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Recipe · 18 Sep
· 7 min read
Our house loaf, step by step
The recipe we bake every morning, scaled down for one loaf and a home oven. You’ll need a starter and a day and a half.
Baskets out to dry
You’ll need
Strong white flour — 400 g
Wholemeal rye flour — 50 g
Water at 26°C — 350 g
Active sourdough starter — 90 g
Fine sea salt — 10 g
Makes
1 loaf, about 900 g
Time
36 hours, 40 minutes of work
This is the loaf we sell most of, written down for a home kitchen. The quantities are ours divided by forty; the timings are the same.
Feed the starter. The night before, feed your starter so it peaks in the morning: bubbly, domed and smelling of yoghurt.
Mix and rest. Mix the flours with 320 g of the water until no dry bits are left. Cover and leave for an hour. This is the autolyse; it does half the kneading for you.
Add starter and salt. Add the starter, then the salt with the last 30 g of water. Squeeze it through with wet hands for three or four minutes.
Fold, four times. Over the next two hours, every thirty minutes, lift each side of the dough and fold it over itself. Then leave it alone for another two hours, until it has grown by about half.
Shape. Tip it onto a lightly floured bench, round it gently, rest twenty minutes, then shape it tight and put it seam-up in a floured basket.
Into the fridge. Cover and refrigerate for 12 to 16 hours. The cold slows everything down and builds the flavour.
Bake. Heat the oven to 250°C with a lidded cast-iron pot inside for 45 minutes. Turn the loaf out, score it once, bake 20 minutes with the lid on and 25 with it off.
Wait. Let it cool for at least an hour before you cut it. We know.
If the crust sings when it comes out of the oven, you got it right.
Michel Arnaud, founder
— The Fournil bakehouse