Hey fellow bakers!

Just wanted to share my path of discovery around sourdough. My lovely sister walked me through her bread recipes when I stayed with her last year, and I was hooked on her sourdough, ciabatta & baguettes. But I made several modifications to her sourdough recipe, which I can now roll out easily every time, with very stable and repeatable outcomes (see the pics I took of different bakes, but all similarly crusty and well-risen).

So, the ingredients are very simple:

- 500g strong white flour (Shipton Mill flour, of course!)

- 300g leaven (made of 125g plain flour, 125g water & 50g sourdough starter, mixed through and left overnight to ferment)

- 250g water

- 8g salt

- 5g diastatic malt powder

Method

Everything you'd expect, ingredients-wise, except the malt powder; this just helps the natural yeast develop in the absence of sugar, and it also helps with the colouration of the crust. And there is a fairly high proportion of leaven than I've seen in other sourdough recipes. You just need to mix everything together, and do the stretch and turn, 4 or 5 times over 3 hours. Then I shape and set the sourdough into a cold dutch oven and leave it for 30 mintes for a final prove, and turn on the oven to 240c. After 30 minutes, I cut a shape or pattern on to the loaf with a sharp knife, and put it in the oven for 40 minutes lid on, then 25 minutes lid off (a bit less so if you don't like them as dark as mine).

And, hey presto, you have one lovely sourdough loaf.