Rustic Sourdough Italian Loaf

This week I am making one of my favorite yeasted breads as a sourdough. It is based in Baking Illustrated by publishers of Cooks Illustrated called Rustic Italian Bread. I call this version Rustic Sourdough Italian Bread.

The original recipe calls for an overnight sponge. Instead I make a 24 hour sponge that I mix the morning before I am going to mix the dough. That then stands for 3 hours at room temperature to get fermentation going then into the fridge until the next morning. This allows for fermentation to continue slowly and for gluten development to occur.

At roughly 12 hours before I am going to mix I refresh my starter so it is nice active by morning. I do this by removing some starter from its container to a bowl and adding equal parts water and flour. I have gotten so I prefer doing that instead of doing the second daily refresh on that starter itself. The end result is the same and I find it more convenient.

No need to have an autolyes with this dough. The sponge has good gluten development after 24 hours.

The hydration level of this dough is 75% so it is a wet dough to work with. You wouldn’t know it however when trying to mix the last of the flour into the dough.

I did make one big mistake with this recipe. I was too lazy to get out a separate bowl for mixing the dough so I mixed in my proofing container. During my second stretch and fold I discovered hard lumps of dried flour in the dough. I had to pick out what I could and then moved the dough to another container. Lesson learned!

I did a total of 4 stretch and folds this time. Before I performed the fourth I did a windowpane test and wasn’t quite satisfied with the dough strength. Total bulk fermentation time was 5-1/2 hours at which time the dough was nice and soft and puffy with some large bubbles. The dough was then divided, weighed and preformed. After a 20 minute rest on my board the dough was shaped and placed in lined bannetons seam side up. Then it was into a plastic bag and into the fridge overnight.

Because it worked so well with the Country Sourdough Loaf I decided to bake the loaves straight from the fridge. The oven and stone were preheated to 500 F for 60 minutes. The roasting pan went in 10 minutes before baking.

The first loaf was taken from the fridge, inverted out of its banneton onto parchment, slashed, into the oven and covered. Baking time was 15 minutes covered at 475 F. The cover was removed, the oven temp dropped to 400 F, and the loaf baked another 17 minutes. After that the oven temperature was raised back to 500 F and the process repeated for the 2nd loaf.

This was the second time I made this recipe. There were two changes that I made from the first time. Change one was the switch to organic bread flour from non-organic. Change two was an additional 12 hours fermentation of the sponge.

I felt that this tasted much better than the first attempt. I do believe there is better flavor from the King Arthur Organic Bread Flour (I have no affiliation with them) compared to the regular bread flour. I also believe that longer fermentation also improves flavor. When you use the same four ingredients starter, flour, water and salt it is difficult to get a difference in taste except by changing the fermentation time. An change in flavor is going to be subtle.

The Formula

Ingredient	Amount	Bakers %
Sponge
Starter	25 g	9%
Flour	285 g	100%
Water	212 g	74%
Dough
Sponge	522 g	123%
Starter	75 g	18%
Bread flour	425 g	100%
Water	310 g	73%
Salt	13 g	3%
Dough weight	1345 g

My Process

1. Mix sponge ingredients 12 hours before planned dough mixing.
2. Cover and let stand on counter 3 hours.
3. Place in fridge until next morning.
4. Remove starter from fridge.
5. Weigh out dough ingredients.
6. Mix starter into water.
7. Pull small chunks off sponge and mix into water and starter until all of the sponge is incorporated.
8. Mix salt into flour.
9. Slowly incorporate flour into water. Mix until all flour is incorporated into the dough. Transfer dough to fermentation container.
10. Cover and let rest 60 minutes.
11. Stretch and fold dough a total of 3 or 4 times until a good windowpane test.
12. Total bulk fermentation time will be 4 to 7 hours.
13. Divide dough into two equal pieces, if making two loaves. Preshape and let rest on counter for 20 minutes. Lightly flour top of dough.
14. Flour banneton(s) with a mix of rye and rice flour.
15. Final shape loaf, place in banneton(s) seam side up. Lightly dust with rice flour. Place in plastic bag and refrigerate until next morning.
16. Place baking stone in oven and preheat to 500 F for 1 hour. Put roasting pan in oven 10 minutes before baking.
17. Remove one loaf from fridge. Invert loaf from banneton on to a sheet of parchment paper. Lightly dust loaf with flour for rustic appearance. Slash loaf.
18. Transfer loaf on parchment to oven and cover with roasting pan. Set oven to 475 F and bake 15 minutes covered.
19. Remove roasting pan and reduce oven temperature to 400 F. Bake for an additional 15 to 20 minutes .
20. Remove bread from oven and let cool on rack before slicing.
21. If baking a second loaf, place roasting pan back in the oven, raise the oven temperature to 500 F and wait 15 minutes before repeating the baking process.