40 Before 50: Bake a Sourdough Loaf

This is a lockdown trend that has gone crazy and who wouldn’t want a slice of that 😉 when you see artisanal loaves all over social media? I do love a sourdough loaf and they are bloody expensive to buy. But also, I secretly want to master this and proudly show off my bake. It is also no. 17 in my 40 before 50 list.

Well, it’s not exactly the kind of loaf you decide to make one morning and then have it for tea. It took just over a week to make mine.

I followed the King Arthur website for creating the starter. This is an excellent resource if you like baking and I do make the Easiest Loaf You’ll Ever Make fairly regularly. The sourdough starter takes about a week of feeding and discarding to get active. I wasn’t 100% sure how active it was but was impatient to start my loaf.

For the actual loaf, I followed the River Cottage website (the actual recipe is quite far down the page).

Here is my summary of how labour intensive this loaf was:

Create the starter: 1 week

Refresh the starter: 6 hours

Folding: 2.5 hours

Rise at room temperature: 2 hours

Resting in fridge: 8 hours

Shape and rest: 30 minutes

Baking: 35 minutes 

Trying to get the loaf out of my Le Creuset: 30 minutes!!

Was it worth it? Not really. Sure, it was tasty and I felt quite smug eating my smashed avocado on sourdough toast for breakfast. Would I make another? No, I am happy to leave this to the professionals!

Because I am not a fan of waste, I also made sourdough crumpets with the discard starter. They were very tangy and not very edible.

Have you ever made one, and did you continue on your sourdough journey?

Love Mrs Jones x