No-Knead Pain de Campagne / Country Sourdough Bread with Egg

Course: Sourdough Bread

Cuisine: European

Prep Time: 6

Cook Time: 1

cold retard in the fridge: 15

Total Time: 22

Servings: slices (about 550 gr loaf)

Calories: 135kcal

Author: Marvellina

I use my basic sourdough country loaf recipe and added an egg to the dough. It gives an amazing oven spring and lovely soft, airy, and creamy crumbs.

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US Customary - Metric

Equipment

Ingredients

The dough:

270 gr bread flour (13% protein content) 90%
30 gr whole wheat 10%
5 gr salt 2%
50 gr egg 17% see notes
187 gr water 62%
60 gr active starter (100% hydration) 20%

For dusting banneton:

rice flour

Instructions

Prepare levain (the night before):

I strongly encourage you to have an active starter that is at least one month old before you attempt to bake this recipe. You can try using your young starter that is at least 2-week old, but the result may not be as satisfactory
Before leaving the house for work in the morning, build the starter you need for later on the day after you get off work. I will feed at 1:7:7 ratio so it will last me about 10 hours to double or triple at 75-77 F (24-25C). This also depends on the strength of your starter and the room temperature the starter is at. It may be faster or longer. You know your starter best, so you can adjust the ratio as you wish.
I use 5 grams starter + 35 grams flour + 35 grams water. I usually prepare a bit more as some may get stuck to the glass jar, spatula, etc.
Remember that you want to use your starter at its peak, meaning it has doubled or tripled when you are ready to use it

Fermentolyse:

Place a mixing bowl on a scale. Break one egg into the mixing bowl and take note of the weight of the egg. Add water to come up to a total of 237 grams. Use a whisk to whisk the egg and water thoroughly
Weigh 60 grams of starter into the mixing bowl. Feed the starter as per your normal routine. Add bread flour and whole wheat flour to a mixing bowl. Add the salt to the flour. If you have a dough whisk, you can use that, otherwise, a sturdy spatula or your hand would work too. Stir to combine into a rough wet dough. The whole process probably takes about 3-5 minutes. It is important that there shouldn't be any visible dry bits. All flour needs to be fully hydrated. Cover and let it sit for 1 hour. Maintain dough temperature at 70-72 F (21-22 C) at this stage if possible
If it's really warm where you are, you may want to put it in a cooler bag with a pack of ice. Because the starter is already added at this point, we don't want it to start fermenting way too early before we have a chance to strengthen the dough during bulk fermentation
Bulk fermentation begins when you innoculate starter (adding starter) into the dough. In this case, it starts at this fermentolyse step

Stretch and fold #1:

From this point on, I maintain the temperature a bit warmer, at 75-78 F (24-26C). Wet your fingers lightly. Pick up the dough from one of the edges, kinda wiggle it and stretch it up and fold it over. Repeat this throughout the edge of the dough. You may end up with 5-6 stretches
Only stretch as far as the dough allows you too, don't force it. Cover and rest for 30 minutes

Stretch and fold #2, #3, and #4 : (every 30 minutes)

Do the same stretch and fold again with your slightly wet fingers. You may notice the dough is a bit tighter this round as gluten has developed a bit more. Cover and rest for 30 minutes and repeat until you've done 4 sets of stretch and fold every 30 minutes

Continue with bulk fermentation:

I recommend using a see-through container or bowl to help you gauge how much the dough has risen so you know when to call an end to bulk fermentation. I also mark the container with a marker to see where the level of the dough is. This helps me to roughly gauge how much it has grown. I usually proof until the dough has doubled in volume or at least close to double
During this time, you can observe the dough. If the dough seems slack, you can do a coil fold. Lightly wet your fingers again and tuck your fingers underneath the dough on the side. Lift the dough up gently. Allow the dough to coil and fold over itself
Rotate the container 90 degrees and do the same on the opposite side. After that rotate 45 degrees and do another coil fold and then rotate the container to coil fold the opposite side. So a total of 4 coil folds (one on each side). Sometimes all you need is just 2 coil folds if the dough seems taut
Remember that you need to observe your dough (read the dough not the clock) and do necessary action only if it is needed. This is one of the keys to successful sourdough baking
Total bulking time from the time the starter is added to this end of bulk fermentation is about 6 1/2-7 hours at 75-78 F (24-26 C). Again, you need to observe the dough, not the clock. It may take longer or faster depending on the temperature

Shape into batard:

I don't do pre-shaping since I only bake one small loaf and the dough usually seems pretty strong after all those stretch and folds and coil folds. I also try not to handle the dough too much near the end of bulk fermentation, to avoid degasing the dough too much
Lightly flour the surface of the dough in the container
Tip the container upside down to let the dough gently slide down upside down. Dust the surrounding of the dough with flour. Since I use a square container, the dough will be sort of "squarish". If you use a round container, the dough will be "roundish"
Just use a bench knife to help you stretch the dough out a bit to make it more "squarish". It doesn't have to be a picture-perfect square
Use a bench knife to tuck in the flour underneath the four edges of the dough
Gently fold half of the dough over towards you to the center. Repeat with the opposite half, overlapping the first half. Then roll the dough over from one end to the other. You can feel that the dough is jiggly and full of air
Tuck a bench knife under one side of the dough and push gently to tighten the dough a bit. Seal both ends

Transfer to an oval banneton:

I use an 8-inch oval banneton lined with a cloth. 9-inch banneton would work too. Lightly dust the cloth with rice flour on the bottom and the side of the cloth. Lightly dust the top of the shaped dough. Dust off some excess. Very gently, using the help of the bench scraper to flip the dough onto your palm. So the seam side is facing you now. Gently put the dough into the prepared banneton. The seam side is up. I like to tighten and seal the seam by pulling a bit of the dough from both sides

Cold retard the dough:

Place the dough inside a produce plastic bag and twist the bag and secure with a clip. Any large ziploc bag would work too. Put this inside the coldest part of your fridge. Make sure the fridge is cold enough at 37-38 F (3-4 C). This is important so the dough won't continue to ferment and you end up with an over-proofed dough. Let the dough cold retard for 18-20 hours

Preheating oven: (The next day when you are ready to bake it)

I bake using a cast-iron dutch oven. Position one oven rack at the lowest level and then another one rack above it. Place the dutch oven and its lid on the 2nd rack. I keep the pot and the lid separated during preheating. Preheat the oven together with the Dutch oven to 485 F (250 C) for 45 minutes
Cut a parchment paper about 2 inches bigger than the size of your banneton. I have a combo cooker Dutch oven, which is nice because I can load the dough with less risk of getting burnt on my arms. If you have a regular Dutch oven pot, you want to cut parchment paper so that it has a "handle" so you can lift the handle and lower the dough into the pot without getting burnt.

Scoring the dough:

When the oven has preheated for 30 minutes, get the dough out from the refrigerator. There is no need to let it come to room temperature. Use a bread lame and make a slash, about 1/2-inch deep at 45-degree angles on the dough, kinda off-center a bit. Mist the dough with water. This creates nice crackling all around the crust later

Baking:

Wear a mitten and carefully get the Dutch oven pot and its lid out from the oven and place one baking sheet on the lowest rack and quickly but carefully close the oven's door back to prevent too much heat loss. This helps to prevent the bottom crust of your bread from being too thick and tough
Carefully load the dough by lifting the parchment paper and lower it into the pot or the combo cooker. Close the lid. Open the oven door again and carefully transfer the pot into the oven again and close the oven door. Lower the temperature to 450 F (230 C) and bake for 40 minutes
After 40 minutes remove the Dutch oven from the oven. Transfer the half-baked bread to a regular baking sheet and put this back inside the oven. Again, this is to help create a nice thin crust all around
Lower the oven temperature to 425 F (220 C) and bake for 5 minutes. This part is just to brown the crust. I like to use digital instant-read thermometer and the internal temperature should be at least 200 F (93 C)

Cooling down:

After that, get the bread out of the oven and transfer it to a cooling rack immediately and now comes the hardest part! You need to wait for at least 3-4 hours or longer before you slice it. If you slice into warm bread, you will end up with gummy crumbs

Store:

Once the bread has cooled down completely, you can store it in a bread box if you plan to consume it in the next few days. You can also put it inside a paper bag
For longer storage, you can wrap the whole loaf or sliced bread in plastic wrap and then put inside a freezer bag. Push all the air out and seal. It can be kept frozen for 1-2 months. Simply thaw at room temperature before serving and then reheat them in toaster or air-fryer. Most toasters these days can toast frozen sliced bread. So you may not even need to thaw it completely

Notes

If the egg that you use is more than 50 grams, that's fine, just scale down on the amount of water to make sure that the total amount of egg + water comes up to about 237 in total to maintain a manageable hydration level. To find out the final hydration of this recipe, please read the detail in the blog post.

Nutrition