sourdough — Recipes — The Boy Who Bakes (2024)

I love making bread for many reasons, its meditative, its relaxing and it’s fun. But of course the main reason I enjoy it, is the eating. There are few things better than a slice of freshly baked homemade bread. Whether its sourdough or yeasted, a country loaf or brioche buns, homemade bread whilst still just a little warm is so gratifying and so utterly delightful. One of my favourite breads to make is the New York style bagel. Boiled and baked they have a great chewy texture and a wonderful flavour. You can find my yeasted recipe here but today we are talking about sourdough bagels.

To work on this recipe I tested multiple batches of bagels and a few different methods of making them. Initially I worked on simply switching out the yeast in my old recipe for sourdough starter. I bulk fermented the dough then knocked it back and formed the dough into bagels before retarding them overnight in the fridge. Even though this worked great with my yeasted bagels for some reason it simply didn’t work with sourdough. The method I settled on was basically the same just switching up when we retard the dough. I made the dough, let it proof for a couple hours then transferred it to the fridge and retarded it overnight. In the morning I divided the dough formed it into bagels and proofed it for about an hour before boiling and baking.

Three big bits of advice before we get to the recipe. First thing you should know when making this recipe is that bagels require a very strong starter, if the starter is sluggish the bagels wont rise properly and can end up flat and too dense. The dough has a low hydration and the starter needs to work harder to proof the dough. The second thing is that the dough needs a lot of strength. To knead the dough you can use your mixer but be aware that this dough is going to put your mixer through the ringer, so much so that I would suggest if you have domestic stand mixer you may want to knead this by hand.

Sourdough New York Style Bagels
Makes 8

175g sourdough starter, recently doubled (or preferably tripled)
250g lukewarm water
1 tbsp barley malt syrup*
10g fine sea salt
500g strong white bread flour

To Boil
2 tbsp barley malt syrup
1 tbsp bicarbonate of soda

*barley malt syrup is a traditional flavouring in NY bagels but it isn’t commonly available from supermarkets. You’ll find it easily in health food stores or of course multiple places online. If you don’t want to buy the syrup you can use honey but the flavour wont be the same.

To make the dough place the starter into a large bowl and pour over the water and malt syrup and whisk together, breaking it up and dissolving the starter slightly. Add the salt and whisk in briefly. Add the flour and mix together to form a shaggy mass. Turn out and knead on the worksurface for around 12-15 minutes or until smooth and elastic. This dough is pretty dense and kneading it is a workout but persevere, the dough needs a lot of gluten development and you’ll be rewarded with a batch of wonderful bagels.

Form the dough into a ball and place into a lightly oiled bowl, turning to coat evenly in the oil. Cover the bowl and set aside for an hour, before transferring to the fridge overnight or up to 24 hours.

Remove the dough from the bowl and cut into 8 equal sized pieces. Form each piece into a ball, making sure the shaping creates a nice taught surface. Cover and set aside for 10 minutes. To form the dough into bagels you can either roll each ball into a rope and squish the ends together, rolling on the join to seal. The method I use most of the time is the poke-a-hole method. Place a ball of dough on the worksurface and press your finger into the middle of the dough, wiggling a little until you’ve pushed all the way through and can feel the worksurface. Spin the bagel around your finger a little to open up the hole then use your fingers to tease it wider. Make the hole a little wider than you think because it will spring back a little as you shape the remaining bagels and when the bagels bake the hole naturally gets smaller.

Place the shaped bagels onto a parchment lined baking tray that has been sprinkled with a thin layer of cornmeal, this helps prevent the bagels from sticking and makes then easier to manoeuvre later on. Cover the bagels and set aside for around an hour. The bagels won’t double in size you looking for them to looked a little puffed up.

A little before your bagels are ready for boiling and baking preheat the oven to 240ºC (220ºC). Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and prepare plates/bowls with any toppings you are planning on using. Fill a large saucepan with water and bring to a gentle boil. Add the malt syrup and bicarbonate of soda (it will foam up a lot but after a couple minutes will settle down).

If you want to test the bagels are ready for boiling and baking you can do a float test. Place one of the bagels into the boiling water. If the bagel sinks but floats within 5-10 seconds they are ready to go. If they stay sunk for longer leave the remaining bagels for another half an hour or so to proof a little longer.

Add the bagels, 4 at a time, and boil for 30 seconds before flipping them and boiling for another 30 seconds. Lift from the water with a slotted spoon and transfer to the prepared baking trays. Repeat with the remaining bagels. After a minute or so, carefully lift the bagels and dunk them into your toppings, coating one side, before placing back onto the baking tray.

Bake the bagels for about 15 minutes or until golden brown. Remove and transfer the bagels to a wire rack to cool completely.

Bagels are best within a day or two of baking but they also freeze brilliantly for up to a month.

Is there anything better than the aroma of fresh bread filling the house? Maybe the aroma of this particular loaf, a sourdough loaded with roasted garlic, chunks of mature cheddar and lots of rosemary. As the bread bakes the cheese slowly caramelises, filling your kitchen with the aroma of freshly made toasted cheese sandwiches, pure comfort and better than any scented candle you could imagine.

I have made versions of this loaf multiple times now but always devour it so quickly that I’ve never quite gotten around to writing it up so I made another loaf, just for quality control of course, and this time I actually measured out everything I put into the loaf. To make the bread you need a sourdough starter and if you’ve already made my basic sourdough loaf your in for a treat. This recipe is a simple adaption of that recipe and follows the same basic patten, the only real difference is the way the additional ingredients are incorporated into the dough.

Roasted Garlic, Cheddar and Rosemary Sourdough Loaf

Mix-Ins

1 large head of garlic
Olive oil
Flaked sea salt
125g mature cheddar, in small dice
3 springs of rosemary, leaved finely chopped

Sourdough Recipe

Levain
25g mature starter (my starter is 100% hydration)
50g 50/50 flour blend (my blend of white and wholemeal bread flours used for the starter)
50ml water at 27C

Dough
100g levain
450g white bread flour
50g wholemeal flour
375ml water at 27C
10g salt

9am - Make the levain

The levain needs to double in size to be ready to bake with. A healthy starter fed at a ratio of 1:2:2 should happily double if not triple in size within 4-5 hours if stored around 25-27ºC.

12pm - Autolyse

An hour before the levain is finished rising, we mix together the flour and water (keeping back 25ml for a later use). To do this we don’t need to knead the dough, or develop the gluten, we just want to hydrate the flour. Squeeze the mixture through your fingers, until everything is moistened, scrape any dry bits from the side of the bowl and then cover the bowl and pop it the oven alongside the levain until it finishes doubling.

The purpose of the autolyse is to fully hydrate the flour, to make a dough that is extensible which is to say nice and stretchy.

1pm - Mix-In Prep

When the levain and autolysed dough are almost finished prep your mix-in ingredients. Peel away most of the outer papery layers from the bulb of garlic and slice off the top. This cut should just be deep enough that the top of each clove of garlic is exposed. Place the garlic onto a piece of foil and drizzle over a little olive oil and sprinkle with a little flaked sea salt. Wrap the garlic in the foil and place onto a baking tray. With the oven preheated to 200ºC (160ºC Fan) roast the garlic for about 45-60 minutes or until the garlic is soft and a rich golden colour. Set aside to cool. In a bowl mix together the rosemary and cheddar.

2pm - Bulk Fermentation

Bulk fermentation is the first rise of the bread and it is where the strength, where the gluten, is mainly going to be developed (the autolyse starts this process off). Unlike a traditional bread dough that is kneaded, sourdough, at least this method, is relatively hands off.

Before we mix everything together, test that the autolyse is ready by doing a float test. The recipe for the levain makes a total of 125g and we only need 100g for the dough itself, the rest is for this stage. Take a teaspoon of the the levain and pop it into a bowl of water. If it floats the mixture is full of gas and is ready to bake with, if it doesn’t we need to leave it a little longer.

Scrape 100g of the levain on top of the autolysed dough and use your fingers to dimple it into the dough. We want to fully distribute the levain so once the dimpling stops working I start folding the dough on itself until it feels more uniform. Leave the dough for 15 minutes before adding the salt.

For the first fold you will preform a classic stretch and fold, lifting and gently stretching the dough and folding it back on itself, doing this four times around the edges of the dough. Rest the dough for 30 minutes before preforming the second set of stretch and folds, resting again for 30 minutes. After this rest we will no longer preform stretch and folds, its time for to add the mix-ins.

Very lightly oil your worksurface and scrape the dough out onto the worksurface. Gently stretch the dough out into a large thin rectangle, working slowly so you don’t rip the dough. Squeeze the garlic into a small bowl and use a fork to mash into a smooth paste. Using your fingers randomly dot the garlic over the dough and spread across the dough. Don’t worry if not every part of dough has garlic on it, just make it’s nicely distributed. Sprinkle over the cheddar mixture and gently press so it sticks to the dough. Fold the dough in thirds, as if folding a letter, encasing the mix-ins inside the dough. Roll the dough up and then place back into the bowl to continue bulk fermentation. Do another two sets of stretch and folds spaced 30 mins apart and then leave the dough to finish bulk fermentation.

When evaluating if the dough has finished its bulk fermentation we are looking for a dough that has risen about 20-50% and shows clear signs of fermentation. This would mean a dough that jiggles when you rock the bowl gently and a dough that has bubbles on the top of the dough. Once thats achieved we are ready for shaping.

7.30pm - Proving

Take the dough from the fridge and carefully turn it out onto a crumpled piece of parchment. You can either leave the dough as it is or dust with little flour.

Using a bread lame or very sharp knife score a line across the top of the loaf (this helps to expand and open up fully as it bakes).

Remove the cast iron pot from the oven and remove the lid. Cut away the remaining parchment and carefully transfer the loaf to the pan and place the lid back on. Bake in the preheated oven for 25 minutes. Baking the loaf in the pan helps to trap the moisture from the dough, creating steam so the crust is slow to form and the bread can rise to its full potential. Reduce the temperature to 220C and remove the lid and bake for a further 20 minutes or until the crust is nice and dark. As this loaf is loaded with cheese you want to keep an eye on it so that it doesn’t burn. Once browned remove the pot from the oven and carefully remove the loaf and set onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Allow the bread to cool for at least an hour before cutting into it or you risk ending up with a gummy bread.

Baking with sourdough is a slower process. These buns are made stretched over two days but do not let that put you off, the hands-on work is short and sweet. Once you’ve learnt to make this dough you also have a great base for other similar recipes. One important thing to note about baking with sourdough, and this is the case for all sourdough breads, is that the starter needs to be at its peak when it is used. This means that the starter has been recently fed and has doubled in size. You want to use the starter before or just after it starts to fall, but well before it has sunk.

If you’ve ever had a Swedish cinnamon bun you know how fabulous they are, sweet sticky and incredibly fragrant and my favouritesfrom Fabrique Bakery are the inspiration for this recipe. The key to the flavour is good quality cardamom and freshly grinding it so the flavour is fresh and bright. You can either break open the pods removing the seeds and grind these, or if this is too time consuming you can simply grind the whole pod, although you’ll need an electric spice grinder to do this. If you aren’t a fan of cardamom this recipe and method would also work great flavoured with cinnamon like a classic cinnamon bun you could also use the dough to make buns in the style of babka, with a chocolate filling and a syrup glaze.

Doves Farm Organic Strong White Bread Flour is available from Sainsbury’s, Ocado, many independents and www.dovesfarm.co.uk.
Doves Farm Organic White Spelt Flour is also available from Tesco.
Right now, there is 20% off these flours on www.dovesfarm.co.uk until the 30 September.

Sourdough Swedish Cardamom Buns
Makes 12
225g Doves Farm Organic Strong White Bread Flour
225g Doves Farm Organic White Spelt Flour
50g caster sugar
Zest of 1 lemon
1 tsp fine sea salt
150g mature sourdough starter, recently fed and doubled in size
185ml whole milk
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla bean paste
75g unsalted butter, diced and at room temperature

Filling
150g caster sugar
185g unsalted butter, very soft
2-3 tbsp ground cardamom
1/4 tsp fine sea salt

To make the dough place the flours, sugar and lemon zest into the bowl of a stand mixer, with the dough hook attached, and mix briefly to combine. Add the sourdough starter, the milk, eggs and vanilla and on low/medium speed knead until everything is moistened. Cover the bowl and set aside for 30 minutes. This stage helps to hydrate the flour and kick starts the gluten development. Add the salt and then on low/medium speed knead the dough for about 10 minutes or until the dough is smooth, elastic and forming a ball that clings to the dough hook. Add the butter one piece at a time and continue kneading until all the butter has been absorbed and the dough has become smooth and elastic again. Form the dough into a ball and place the dough into a lightly greased bowl and cover. Set the bowl aside for about 6 hours or until the dough has almost doubled in size. Transfer the bowl to the fridge and leave overnight, this firms up the dough and makes it easier to handle. At this stage the dough can be refrigerated for 24-48 hours.

Before you remove the dough from the fridge make the filling. Beat all the ingredients until soft and well combined. On a lightly floured work surface roll out the dough into a 30x60cm rectangle. Spread the filling over one half of the dough and then fold the uncovered half over, creating a square of dough. Roll out to slightly extend so the finished shape is roughly 30x40cm. Cut the dough into 12 equal sized strips.

To form the buns gently stretch out each strip of dough and grip one end with your thumb and forefinger. Fold the dough around your first three fingers and before you run out dough fold the tail end over the ring of dough and tuck the end underneath. Place the buns onto two parchment lined baking trays and cover, setting aside for 3-4 hours or until risen and puffy.

When ready to bake preheat the oven to 190ºC (170ºC Fan). Brush with a beaten egg and sprinkle liberally with pearl sugar. Bake the buns for about 20 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool.

Kept in a sealed container the buns will keep for 2-3 days but are best on the day made, they will also freeze brilliantly.

I have something shameful to admit. I abandoned my sourdough starter in the back of the fridge for months, forgotten and neglected. After languishing in the fridge for so long I wondered if it could have possibly survived or if could be revived. I am a firm believer that once your starter is properly established it becomes pretty hardy and almost indestructible. Pulling it from the fridge there was a thick dark layer of hooch and underneath was a very thick floury paste, it did not look healthy and it didn’t smell healthy either. I poured off the hooch and discarded all but a tablespoon of the starter that remained. From their I fed the starter as you would normally with a 50/50 mix of flour and water, leaving a day between feeds, and after three days of feeding the starter was back with a bang, it was tripling with each feed. I have made a bunch of focaccia since then and it feels safe to say that this proves even the most neglected starter can be brought back from the brink of death.

The reason I made focaccia instead of traditional country style loaf was a little laziness and a little wanting something different. Most sourdough I make is made with a no knead method, utilising stretch and folds instead of kneading but with focaccia its even easier as there isn’t really any shaping, it really is the easiest sourdough bread.

A word advice on the pan you use for this bread, make sure it is either very good quality non stick or make sure you line it with parchment, there is nothing worse than your hard work becoming lodged in the pan.

Sourdough Focaccia
500g strong white bread flour
425ml water (25-27ºC)
150g sourdough starter (100% hydration and its peak)
10g salt
Olive oil, lots of it

Toppings
Flaked sea salt
2-3 sprigs fresh rosemary, roughly chopped

To make the focaccia dough pour the water, reserving 25ml for later, into a large bowl and scrape in the starter, mixing briefly to dissolve it into the water. Pour in the flour and use your hands to form a shaggy dough. At this stage you are not looking to knead the dough, simply ensuring all the flour is hydrated. To do this I start by stirring with my hand and when it starts to form a more uniform mass I squeeze the dough between my fingers, doing so until it feels like there is no dry spots. Cover the bowl and set aside for about 30 minutes. At this stage, and until the dough goes into the fridge, I like to keep the dough somewhere warm which helps with the fermentation of the dough.

Sprinkle the salt on top of the dough and pour over the last 25ml water. Dimple the dough, squeeze it through your fingers, fold it over on itself, generally working the dough until the water and salt have been combined. During this process the dough can look separated but just keep working it until it comes back into a uniform mass. Cover and rest again for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes we now do our first set of stretch and folds, which is our alternative to kneading and builds strength into the dough. Using a wet hand go under the dough pull a portion and then stretch it up and over the dough, repeating this four times around the bowl. Cover and rest for 30 minutes, repeating this process 3 more times. At this stage I then leave the dough for about 1-2 hours until the dough has risen around 40-50% and the dough is showing signs of fermentation. The dough should have a jiggle and have lots of bubbles on the surface of the dough. Grease a non-stick 9x13 pan (or a traditional 9x13 pan lined with parchment paper) with 3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. Carefully transfer the dough to the tin and top with a little oil to prevent it drying out. Cover the pan and refrigerate for 18-24 hours.

To bake the focaccia the dough needs brining back to room temperature so remove the tin from the fridge and let it rest for 1-3 hours or until the dough has a jiggle to it. When almost ready preheat the oven to 240ºC (220ºC Fan)

Drizzle the focaccia generously with extra virgin olive oil and then using oiled fingers, dimple the dough all over. Sprinkle generously with flaked sea salt and chopped rosemary, if using. Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes then reduce the temperature to 210ºC (190ºC Fan) and bake for a further 15 minutes or until the focaccia is golden brown.

Remove from the oven and carefully transfer the bread from the tin to a wire rack to cool.

Focaccia is best on the day made but is also great for a few days after baking. As with most breads focaccia also freezes brilliantly