…the remainder of the starter is now available to make bread… Here you are making the dough that will be baked as bread. The process is simple – just add flour and warm water to the remnants of the starter until you get enough mixture. I also like to add two eggs at this point – but that’s mostly because I have my own hens and I have lots of eggs. I don’t think it makes all that much difference to the resulting loaf so you can consider the eggs to be optional. I also add strong brown flour and sometimes seeded flours at this point – they make the bread taste nice and nutty. The type of flour you use here is your choice – but definitely don’t add the eggs and odd flours before putting the starter back into the Kilner jar. Only strong white flour should be used for the starter. As before, you do not need to measure the flour and water. Just add it in and stir until you get the volume about 1/2 of the size of loaf you need. The mixture will expand by a factor of 2 or 3 when it rises so you need a lot less than you think. Make the bread a few times and experience will soon tell you how much dough you need.

… the sourdough mixture should have no lumps and should have the consistency of cake mixture… Before you use the sourdough mixture make sure the consistency is correct. No doubt you have seen people kneading bread with their hands – this is NOT the way it is done in this Low Effort procedure. What you want is something similar to a cake mixture. Add flour or warm water until the sourdough is not runny and sloppy if the bowl is moved but also is not so thick it could be kneaded. It should be easily stir-able with a spatula and should have no major lumps.

… pour the sourdough mixture into a soft silicone baking mould… Here’s the trick. If you have looked at videos on the Internet you have doubtless seen many examples of people kneading dough, letting it rise in a proving basket and kneading it again etc. I have had really bad luck doing this. It takes a long time, the bread invariably sticks to the containers in a very annoying way and I eventually give up in frustration. With this Low Effort procedure you do not need to do any of that. All you need is a Silicone Non-Stick Baking Mould – many examples of which are readily available online.

Silicone moulds look like they are soft and floppy rubber – but they are oven safe. They are the only baking tray I have found that bread dough absolutely will not stick to. You do not need to put oil or anything on them – just use them as they are. I like the brown bread moulds (shown in the image at left) which produce a boat shaped banneton style loaf. There are more traditional rectangular moulds as well. These work with no problems but they are a bit too small for me and the rising dough often foams over the top and then I have an annoying mess to clean up.

Pour the sourdough mixture into the silicone baking mould. Since the sourdough mixture will expand by a factor of 2 or 3 you want the level of the mixture to be quite a bit below the top of the mould or it will spill over and make a mess when it rises.

In the image on the left you can see the volume of dough is considerably smaller than the size of the mould. Also note the consistency of the mixture. It is not runny and it is not so stiff you could knead it.

…set the mixture in the mould somewhere warm and place a plastic bag loosely over the top… At this point you have done all of the hard work. Just place a plastic bag over the top and place it somewhere warmish to rise for 8-10 hours or so. Note that the bag is not tight to the top. I use a fairly stiff plastic bag that came with some takeaway food for this purpose.

I typically arrange the scheduling of the baking process so that the 8-10 hour rise time happens overnight and then I can bake the bread first thing in the morning.

…after the dough has risen, set your oven to 235°C and pre-heat for 15 minutes or until it warms up… You need a warm oven to bake the bread. You definitely do not want to place the newly risen dough in a cold oven. Try to resist the temptation to take the bag off and see how well your mixture rose. Unlike breads with stiff dough, and like just about every cake, you can collapse the bubbles out of the newly risen mixture by messing around with it too much. Place a small bowl of water in the back of the oven. This will heat up and raise the humidity in the oven and the crust will not be too hard. You can leave the bowl out if you like really hard crusts on your bread.

…place the silicone mould with the newly risen sourdough mixture straight into the heated oven… The really great thing about the silicone baking moulds is that they go straight in the oven. Honestly they do – they look like they will melt down into a plastic rubbery goo, but no, they are specifically designed for this. This means that once the mixture is in the mould it need not be transferred out and you can make the mixture a lot looser than you normally would be able to do. Leave the dough in the mould - do NOT knead the dough in any way – treat it like you would a cake.

The bread is baked for 35 minutes at 235°C. The small bowl of water is still in the oven as can be seen in the image. You may need a slightly longer time for larger loaves and a shorter time for smaller ones. Experience will show you how to get this right for your oven.

… take the mould with the bread out of the oven and tip it out onto a tray… The bread will bake in the oven and turn into a nice sourdough loaf in the mould. Once it is done just take it out of the oven and tip it out of the mould onto a tray. The bread will come out easily and there will be no sticking or other mess. If you tip it out upside down you can gently tap on the bottom of the loaf. If you get a hollow knocking sound it is done, if you get a squishy thud like sound you can just put the mould back around it and pop it back into the oven for another 5 minutes or so. Be careful while doing this – both the mould and bread will be very hot.

Let the bread cool down a bit and then it will be ready to eat.

… put the jar of starter you saved in step 3 back in the fridge for next time… Back in Step 3 you replaced the starter in the jar with some of the new mixture. The rest of the mixture went on to form the basis of the bread. I usually leave the starter out (suitably covered) alongside the bread in the mould while it rises. This gives the yeast in the starter a bit of time to eat and reproduce in the warmth. When I put the bread in the oven to bake I put the starter back in the fridge for next time.

The thing that makes the Low Effort Sourdough process work so well is the usage of silicone bread moulds. These moulds remove the time consuming requirement to knead the dough and turn the process of making a sourdough loaf into something much more like making a cake.

Why does it work? The kneading process breaks down the cellulose chains in the flour and makes more sugars available for the yeast to feast on. My theory is that probably the extra water in the Low Effort dough and the unusually long rise time compensate for the lack of kneading and achieve much the same effect.

I have found that the bubbles in the Low Effort sourdough bread are not as large as in “proper” sourdough bread but, as you can see, there are plenty of smaller bubbles. The bread is also not as light and “fluffy” as is typical – but it is not a dense block either. It tastes the same though and the resulting loaf resembles a traditional peasant bread. The other characteristic I have noted is its keeping ability – the bread is truly excellent on the day it is made (freshly made bread always is) but on day 5 it is still pretty much just as good as it was on day 2.

Once you get the hang of it, the entire process detailed here probably requires no more than 10 minutes worth of effort on the part of the baker. Most of the time is spent waiting for the yeasts to work their magic.

Good luck with your bread making.