Homemade bread with sourdough starter

Homemade bread with prozimi

Ingredients

  • 500gr hard flour
  • 500gr wheat flour or all-purpose flour
  • 1 tablespoon salt
  • prozimi
  • lukewarm water
  • olive oil for greasing the baking pan

Method

last evening prepare the prozimi (sourdough starter):

  1. Take the sourdough starter that you keep from the last time you made bread and dissolve it in lukewarm water (careful not too hot because it will burn the enzymes and will not rise!).
  2. Strain it in a medium-large saucepan and add some flour, stirring with a spoon until it becomes a thick.
  3. Cover the pan and wrap with a thick cloth (or blanket) and leave it overnight.
  4. The morning it must have been risen and almost filled the saucepan.

star the bread dough:

  1. In a large bowl, add flours, stir them and make a hole in the center.
  2. Add there the salt, the prozimi (sourdough starter) from the pot, some lukewarm water and knead well until flour moistened and make a soft dough.
  3. Knead for 5-10 minutes approximately until the dough become soft.
  4. When dough is ready, keep 1 small ball into a bowl, to have prozimi for next time. (Cover with the lid gently, and let it rise. When inflated, press it to sit in the volume and leave rise again. After 2 days, put in on the refrigerator if you are going to make bread the next 7-8 days. Otherwise keep it in the freezer and when you need it, just remove it from the freezer for 7-10 hours to thaw).
  5. Grease with some olive oil a baking pan, add a piece of dough (fill half height of baking pan), and press gently with your hands to go around the pan so you don’t have empty space.
  6. Cover well with a thick cloth or blanket and leave until doubled in volume.
  7. With a knife, make a hole in the middle (can deflate a bit, do not be afraid).
  8. Bake in preheated oven at 180oC-200oC for 40′-45′ until golden brown.
  9. Removed from the oven, pass a clean cloth towel on top (which is golden brown) to polish the surface, upside down the pan and remove the pan.
  10. In case you can’t remove the pan, place the pan upside down on a thick kitchen towel and cover well from above (with thick towels) to sweat and baking pan can be removed (leave it on towels until baking pan can be removed itself.)
Tips:

You can also do loaves, using a rectangular baking pan.
Divide the dough into 2-3 equal parts, shape your dough and place in the baking pan. Lubricate the loaf with olive oil and then add another loaf next.
This way loaves can be divided each other after baking.

Also you can make small bread balls. You will need a round baking pan and shape the dough into balls and place them in the pan, one close to each other making a “daisy”.
And in this case you have to lubricate each ball, so it can be divided each other after baking.
Small bread balls will take less baking time.