LBHarp Sourdough Bread Method

It’s January and cold. On your harp practice breaks try making a warm loaf of bread.
After years of babysitting sourdough to the most detailed degree I have come up with this much less fuss (at least to my understanding of bread) method. It uses much less flour for starter, it doens't require you babysit it for 8 hours and it is a less mess way of shaping the loaf.
LeAnne Bennion's Sourdough Method
QUICK SUMMARY:
-Mix dough with 320g water+60g starter+400g flour
-Feed Starter daily 30g flour+30g water
WAIT: 30-60 min
-Add 6g salt and hand mix for five min to let salt absorb
WAIT: 6-8 hours (doing coil colds whenever you feel like it)
-Fold and put into bread basket seam side up
WAIT: counter for 4-8 hrs or fridge overnight
-Preheat oven to 450 degrees with lidded pot inside
-Flip dough into pot seam side down and score in half moon, replace lid
WAIT: Bake 25 min lid on, 25 min lid off
-EAT BREAD (wait a hour for it to cool/set)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
LONG SUMMARY:
What you need:
320 grams room temp water
60 grams sourdough starter
400 grams flour (350 white flour/50 wheat flour)
6 grams sea salt
Dutch oven with a lid (kind of like a Le Creuset but Marshalls has much cheaper ones)
Bread proofing basket (I prefer and oval shape with a liner)
Food Scale (a must)
THE STARTER
Feed every day but if you forget, it can go a couple days without dying. It can last up to two weeks in the fridge and up to three monthsyears in the freezer.
Discard/dump out most of the day old starter in the trash (or use in bread if baking) but leave a remnant on the spoon (or a butter knife is what I use to mix it). Whatever is left on your utensil and the sides of the container is enough for this small amount of flour and water. Add 30g room tempish water and 30 g flour (mix 90% White, 10% wheat flour). I keep a container of premixed 90-10 mixed flour on my counter next to my starter.
THE BREAD
Pour 320g room temp water into a bowl with a lid. Add all the starter or 60 grams and then feed the starter again. Mix the water and starter. Add 400g flour. I like to play around with the ratios of white to wheat here. Sometimes I do all white flour, sometimes 300g white/100g wheat. Usually about 350g White/50g wheat. Depends on what you like and you will see it turns out different each time. Mix all together till there is no loose flour. It does not have to be super mixed. Just till it comes together and is in one lump. Let sit for an hour. Technical term for this is autolyse. Letting the flour absorb all the water before really starting to shape it. It also lets the starter start starting before the salt comes in to slow down the proofing process.
After an hour, add 6g of salt and then mix, squeezing it through your fingers and then turning the dough onto itself. Mix for about five minutes to get the salt really dissolved into the dough. Let sit for however long you like and then for the next 6-10 hrs do coil folds whenever you remember.
Technically I do a coil fold about every half a hour to an hour for the first couple of hours. Then I don't care. Then I do a couple coil folds before shaping it into the basket. Look for lots of bubbly bubbles to show signs that the dough is proofing well.
When the bread has been proofing on the counter for at least 6 hrs or 8 or 10 (sometimes 12 if you had a long busy day) do another coil fold and then dust the top of it. Dust all the insides of the bread basket with flour and then put the dough into the basket seam side up. Pinch the seam so that the sides of the fold come together and stick.
Let it proof covered with a cloth in the fridge overnight or on the counter for another 4-8 hours.
When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 450 degrees F with the lidded pot inside. Let it preheat a little longer than the oven setting says it's preheated because this allows it to get really hot and a hotter oven means faster oven spring aka bread rising to the sky.
Pull the pot out of the hot oven and take the lid off. Make sure the seam side up of the dough is not sticky and might stick to the pot (add a little flour if needed) and flip the dough seam side down into the pot. Score the dough in a half moon shape or whatever cool shape you have seen on tick tock. Replace the lid and then bake for 25 min with lid on/20 minutes lid off. Oven times may vary because my oven is very different from yours. It's all trial and error. I also put the used bread basket on the warm stove to help it dry out.
When the bread looks nice and toasted with a deep color, pull it out and let it cool out of the pot for about an hour. Or 30 minutes if you need egg toast now. Or now if you want the most steamy steam bread of all time that feels so wholesome and delish and fills you with the pride of the earth and our ancestors.
:)
If you made it this far in my bread essay and still have questions. Congrats. You read my bread essay! Happy Baking!!!
-LeAnne

[@JamesBar47]

Hey LeAnne! Great tutorial and the results look really great! Bread is one of those recipes that I just have a hard time making consistently good for some reason but, I'll have to follow your video next time! I remember the woes of feeding my starter back during the pandemic lockdown and how wasteful I felt it was having to get rid of some just to feed it - I think I saw a recipe for sourdough pancakes and tried making them a few times... they were something of an acquired taste lol. Hope you are doing well and would love to chat again soon!