Soft Sourdough French Bread
Using the Soft Sourdough Master Recipe you can easily make yourself a loaf of sourdough french bread to accompany a meal or turn into garlic bread. Better yet- make extra for french toast!
Ingredients
Pre-Ferment
- ½ cup sourdough starter see notes
- ½ cup warm water
- ⅔ cup all-purpose flour
Dough
- Pre-ferment from above
- 1 tablespoon butter or use coconut oil or olive oil
- 1 tablespoon honey or try 1 tablespoon maple syrup or 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ¾ cup milk see notes
- 2 ¼ - 2 ¾ cups all purpose flour
- Butter to brush crust after baking
Instructions
Pre-Ferment
- Mix the pre-ferment of sourdough starter, flour, and water up 8-24 hours before you want to bake. The longer beforehand, the more sour your end product will be. If I plan to mix the dough in the morning, I make it before bed. Cover with plastic wrap or a plastic bag and let sit on the counter.
To Make the Dough
- Melt butter, honey, and salt on low in a saucepan. When it's melted and combined, turn off the heat, add your milk, and stir to combine. With a thermometer or your finger, test the temperature of the mixture. By thermometer, it should be no more than 105F. By your finger...you should be able to comfortably hold it in for 10 seconds. If it's not this warm, turn the heat back on to warm it. If I use a heavy bottom pot, there is enough residual heat to heat the milk, if I use something like a thin enamel pot, there isn't.
- Add the warm liquid to your mixer (or bowl you plan to mix the dough in) and add your pre-ferment.
- Stir to combine; it's not going to combine super well until you start adding flour.
- Add your flour, starting on the low end, and mix the dough, adding more flour as needed just until it's combined, but not a cohesive, nice dough.
- Let sit 15-30 minutes, then knead the dough.
- This dough takes more kneading than most. My mixer kneads on low for 10 minutes, so if kneading by hand, you're going to knead about 10-15 minutes.
- If the dough sticks to the bowl or your hands, add a little more flour, but try not to add too much. It's not a stiff dough, it's on the softer side. Try wetting your hands/counter for kneading if it's sticking and you've already added a lot more flour.
Bake in One Day Method
- Cover your dough with plastic wrap or a plastic bag and let rise 2-3 hours until it looks like it's kind of doubled (don't overthink it, as long as it's 1 ½ times it's original size).
Overnight Method
- Cover your dough with plastic wrap or a plastic bag and let sit overnight. It will be gigantic and beautiful in the morning.
For Either Method: Continue as Below
- Punch your dough down, give it a few kneads. Yes, you are letting it rise twice before shaping.
- Cover with plastic wrap or a plastic bag and let sit 2-3 hours until it's doubled. To test if your dough has doubled, dip your finger in flour and poke the dough. If the dough bounces back, it's got more to give and needs to keep rising. If the dough stays indented, it's given all it has to give and you can proceed.
Shaping
- Dump your dough out onto a lightly floured counter, roll out to an 18x6-inch rectangle.
- Roll your dough up so it's now an 18" long log and let it rest, seam side down, for 5-10 minutes.
- Then turn it seam side up, flatten it out into a looong rectangle, fold it in half to make a shorter rectangle, then roll up, pinch the seams together well and fold in the ends, pinching well. Put seam side down on a lined tray. This makes your dough have lots of tension, and gives you a taller, more round loaf instead of a flatter loaf.
- Cover and let rise 2-3 hours. If your house is REALLY cold, like below 60F/15C, turn your oven on for a minute or two. Tuck a cast iron pan in first to help retain heat. Turn oven off and put covered bread into oven.
- When it's doubled (don't forget to take bread out if its in there!) preheat oven to 375F.
- Slash 3 diagonal slices in the top of the loaf for the classic French bread look.
- Bake for 15 minutes, flip it around and bake another 10 minutes.
- Check the internal temp of your loaves. This is the most reliable way to know your bread is ready. Your bread should be 190-200F; if not put it in for another 5 minutes.
- When the bread is done, take out of the oven, and brush the crust with butter. I either rub a stick of butter on top or melt butter and brush it on with a pastry brush.
Notes
Pre-ferment
You can use sourdough starter that 'needs to be fed' as long as it has recently doubled. So we aren't using discard, but it also doesn't have to be in "optimal bread baking state."
Buttermilk
You can save buttermilk from making butter for this if you have it! Use non-dairy milk or yogurt/cultured buttermilk watered down to to milk consistency as well.
Overnight Tweaks
In my extensive testing of this recipe, I have found if you are doing an overnight rise, you can skip the autolyze rest before kneading AND skip the first punch down and rise. Just let mix, knead, let it rise, punch down and shape in the morning.
Nutrition
Calories: 143kcalCarbohydrates: 27gProtein: 4gFat: 2gSaturated Fat: 1gPolyunsaturated Fat: 0.2gMonounsaturated Fat: 0.4gTrans Fat: 0.04gCholesterol: 4mgSodium: 208mgPotassium: 57mgFiber: 1gSugar: 2gVitamin A: 54IUVitamin C: 0.01mgCalcium: 24mgIron: 1mg
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!