Easy Homemade Sourdough Bread Bowls
This easy recipe for sourdough bread bowls is perfect for soups and stews in the wintertime. Anytime I serve soup in bread bowls, my family gets so excited because it looks like I went to a lot of extra effort. I get excited because it doesn’t take a lot of extra effort to make these, and because they’re made with sourdough, I know they are the healthiest option for my family.
Ingredients
- 3 cups warm water
- 1 cup active sourdough starter
- 7 cups all purpose or bread flour
- 2 tablespoon salt
Instructions
Feed Starter
- Feed starter 4-12 hours before mixing up your dough
Mix Ingredients
- In a large bowl, add water, active sourdough starter, and flour. Mix until it comes together into a shaggy dough. Leave it for 15-30 minutes to “autolyse”. This just means you’re giving the flour a chance to absorb the water and the starter.
- Add the salt and “mix” into the dough with a circular motion similar to how a mixer would mix the dough (if you’re in a hurry you can mix in the salt when you first mix up the dough). Let sit for another 15-30 minutes.
Create Structure In Your Dough
- Begin creating structure in your dough by doing a series of stretch and folds, coil folds and/or lamination every 15-30 minutes. You will know your dough has good structure when it holds its shape and starts getting some bubbles on top. Sometimes I only do 2-3 stretch and folds before letting it bulk ferment if I’m in a hurry, but if I have the time I try to also do 1-2 coil folds and one lamination.
Bulk Ferment
- Cover bowl with a loose fitting lid like a plate and leave it in the bowl at room temperature for 2-3 hours to bulk ferment.
Cold Ferment
- Place the bowl of dough in the refrigerator to do it’s cold ferment. This will help the dough to firm up and make it easier to shape and score.
Preheat Oven
- Preheat your oven to 450 degrees with your cast iron or pizza stones in the oven.
Shape
- Tear off two pieces of parchment paper at least the size of your baking stone. Turn dough out onto the counter. Using a bench scraper, divide the dough into 8 equal portions. Shape the bread bowls by tucking the edges of each ball of dough underneath itself. Create surface tension on the ball by pushing it away from you and then pulling it back towards you several times. (See video). Place four bread bowls on each piece of parchment paper.
Score
- Score the top of the dough about ¼” deep with a simple cross. This will encourage the bread bowls to expand upwards.
Bake
- Place a 9” x 13” pan on the bottom rack of your hot oven. Pour some boiling water into pan to create steam in your oven. This will help to give your bread a crispy crust with a fluffy inside and will replicate dutch oven baking.
- Using the pizza peel, quickly place the bread bowls that are on the parchment onto the pre-heated stones.
- Reduce heat to 425 degrees and bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown.
- Remove from oven and place on a cooling rack.
- Can brush the tops with butter if desired.
Notes
- These sourdough bread bowls bake up best on a pre-heated flat cast iron pan or pizza stone.
- You’ll want to add boiling water to a separate pan in your oven to create a steam environment. This is necessary to help create a beautiful chewy crust on the sourdough bread bowls.
- I rarely measure any ingredients with a scale, but if you are new to sourdough, you may want to do so until you get a feel for the dough. After you know what you’re doing, it’s easy to just measure in cups.
- To make the hole in the middle of the bread bowl, I just use a bread knife and cut vertically around the edges of the bread bowl. Then I gently lift out the inside with a spoon.
- I like to serve the middle of the bread bowl on the side and dip it into my soup. More of that delicious bread soaked in creamy soup…yum!
- A bench scraper is helpful for dividing the dough into pieces before shaping the bread bowls.