Bread Guide: Overnight Country Blonde

A guide to Ken Forkish's "Overnight Country Blonde" (page 168 from Flour Water Salt Yeast).

Overnight Country Blonde

Introduction

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.

Ingredients

Tools & Equipment

Making and Maintaining Levain

You only do this once. After 5 days, you'll have a living levain that you maintain indefinitely.

Day 1

Wash your hands with water, not with soap. This is not a joke. Dry with paper towels.

Measure 50g of whole wheat flour into a bowl, then add 50g (i.e., 50ml) 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)

Throw out roughly 3/4 of what you made. Add 50g of whole wheat flour. Add 50g/50ml of water to the mixture. Mix by hand. Don't cheat with a spoon. Scrape what sticks to your hand back into the bowl. Leave uncovered for 1-2 hours. Cover with plastic wrap.

Day 3 (24h later)

Things should have come alive by now. Do the same as on Day 2: Throw out roughly 3/4. Add 50g of whole wheat flour. Add 50g/50ml of water to the mixture. Mix by hand. Don't cheat with a spoon. Scrape what sticks to your hand back into the bowl. Leave uncovered for 1-2 hours. Cover with plastic wrap.

Day 4 (24h later)

Stir it. Scoop 20g over to a clean bowl. (You'll need to tare the scale with the new bowl first before measuring exactly 20g.) Add 50g of whole wheat flour. Add 50g/50ml of water. Mix by hand. Don't cheat with a spoon. Scrape what sticks to your hand back into the bowl. Cover. (No need to leave uncovered first.)

Day 5 (24h later)

You have levain! Proceed to the 24h life cycle.

Levain's 24-hour Lifecycle

During normal operation, levain never goes into the fridge; it lives its life on the countertop in a sealed container. You feed it every 24h. That takes about 5 minutes. Whether you should do this in the morning or the evening depends on your schedule; see below.

Feeding levain:

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. It should be a little firm and stringy when you pull a spoon through it. If it's wet and goopy, you're too late.

Step 1: Mix flour and water ("autolyse")

In the morning, weigh

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 autolyze.

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 gets warm and approaches body temperature, you've gone too long. 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:

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

Dough ready 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

Banneton in fridge

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

Finished bread

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

Shira Fischer for reviewing and critiquing this document. And, yes, you too, Claude.