Bread Guide: Overnight Country Blonde
A guide to the "Overnight Country Blonde" (page 168 from Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish).
This guide covers two things: making levain and making bread. Levain (a sourdough starter) is a one-time effort: you create it once, then keep it alive by feeding it daily. Bread making is a separate process that uses some of your levain as an ingredient.
What to expect: Each bake requires about 30 minutes of active work spread across 12-24 hours. But before you bake your first bread, you'll need to create a levain—a one-time effort that takes 6-8 days (5 minutes per day).
Ingredients
- King Arthur bread flour: this is non-negotiable, do not use store brand flour; do not complain to me about inferior results, sticky dough, flat-looking, mediocre bread until you use King Arthur bread flour. If you have access to freshly milled flour, even better. Bakeries are often willing to sell you a bag of their bread flour.
- King Arthur whole wheat flour; other high-quality whole wheat flour is acceptable.
- King Arthur rye flour; other high-quality rye flour is acceptable.
- Fine salt; bonus points for non-iodized (fine!) sea salt, but regular fine store brand salt is fine.
Tools & Equipment
A kitchen scale, Dutch oven, banneton, and a few other essentials.
- Large sealable bowl or bucket — Eventually, you'll want a bread bucket that tells you volume when looking at the side: Cambro 6-Quart Container.
- Scale for large amounts — Any scale with consistent 1g precision will do. I use the KD8000 Kitchen Scale.
- Precision scale for salt — I use a digital pocket scale.
- Very large wooden cutting board or wooden kitchen table — You're going to have trouble with a stone/marble countertop for reasons that will become apparent later.
- Bench scraper — stainless steel bench scraper.
- Banneton (proofing basket) — Kook banneton basket — You can get away not having this immediately, but you'll be immensely happy with it.
- Cast iron pan with a lid — Lodge combo cooker.
- Heavy-duty oven mitts — You need very good oven mitts to handle a 475°F (245°C) cast iron pan: heat resistant gloves.
- Lame (bread scoring tool) — Pronounced "laahm"; not needed initially, but eventually you may want to score your bread: Saint Germain lame.
- Cooling rack — So air can flow over and under the bread after it comes out of the oven. The cheapest is fine: stainless steel cooling rack.
- High-grade bread knife — It's dumb to go out of your way to make a super fancy bread and then squish it because your knife cannot cut through the crust. Knives fall into the "You Get What You Pay For" category. I have the Wüsthof 9" bread knife.
- Dish brush to clean the banneton — Amazer dish brush.
Making and Maintaining Levain
You only do this once. After 6-8 days, you'll have a living levain that you maintain indefinitely.
Day 1
Wash your hands with water, not with soap. (Soap kills the natural yeasts on your skin that help the levain come alive.) Dry with paper towels.
Measure 100g of organic whole wheat flour into a bowl, then add 100g (i.e., 100ml) of water. Mix by hand. Not with a spoon. Your hand. Scrape what sticks to your hand back into the bowl. Leave uncovered for 1-2 hours. It'll look a bit nasty. Cover it with plastic wrap. Leave it be.
Day 2 (24h later)
Mix the sludge. It might look bubbly. It might look stringy when you pull a spoon through. This is good. Throw out half. That is, keep 50g. Add 50g of organic whole wheat flour. Add 50g (i.e., 50ml) of water to the mixture. Mix by hand. Scrape what sticks to your hand back into the bowl. Scrape the sides. Mix it all cleanly together. Leave uncovered for 1-2 hours. Cover with plastic wrap.
Summary: keep 50g, add 50g whole wheat, 50g water.
Day 3 (24h later)
Things should have come alive by now. It should look bubbly. It might look stringy when you pull a spoon through. Mix it. Throw out half. Keep 50g. Add 50g of organic whole wheat flour. Add 50g (i.e., 50ml) of water to the mixture. Mix by hand. Scrape what sticks to your hand back into the bowl. Scrape the sides. Mix it all cleanly together. Leave uncovered for 1-2 hours. Cover with plastic wrap.
Summary: keep 50g, add 50g whole wheat, 50g water.
Day 4 (24h later)
You may still have bubbles and/or stringy substance, but things may have turned into a more muddy sludge at this point. Today we're going to start morphing this starter into the levain you want. Grab a container with a tight fitting lid. Measure the weight of the container without lid first. Put a sticker on the container to document its dry weight. Mix well. Spoon over 50g into the container. Discard the rest. Add 25g of organic whole wheat flour. Add 100g of regular flour. Add 100g of water. Mix by hand. Scrape what sticks to your hand back into the bowl. Scrape the sides. Mix it all cleanly together. Leave uncovered for an hour. Close the container.
Summary: keep 50g, add 25g whole wheat, 100g regular, 100g water.
Day 5 (24h later)
You may still have bubbles and/or stringy substance, but things may have turned into a more muddy sludge at this point. This is fine. New levain goes through a crisis mud phase. We all do. Mix well. Keep 25g in the container. Discard the rest. (It might seem crazy we did all this work and you throw almost all of it away.) Add 25g of organic whole wheat flour. Add 100g of regular flour. Add 100g of water. Mix by hand. Scrape what sticks to your hand back into the bowl. Scrape the sides. Leave uncovered for an hour. Close the container.
Summary: keep 25g, add 25g whole wheat, 100g regular, 100g water.
Day 6 (24h later)
The stringiness might be coming back again. This is good. Keep 25g in the container. Discard the rest. Add 25g of organic whole wheat flour. Add 100g of regular flour. Add 100g of water. Mix by hand. Scrape what sticks to your hand back into the bowl. Scrape sides. Close the container. (Do not leave it uncovered first.)
Summary: keep 25g, add 25g whole wheat, 100g regular, 100g water.
Day 7 (24h later)
Your levain is likely ready to be used for bread making. Feed it like you did on day 6: keep 25g, add 25g of whole wheat flour, add 100g of regular flour, add 100g of water, mix by hand, scrape your hands with a spoon, scrape the sides, work it all into a neat blob. Close the container. Check it 10-16 hours later!
Summary: keep 25g, add 25g whole wheat, 100g regular, 100g water.
Your levain is ready when it is very firm and stringy when pulling a spoon through it. If it does not look like this, do not use it to make bread. Instead, keep feeding it like day 6 and day 7 until it is firm and stringy about 10-16 hours after feeding.
Levain's 24-hour Life Cycle
During normal operation, levain never goes into the fridge; it lives its life on the countertop in a sealed container. You feed it every 24 hours. That takes about 5 minutes. Whether you should do this in the morning or the evening depends on your schedule; see below.
Feeding levain:
- Keep 25g of yesterday's levain; throw out the rest. (You'll need to know the container's dry weight to determine its weight with 25g of levain.)
- Add 25g of organic whole wheat flour.
- Add 100g of regular flour (you do not need King Arthur for this; store brand flour is fine).
- Add 100g of water.
The end result will be close to 250g. Mix by hand (wash without soap, dry with paper towels), then finish by stirring with a clean spoon, scraping the leftovers from your hands and the old crusty remnants from the sides of the container. Leave a cleanly consolidated mix in your sealed container.
Do not use a dirty spoon (especially one you've used for a bread recipe) for the levain. I have ruined a levain by contaminating it with rye flour.
Taking a break from the 24-hour cycle
If you need a break, put the levain in the fridge (ideally at its 12h cycle mark) for up to 2-3 weeks. It'll take 2 feeding cycles to regain its strength.
Making Bread
Schedule
If you're working from home, you can start in the morning (between 8am-11am, say), which means you need to feed your levain in the evening. If you're away during the day, you need to start your bread in the evening (say, 7pm), so you'll need to feed your levain in the morning.
Either way, start with Step 1 when your levain is at its peak (see Step 0).
Step 0: Check that your levain is ripe
Your levain is ripe when it smells a little like yoghurt and is firm and stringy when you pull a spoon through it.
Step 1: Mix flour and water ("autolyse")
In the morning, weigh
- 402g of King Arthur bread flour,
- 25g of rye flour,
- 13g of whole wheat flour, and
- 342g of water (lukewarm is good)
into a bucket or large bowl. If you put in too much, even 1g, take it out again. Throw it away; do not put it back in the flour bag once it's in the bucket. Too much water can be carefully spooned out, avoiding the flour.
Stir with a clean spoon until combined. Do not knead. We're just combining flour and water until there are no more dry spots. Scrape the spoon clean with your finger and push it back into the mix. You've now got some goopy goop in a bucket.
Now we're going to make life easy on ourselves and prepare the next step, so we don't have to get out the scale again. The levain and salt steps are, strictly speaking, part of Step 2, but we're doing the weighing work now.
Stir your levain (which should now be around its 12-16h point in the 24h cycle; it should be nice and stringy) with a CLEAN spoon, then spoon out 108g of levain onto the mixed flour/water goop, but do not mix it in. Do NOT let the spoon that you use for this touch the levain again. (In other words, do not contaminate your levain with your bread mix.)
Weigh out 11.00g of salt into a little container. Do NOT throw it into the mix. Just place the salt container on top of your bucket so you do not forget it later.
Now leave it be for 30-60 minutes. I sometimes forget it for hours. That's OK. This phase is called the autolyse ("OH-toh-leeze"). The flour gets time to absorb the water and begins its first phase of gluten development.
Here's Ken Forkish mixing the autolyse.
Step 2: Add levain and salt, then knead
Just kidding, you had already dumped the levain on top of the goop, so that part is done. And because you're very forgetful, you also prepped the salt and placed it on top of the container, which you can now dump into it as well.
Now you fold and pinch the dough. Here's Ken Forkish doing the fold and pinch. I try to avoid wetting my hand each time.
Keep doing this until you feel some elasticity getting into the dough. This typically takes about five minutes. (If the dough approaches body temperature, you've overworked the gluten. Stop.)
Step 3: Wait, Fold, Wait, Fold, Wait, Fold
Three times in a row, you're going to wait 25-45 minutes and do so-called folding. Here's Ken Forkish doing a fold.
So, to be explicit:
- Wait 25-45 minutes.
- Open the container. Fold. Close the container.
- Wait 25-45 minutes.
- Open the container. Fold. Close the container.
- Wait 25-45 minutes.
- Open the container. Fold. Close the container.
Step 4: Let it rise ("proof")
Leave the container closed. Let the dough rise until it reaches 2 qt when viewed from the side. (Or roughly tripled in volume if you don't have numbers.) In the summer, this takes 3-4 hours. In winter, this can take a whole day.
Don't rush this. Don't put it in the oven.
Step 5: Bench rest for 10 minutes
Throw a handful of flour onto a large wooden cutting board or a wooden kitchen table, then spread it into a thin layer.
Tilt the tub to the side and, using a spatula, gently transfer the dough from the container. This is a negotiation. Don't pull on it, don't rip it. Let it slide out. Using the spatula, loosen the dough from the container where it is sticky. Try to prevent high tension or torque in the dough. Aim the dough in the middle of the flour circle.
Leave it there for 10 minutes. This is called bench rest.
Step 6: Shape
Heavily dust the banneton with flour.
Shape the dough into a loaf.
This is hard to explain in words. I recommend you watch the video.
But I can try words.
First, fold the dough like an envelope, from all four sides. That is, stretch the top edge over the center. Then do the same with the right side, then the left side. For the final fold, bring the bottom edge up and over, then flip the whole package so the seams are now on the bottom.
Then comes the second part of shaping a loaf: tightening it. Cup your floured hands around the far side of the dough and drag it toward you. The friction against the board pulls the bottom edge underneath, creating surface tension—that's what gives the loaf structure. Rotate 90° and repeat until the dough feels taut and holds its shape. Do this from all four, uh, sides, inasmuch as a round loaf has, you know ... sides.
Then transfer it to the banneton. For now, put the seams facing down into the banneton. When you flip it out to bake, they'll end up on top—that's what creates those rustic cracks you see in the photo.
Cover with a towel.
Here's Ken Forkish shaping the dough into a loaf.
Step 7a: Final proof in banneton
Let the loaf sit in the banneton on the countertop for 1-4 hours, depending on the ambient temperature. The bread is ready for baking when the dough has risen enough to push the towel upward in the center. You can wait longer until the bread surface is even with or higher than the banneton edge. But don't let it go much longer than that. If the dough starts to tear, you've waited for too long. Keep in mind that the oven takes a while to reach temperature, so plan ahead.
Step 7b (optional!): Introduce a delay of up to 48 hours
After the loaf settles into the banneton with a towel on top, you can put it into the fridge for hours, one day, or even two days. But no more. For example, if it's too late in the evening to bake, you can put the covered banneton in the fridge and take it out in the morning to resume the final proof.
Step 8: Bake for 25 minutes at 475°F (245°C)
Preheat the oven to 475°F (245°C) with the cast iron pan and lid inside. Wait another 10-15 minutes after the oven reaches its temperature so the pan and lid have reached equilibrium.
Take the pan out of the oven, remove the lid.
Dust your hand with flour, spread your fingers, rest your palm on top of the surface of the dough, and flip the banneton over onto your hand so the loaf now rests on your palm and fingers. Remove the banneton. If the dough sticks to the banneton, do not pull on the banneton. Gently wiggle your hand and the basket, gently peel it away from the dough, and let gravity do its work. This can take 30 seconds or longer.
Once freed from the banneton, transfer the loaf into the pan. Place the lid on top. Do not burn your fingers.
The lid traps the moisture, creating a hard crust.
(Do not wash the banneton! Let it completely dry out, then use a dedicated, clean, dry dish brush to remove flour and dried-up dough remnants.)
Step 9: Remove lid, bake for 5 minutes at 450°F (230°C)
After 25 minutes, remove the lid. (The bread should be baked light brown. If it's still pale, put the lid back on, bake for a few more minutes, and make a note for next time: your oven runs cold. If it is already dark brown after 25 minutes, bake at a lower temperature next time: your oven runs hot.)
In short: if the bread is a light golden brown, remove the lid from the oven, lower the oven temperature to 450°F (230°C), and bake for another 5 minutes.
Step 10: Cool until room temperature
The bread is done when the top edge of the crust (the "ear") is almost burned. Remove the pan from the oven and use a metal spatula to transfer the bread to a cooling rack.
Let the bread cool to room temperature. Warm bread is a myth! The interior is still settling; it's too moist, and, most importantly, the flavors haven't fully developed.
Step 11: Eat and store
Use a high-quality bread knife. Do not store the bread in a plastic bag. Just rest the bread, cut side down, on a wooden cutting board.
Thanks to Shira Fischer for reviewing and critiquing this guide. And, yes, you too, Claude.