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How much time does it really take to make bread from scratch?
How to Make Sourdough Bread from Scratch
The time involved in making bread can be divided into hands-on time and hands-off time.
Some bakers might use a lot of hands-on time, kneading a lot to develop strength in the dough. Other bakers might use a no-knead approach and use more hands-off time, with just a couple of minutes of hands-on time.
You don’t need to knead your bread at all. The purpose of kneading is to strengthen the gluten. The purpose of having strong gluten is to trap the gasses that add more flavour to you bread, and to make the bread light in texture. By handling the processes of strengthening and shaping bread a bit differently, it’s possible to have light, open, flavoursome bread with minimal hands-on time. Here is a rough guide to how I do this.
Table of Contents
Mix until just combined, then rest for at least fifteen minutes.
Mix until no traces of flour remain, not any longer. When working with 100% whole grain flours it’s important not to over-mix, as the tiny pieces of bran in the flour can cut into the gluten and weaken it.
Stretch and fold, or squash and fold.
Allow your dough to sit for around 20 minutes, then do a series of stretch and folds by lifting up half the dough, folding it over the other half, rotating the bowl a quarter turn, then repeating the stretching, folding, and rotating, until all four sides have been stretched and folded. Stop this if the dough starts to tear at any point
Optionally repeat the resting (rest for 15 to 30 minutes), stretching, and folding up to three more times if you want to.
It’s really not the end of the world if you don’t have time to do this (or if you forget). You’ll still get good bread without it.
Ferment
Leave your dough alone until it’s fermented. If your room is warm enough, it will puff up. If your room is cold, it may not rise muc
The amount of time your dough will take to ferment will depend on how much starter is in the dough, the water temperature, and the room temperature. I adjust the amount of starter and the water temperature to work with whatever room temperature conditions I am facing at different times of the year, as well as adjusting these things to suit my schedule: sometimes I need a bread that ferments rapidly, and make a dough where 50% or more of the flour is prefermented, other times I need a dough that ferments more slowly, and use a smaller amount of starter.
Be gentle when dividing and shaping
If you want nice airy bread, you don’t want to destroy all those bubbles that have been created during fermentation. Don’t pick pieces off one bit of dough to add to the other or try to get it to an exact weight on a scale, just divide into what looks about righ
Shaping
Some doughs don’t need to be shaped at all. If you are really busy and want bread, you can simply just dump your dough into a greased loaf tin (or into a floured towel-lined bowl) and you’ll still get bread. Maybe not as neat as if you’d shaped it properly, but it will still feed you, and will still taste goo
If you want to shape the dough, it helps to observe and to feel what the dough is like. If you haven’t done many stretch and folds earlier, the dough might be a bit weak, and can benefit from preshaping. To preshape, simply fold the dough in half, to form a semicircle, and then fold that in half, to form a quarter circle. Allow it to rest for a few minutes if you like, and then get on to the final shaping.
I do most of my shaping in midair, and it takes a few seconds. Shaping can also be done quickly on a bench. Shaping a boule is simply a matter of imagining an invisible dot on one side of the ball of dough, and tensioning the outside of the dough towards that dot. When the dough looks tight and tense, stop shaping.
For a pan loaf or bâtard, sometimes I am folding it up in thirds like a letter or rolling it like a cinnamon bun, other times I am shaping it as if it were a boule, but instead of an invisible dot, it’s an invisible line. Shaping bread has become instinct for me, and it only takes a few seconds per loaf.
Proofing
Proofing can happen at any temperature. Your bread will proof quickly and rise up in warm room temperatures, or you can delay the baking by moving your bread to a cooler part of the house, or proof it in a fridge for up to 24 hours
Scoring or not scoring
If you’re baking with a lot of white flour, or if your wholegrain loaf hasn’t risen much in proofing, you might want to quickly slash the top of it with a knife a couple of times before you bake it. I use a serrated steak knife to do this, but most of the time I usually skip this step.
Baking
Baking itself is simply a matter of putting the bread in a preheated oven and waiting
If you’re using the dutch oven method, you’ll want to remove the lid half an hour into baking, but other than that quick step, baking is another hands-off part of making bread.
You can make bread!
You can make great bread with only a couple of minutes of hands-on time per loaf.
There’s a bunch of steps along the way that you can do (or that you can skip), but for good baking with minimal time, it helps to take a step back and think “what do I actually want to do? And what kind of baking will work in my life?” There are a lot of finicky instructions around about creating special levains, autolyse, pretty score marks, and more, but all these instructions do no good if you are too busy to follow them.
Think about your schedule, and when it would suit you to do each real stage of baking (mixing, strengthening, shaping, baking), and by tinkering with the amount of starter, water temperature, and room temperature, you will be able to create breads that work in your life.
A sourdough book for busy people
I created a sourdough book with simple instructions that anyone can follow, with recipes that work even in busy schedules. If you’d like access to 75 easy sourdough recipes for breads, pizza, and pastries, check out Sourdough Without Fail.
Free sourdough discard recipes
About Kate Downham
Kate Downham has been growing, preserving, and cooking real food since 2007. She is the author of four books on homestead skills: A Year in an Off-Grid Kitchen, Natural Small Batch Cheesemaking, Backyard Dairy Goats, and Sourdough Without Fail.
Off-grid with her family of nine in the Tasmanian forest, Kate milks her own goats, makes all their cheese, mills all her own grain, and bakes fresh sourdough bread daily.
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