I've posted this recipe before, but I need help in

[alfredo]

converting it to sourdough. Here’s the recipe:
Whole Wheat no knead WW bread Dutch oven

4 cups WW flour
2 tsp salt
3/4 tsp yeast
2 cups water. Adjust as needed
Mix until dry ingredients are mixed in

Cover with plastic wrap and let rise 16 to 18 hrs Punch down and Turn dough out on well floured board. Stretch fold over , turn 90 degrees. Form into ball. Put dough in a floured towel , cover and let rise. Let rise 1 1/2 hours. After 1 hour, turn stove on at 400 or 450 degrees depending on your stove. I set mine to 450 because the oven runs cool. I need an oven thermometer


Bring the dutch oven out when the 1 and 1/2 hours have passed and put the dough in the pan.

Cook for 30 minutes, then bring the pan out and remove the top and return the pan back in for an additional 12 - 15 minutes. Take the bread out and allow to cool for several hours.

I add some 2 heaping Tbs gluten to the dry ingredients. Adjust water accordingly

The longer the first rise, the better it tastes.

Thanks

[procon]

1. Rule of thumb to adapt recipes to sourdough:

Substitute 1 cup of live starter per package of yeast. Then subtract about 1/2 cup of water and 3/4 cup of flour from the recipe to compensate for the water and flour in the starter. Sourdough needs more rising time than the active yeast, so I do two rises.

Other than that, I don't see that you'd need to change your recipe.

[alfredo]

2. It already rises overnight, then proofing.

Maybe I will start at 9PM instead of 11PM to give a few more hours to rise. Should 2 extra hours be enough? I usually put it in the oven at 6PM and let it cool until midnight before bagging.

I bought a new bread knife, and it is wonderful. Got new oven mittens too. The old ones have come apart at the seams.

So thanks.

[procon]

3. Use whatever herbs you like, or combinations that

you like for your artisan breads, or choose the herbs that will compliment the foods you're serving.

Caraway goes really well with pork and ham, and cabbage or sauerkraut dishes. It's used in a lot of German style recipes so a crunchy bread with some caraway seeds, or try some combinations using fennel, rosemary and anise for a wonderfully fragrant and tasty bread.

Italian herbs are used to enhance tomato based recipes, either Italian or anything else. You can't go wrong adding them to an artisan baguette to be served with homemade tomato soup, gumbo, ratatouille or marinara sauces.

[Major Nikon]

4. It's pretty easy to do

The first thing to consider is how much hydration you want your dough to have. For pretty much all yeast breads I make, sourdough included, hydration is always between 70-75%. This is the ratio, by weight of flour to water.

Always measure your flour and water by weight. I can’t stress this enough. It’s difficult to measure flour by volume consistently, but by weight it’s very easy and you get the same results every time.

I have no idea what the hydration level is for your recipe because a cup of flour for you might be 110g or it might be 160g. I suspect it’s closer to 160g if you are scooping and leveling.

I’m just going to go with some assumed numbers to show you how this works. Let’s say you feed your starter at 50% hydration (equal parts flour and water by weight). Let’s also say you plan on using 150g of starter and you want a half kilo loaf (pre-cooked weight) at 72% hydration. That’s going to be 720g of flour and 280g of water. Since the starter is 50%, we will get 75g of flour and 75g of water from the starter. So our recipe will need (720-75) 645g of flour, (280-75) 205g of water, and 150g of starter plus your salt.

If you want a slower rise/proof use less starter and adjust your flour and water accordingly to achieve the same hydration.

That’s how professional bakers do it. When you work by weight and hydration levels it makes modifications to your recipe super simple and you never have to “adjust” your water levels because so long as you measure accurately it’s going to be consistent every time.