Favorite Bread Machine Sourdough Loaf

By mz0926

Ingredients

• 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
• 3/4 cup milk, warmed
• 1 1/2 tablespoons butter, softened
• 1 cup sourdough starter

Details

Servings 2
Adapted from unsophisticook.com

Preparation

Step 1

You see that liquid on top of the unstirred starter? That's just the "hooch" -- it's mostly alcohol and a byproduct of the fermentation process. Just stir it back into your starter, and it will be fine to use.

Bread Machine Directions

Add 1 cup flour, sugar, salt, and yeast to your bread pan. If your bread machine has a warming cycle, turn it off and start a basic bread cycle to stir these ingredients together. I use the dark crust setting for this recipe

Slowly add warm milk and softened butter to dry mixture while the bread machine is still stirring. Then do the same with the sourdough starter.

Add the remaining 2-1/2 cups of flour slowly to the wet mixture. It may seem like too much flour, as the dough will get very crumbly, but it will all get kneaded into the bread. I've found that it helps to press down on the dough as the machine is still kneading to get it to pick up all of the bits of dough.

Oven Directions

Add 1 cup flour, sugar, salt, and yeast to a mixing bowl.

Slowly stir in warm milk and softened butter to dry mixture. Then do the same with the sourdough starter.

Mix remaining 2-1/2 cups of flour slowly into the wet mixture. Then turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 8-10 minutes.

Place dough in an oiled bowl, turning to make sure it's coated, and let rise for one hour.

Punch down and let rest for 15 minutes. Then shape into a loaf and place in a greased 2-lb. loaf pan. Allow to rise for another hour.

add one

I cannot wait to try this! However, I live above 7,000 feet and have tried four recipes in my new machine without success. I have three high-altitude bread machine cookbook recipes. Does anyone have a recipe that they use that works for this type of altitude? I would love to be able to make bread :)

HONEY WHOLE WHEAT BREAD

• 3 cups whole wheat flour

In large bowl, combine 2 cups all-purpose flour, 1 cup whole wheat flour, the yeast, and salt and mix well.

In saucepan, heat milk, water, honey, and oil until a thermometer reads 120-130 degrees F (warm)

Add liquid mixture to flour mixture and stir to combine. Beat this batter for 3 minutes. Then, gradually stir in rest of whole wheat flour and enough remaining all-purpose four to form a firm dough.

Sprinkle work surface with flour and knead dough, adding more flour if necessary, for 5-8 minutes until smooth and satiny. Place dough in a greased bowl, turning the dough in the bowl to grease the top. Cover and let rise in a warm place about 1 hour, until double in bulk.

Punch down dough and divide into 2 pieces. On lightly floured surface, roll or press each piece of dough to a 14×7″ rectangle. Starting with shorter side, roll up tightly, pressing dough into roll with each turn. Pinch edges and ends to seal and place dough, seam-side down, into greased 9×5″ bread pans, making sure short ends of bread are snugly fitted against the sides of the pans. Cover and let rise in warm place until the dough fills the corners of the pans and is double in bulk, 30-40 minutes.

Bake in preheated 375 degree oven for 35-40 minutes, until bread is golden brown. Remove from pans and cool on wire racks. I like to brush the bread with butter when it’s still hot from the oven for a softer crust.

Just follow the directions of the bread maker.wet on the bottom, dry on top. I use the dough cycle and bake it in the oven except when I am in a big hurry…..Best bread I have ever made.

I’m working on some oven-baking directions and I’ll add them to the post shortly, so please check back.

I made the started out of all purpose flour & follow your directions, Turned out great.

thanks for the recipe, Im going to try this. I was looking for a sourdough bread recipe without several stages of monitoring., pretty much, I am okay to make the starter, and use it the next day to make the bread. I am going to try this today.

The starter worked very well, and the I made the bread next day with your oven directions, it came out perfect!!!. Thanks for the starter recipe!!!

this was great thanks! I made your starter and this in my machine (just a sunbeam $40 one from walmart but I have had it forever and it has always worked super) I wish though that it didn’t require any yeast to make it though because I feel like the starter is a lot of work to still have to buy yeast too! Oh well ;) Can’t wait to find more things to do with it pancakes etc. etc. Make sure to post if you do anything else with yours!

This might be the best bread that I’ve made with my starter, thus far. I did have to add about a half cup extra milk. Delish! Thanks for the recipe!

Sandy — you CAN make a starter without using any yeast. However it takes a few weeks, can smell very nasty at some points and sometimes doesn’t work well. You are starting with yeast at the beginning here, which makes sure the right stuff is growing right away. However you never use yeast again with your starter — so I think this is a great way to start sourdough. :) That being said, here’s a link to a good tutorial on making your own starter without using yeast. I have used it, and it works well.

I started my bread as directed in my machine. My pan kept jumping off the stirrer… i tried to hold the pan while it mixed but finally gave up and pulled it out and kneeded by hand. I am aiming for the oven method now and I am confident that it will be fine (just not as easy). Any ideas why this is happening? I have been using the machine for all kinds of bread and never had this happen. I can’t wait to taste this bread!

Hi Anna! It sounds like your dough may have not had had enough liquid. As I mentioned in the post, it’s definitely a drier dough when it’s being kneaded. Some starters are thicker than others, though, so you could try adding some additional milk a tablespoon at a time until you have the right consistency of dough.

A couple of notes from above. I have a starter that I have used off and on for a number of years and it started without yeast. However, I occasionally use yeast to kick start it when I need to wake it up – there are a lot of vendors on the web; some will send you a sample for free. I have been in search for the best recipe for sourdough bread for a bread machine for a number of years. I found your recipe the other day and broke out my starter and woke it up. As a side note I also added some rye to my starter – never did this before but saw it was in your starter recipe. Anyway all went well except the mixture was too dry. I know you said to expect this but as you noted above, I think my starter is thicker than what you may use. So I started to add more starter to the dough as it continued to mix until it reached the consistency I thought was okay. Even then I worried it might still be too dry. As it turns out this was the best sourdough recipe I have tired. My wife thinks it is a tad too sour, but I like it. Only downside is it was a little dense. I like dense bread for sandwiches so it is fine with me, but I may try adding milk or water next time if it looks to dry instead of more starter. The recipe is a keeper for me.

I just bought a Zojirushi BB–CEC–20. the homemade custom program cycle does an excellent job of making my whole-grain wheat sourdough bread. it takes about 10 minutes to mix all the ingredients into the pan. About 11 hours later the best sourdough bread you’ve ever eaten appears. I challenge you to make a better loaf of sourdough bread by any means you can conceive.

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