Sourdough bread is a great alternative when wanting a healthier bread. If you haven’t read my article on sourdough bread, you can read it here: A Healthy Bread That Is Good For You! I have always loved an authentic sourdough loaf. A true sourdough loaf is made with wild yeast or a sourdough starter. If you haven’t read my post on how to start a sourdough starter, you can do that here: How To Start Your Own Sourdough Starter. This loaf of bread has 4 ingredients, that is it! It is super easy to make but does take some time to ferment. This dough actually ferments for 19 hours. Don’t let that scare you…the whole process will take you 10 minutes of prep time and the rest of the time the dough just sits there getting better and tastier.
There are several things that you will need to get started. It is a good idea to have a digital scale to measure your ingredients but is not absolutely necessary. I do my best to show you how to utilize what you have in your kitchen so you don’t have to buy any special equipment. I use a dutch oven to cook my bread in. Often times people will cook sourdough in a La Cloche, but I find it just as easy to use a dutch oven. Another item that is often used when cooking sourdough bread is a proofing basket or a round brotform (pictured at bottom of post). Again, I just use what I have in my kitchen. You can make a proofing basket by using a colander lined with a thin towel (not a thick towel). You might want to purchase a Danish dough whisk, but a slotted spoon works as well. See the bottom of this post to see where you can purchase these items. I have pictures showing you all of this. This recipe was modified from Breadtopia, a great website that teaches us all how to make a better loaf of sourdough! So let’s get started.
The first thing you need to do is measure out 350 grams (1 1/2 cup) of filtered water (at room temperature). Place water into a ceramic bowl, not metal. Stir in 3 tablespoons of honey. If using raw honey, melt the honey on low heat until it turns into a liquid.
Add 1/4 cup of sourdough starter (learn how to make your own sourdough starter here) to the water mixture and mix well. Your sourdough starter should look like this.
Add 1/4 cup of this starter to the water mixture and stir well.
In another bowl, measure out 530 grams (about 5 cups fluffed) of 100% whole spelt flour. Add 10 grams (1 1/2 tsp) of unrefined sea salt and stir. Please note, you need to use whole spelt flour, other flours will not work with this recipe.
Mix the flour mixture in with the water mixture. Stir with a slotted spoon until well combined. The dough will be a wet dough.
Cover with plastic and store in a warm place for 1 hour.
After 1 hour, dust your hands and the top of the dough with flour. Pick up the dough and stretch and then fold the dough. Stretch once again in the opposite direction. Place back into the bowl and cover with plastic for another 1/2 hour. After a half hour, do a second stretch and fold in both directions. Put back in the bowl and cover with plastic for another half hour. After a half hour do a final (third) stretch and fold in both directions. Place the dough back into the bowl and cover with plastic and allow it to sit overnight. I usually start this whole process at 3:30 pm and bake it the next morning at 9:30 am.
In the morning you will need a wood cutting board, a colander and light dish towel.
This is what your dough will look like in the morning. Yours might rise a bit more, it all depends on the weather and how warm your kitchen is. It was cooler in my kitchen, so it didn’t rise as much, but don’t let that alarm you, it will still rise as it proofs and cooks.
Flour the cutting board, hands, the dish towel in the colander and the top of the dough with rice flour. Gently scrape the dough out of the bowl and place it onto the cutting board. Pull the sides up and pinch the dough at the top. Place dough into the lined colander and cover with plastic and allow the dough to rise for another hour and a half.
In a 400º-450º F oven(temperature might vary depending on your oven, 450ºF was too hot for me, I cooked mine in a 400º F oven). Preheat a dutch oven with a lid on for the last half hour that the dough is rising. Pull the very hot dutch oven out of the oven and gently transfer the dough into the hot dutch oven by flipping the dough gently out of the colander. Put the lid back on and return to oven and bake for 35 minutes. After 35 minutes remove the lid and allow to bake for 10 additional minutes or until the internal temperature reaches 195º-200º F.
Remove bread from Dutch oven and allow the bread to cool for 1 hour before serving. Serve with some grass fed butter and enjoy!
How To Make A “Real” Sourdough Spelt Loaf
Prep Time: 20 minutes- Cook Time: 45 minutes
- Total Time: 1 hour 5 minutes
- Yield: 20 pieces 1x
- Category: side dish
- Method: baking
- Cuisine: american
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Pin RecipeDescription
Learn how to make your own sourdough spelt loaf. It really is quite easy!
Ingredients
- 530 grams (5 fluffed cups) spelt flour
- 3 tbsp honey
- 350 grams (1 1/2 cup) water
- 10 grams (1 1/2 tsp) unrefined sea salt
- 1/4 cup sourdough starter, see recipe
Instructions
- See Instructions in this post
Notes
Nutrition Info: Calories: 143.8 Fat: 1.0g Carbohydrates: 28.5g Protein: 4.1g
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 piece
@Lois I’d put the starter back in the fridge and then pull it out again when you have a free morning.
@Beck glad to see it worked for you! I am going to have to try the white spelt, but that helps with the texture a whole lot!
does anyone know anything about dough (besem) starter? i would like to convert my liquid starter to a dough starter, but am unsure if this will chance the amount of starter i need in the recipe.
thanks!
I am a little confused about making the starter when it says to throw out the rest. The instructions say this every time you feed it.
Yes. You only save the 1/4 cup. the outcome is a nice strong sour dough! Once you have gone through all the steps then you can start saving more if you feel that the 1/2 cup you end up with is not enough. I know it feels like a waist but once you have your starter not much is wasted after that. It all works out! =)
There are lots of recipes for your sourdough ‘discard’ (the part you throw out). Crackers, pancakes, naan, etc
Once your starter is up & running smoothly there are a lot of ‘starter discard’ recipes available that you can use instead of throwing extra starter away
Ive made your sour dough starter and have started my journey to sourdough heaven! I started my loaf yesterday and was pleased to see that it had risen a good deal this morning. I went to take it out of the bowl and found that it is still immensely sticky. We are talking cant get it off your fingers at all sticky. Your picture shows that it will at least keep its shape.. mine will not. It slowly turns back into a pile of goo… what do I do.. I have it in the towel right now with lots of flour but Im worried that it will end up a huge pancake … any advice? =)
I haven’t made this bread yet but I belive it’s ok that it doesn’t hold it’s shape for long, that’s why you put it in a preheated dutch oven, that way it develops a crust quickly, before it has time to turn into a blob 🙂
I will be trying this with my rye sourdough starter, pretty excited to try something new with it. Thank you for the recipe!
This is probably a silly question but I can’t take sugar in any form, so is there any wa
y to avoid the honey?
Is the honey neccessary? Is it for flavour or does it have a reactive property with the starter?
Other recipes I have tried called for more starter and no sweetener.
For those asking about sugar/honey, you can absolutley leave it out. It may take your dough a little longer to rise, but otherwise it will work the same. Just so you know, the honey here is not really used as a sweetener, but to feed the yeast in the sourdough. The sugar gets “eaten” by the yeast in the starter, so unless you add sugar very late in a recipe you won’t actually be having a response as you normaly would if you ate straight honey. But you can certainly leave it out.
This bread recipe is fantastic, I used agave nectar instead of honey, and left it to rise slightly longer, only because of the time as I started to make the bread dough earlier in the day. This was the only recipe I could find that truly explained how to use the sour dough starter. I also added slightly more water and ceramic casserole dish as I did not have a Dutch. oven. Bur for a first go at Spelt sour dough bread it tasted pretty good. Thank you for posting this recipe.
So glad you enjoyed it!
I am on day three of my starter and very excited about being able to make the bread in a few weeks! Is sprouted spelt flour ok?
Yep that is fine.
I started my bread making this morning which lands me at needing to bake it at like 3AM.. can it continue to proof a few more hours while I sleep or will that mess it up? Or should I refridgerate for a few hours?