The Easiest Way to Bake 6 Sourdough Loaves at Once (no steam, no Dutch ovens)

This recipe has got easy stamped all over it and it produces a rustic fun loaf. But best of all you can bake all of the six loaves at once. You don't have to worry about steam, Dutch ovens or baking them one after the other. Now all of my ingredients have been stored at 25 degrees Celsius and I'm going to ferment my dough at that temperature too. Now as I do for all of my bakes I'm going to let my starter ferment overnight. That way it's ready to use first thing in the morning. Now not only is this a great scheduling tactic but feeding it at a low inoculation stops that fermentation from becoming overly acidic which can have a really negative effect on the entire fermentation chain. So it's 10 o'clock at night and I'm going to mix 210 grams of strong white bread flour and 210 grams of water and 21 grams of starter. Now I only need 424 grams of starter for the actual dough but I've made a little bit more. That's going to account for any wastage, some weight loss during the fermentation process and it's going to leave enough behind to seed my next starter. That's it. I'm going to leave this covered to ferment at 25 degrees Celsius until it's ready tomorrow morning. And here we are, nine o'clock in the morning and it's time to mix our dough. Now to make six 550 gram loaves I'm going to need about 3.6 kilos of dough. So for this I'm going to use my mixer but you can absolutely mix this by hand. I used to do big batches that way until I bought this Halo Pro into my workflow. Right so I'm adding 1,228 grams of water into my mixer bowl. That's followed by 42 grams of salt. Now as I'm using flaky sea salt I just spend a minute or two just to make sure that it's well dissolved. Now I start the mixing process at 30%. I add around half of this flour blend. Now this flour blend contains 1,694 grams of soft white flour, 106 grams of whole wheat flour and 106 grams of spelt flour. Now after a 30 second mix I add 424 grams of ripe sourdough starter. Then I finally add the rest of the flour blend. Now I'm going to leave this to mix on 30% for a couple of minutes until everything is fully incorporated. Now I'm going to cover dough temperature more in a future video but another benefit of mixing nice and slow is that the dough temperature stays within my target of 25 degrees celsius. Now I just cover this dough and I'm going to leave it to rest for 30 minutes. Right so after 30 minutes I'm going to finish the mixing and I'm going to do that at 30% speed until I'm confident that all of those ingredients are really well combined. Okay now we've finished with the mixer and time is going to take care of the rest. I'm going to turn this dough out of the mixing bowl and I'm going to place it into a large container. I'm going to cover it and then I'm going to leave it at 25 degrees celsius to continue its journey along the fermentation chain. Right so the dough is going to be left to increase in volume by around 75% and during that time I'm going to give the dough three folds inside of the container. I'm going to space them around an hour apart. Now three is not a magic number, it just fits really well into this part of the process. If I'm busy or if I need to go out the dough simply gets fewer folds. This is a forgiving formula and baking method. I promise you getting the fermentation chain dialled in properly is far more important than how many times you stretch the dough. Okay so since we mixed the dough it's been bulk fermenting for around six hours and it's increased in volume by around 75%. Now the gluten has developed really well and we can see that the fermentation is right on point. Now if you're if you want to learn how to judge the fermentation process using volume tracking I'm going to leave a link in the video description. Now I'm going to split this mix into six 600 gram dough pieces. That's going to fit my tray perfectly and then after weighing each piece I'm gently going to pull it into a loose dough ball. They're going to sit here on the counter top for 15 minutes uncovered then they can just relax a little bit and that surface will dry out slightly. Now shaping six separate pieces of dough and then leaving them to prove in different baskets can be a bit daunting for beginners but this method makes the process super simple and it reduces the chances of anything going wrong. Each piece of dough is shaped as I normally would for a batard. I fold the top and the bottom of the dough inwards and then rotate that dough 90 degrees. I fold the top and the bottom in again and then I roll that dough up and then seal it at the end. They get rolled in rice flour and then I place them into a non-stick baking tray with that seam actually facing downwards. Now even if your shaping isn't perfect you don't need to worry. Each piece of dough supports its neighbour and the tray prevents them from spreading out. Essentially there is only one way these can prove and that's upwards. Now try not to apply too much pressure while you're shaping. The aim is to create tension on the surface of the dough. It's not to squeeze all of the gas out. Now I just use a large plastic bag to cover the and then I leave it at ambient temperature to prove. Right and here's our dough after a two hour ambient proof at 25 degrees celsius. You can see they've all puffed up nicely to fill the tray and you can see here how they're actually supporting each other in that process. I can feel the gas inside the dough. It's soft and it doesn't feel like it's about to pop and kind of shrivel up. It's still got structure. Now these are going to go into my fridge for an overnight retard ready for baking at stupid o'clock tomorrow morning. Right so it's super early the next morning and it's time to bake. Now this is a large mass of cold dough so when I bake something like this I either use my baking stone or my Brod & Taylor baking steel preheated to 220 degrees celsius. That's going to add thermal mass. This helps transfer heat into the dough more efficiently and it reduces the temperature drop when the dough first goes into the oven. Now as you can see I use an upturned baking tray just to protect the top of the dough during the first 20 minutes or so of the bake. Now these loaves they took a total of one hour to bake through. Now if you want you can bake it directly on the oven shelf but you may need to increase the bake time just a touch until you get that desired crust colour. This is such a fun stress-free way to bake multiple sourdough loaves all in one go and you know what the result is far more rustic than if we used individual baking tins. It really is a great way for beginners to start scaling up at home. There's no hassle of juggling multiple proving baskets or baking loaves one after the other after the other. Now each of these loaves weighs approximately 550 grams after cooling. These make the perfect rustic sandwich loaves. You can give them away to family, friends or you know what you can even sell them through your micro bakery. Now don't forget all of the resource links are down below in the description. I want you to give this a whirl and I want you to let me know what you think. Till next time stay tuned.