If you’re just as fascinated by sourdough as we are, it's time to try it at home. With all the time we have at our disposal during this period, it’s actually possible to follow each and every step – feeding it and learning the right technique so you’ll always have some available for homemade recipes. As you’ll see in the tutorial below – created by our stylist Beatrice Prada, guided from a distance by chef Davide Brovelli of our very own La Scuola della Cucina Italiana – we start off with fruit fermentation, moving on to the preparation of the sourdough starter, followed by feedings and dough-working until we finally have a loaf that’s ready to be baked in the oven! Ready for the Italian sourdough challenge?
Fruit fermentation for your sourdough starter
There are several starter ingredients that allow us to make sourdough at home – including yogurt, fermented fruit and other ingredients that contain sufficient acidity. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to start from scratch with fresh fruit. In a bowl, mix 1 lb chopped apples, 9 oz organic raisins and 1 ½ liters water. Add a tablespoon of honey and let it ferment for 5-7 days – sealed with plastic wrap at room temperature.
The first mixture
The next step for making sourdough at home is to filter the fermented fruit liquid with a sieve. After filtering, mix 7 oz fermented fruit liquid with 7 oz flour and knead.
Once kneaded, transfer to a bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let the sourdough rest for 24 hours at 78°F. After 24 hours, your dough should look like this:
Feeding the sourdough mother yeast
Feed the mother yeast sourdough starter using 4 oz sourdough starter, 4 oz flour and 4 oz water. Let it rest once more. In the meantime, you can already bake with the leftovers from the starter, but make sure you add a small percentage of brewer's yeast because our sourdough is still not strong enough on its own yet. After another 24 hours, the mother yeast will start to make bubbles!
The dough
Now we can start baking! Pour 2 oz mother yeast sourdough starter, 14 oz flour, 4 oz semolina flour and 12 oz water into a bowl. Knead.
Below are a few examples of what your dough should look like after working it, while it’s resting and after 3 hours of rising (when it should be doubled in volume).
Folding the sourdough
Now it’s time to knead the leavened sourdough mixture, rolling it out and folding it.
As you can see, the dough makes bubbles!
Making bread with sourdough
Once the folds have been made, knead the dough to give it the desired shape and dust it with a little flour. Let it rise for another two or three hours.
Baking homemade bread with mother yeast
Bake the loaf in a pre-heated oven at 465°F for 20 minutes on the top rack with a bowl of water in the oven. Then lower the temperature to 400°F for another 10-15 minutes. To check the dough as it bakes, gently knock the bottom of the tray; if the sound is “hollow,” the bread is ready!