It’s fall, and it’s time to go back into the kitchen and make some good food, and what’s better than bread? But wait a minute, you threw out your starter, or you never go around to make one. Making one involves a lot of feeding, flour and water weight, and stuff. Well, Foodgeek to the rescue. This is my article about how to make bread with apple sourdough starter.
What’s an apple sourdough starter, and how do you make it? Well, it’s super simple. Basically just purée the apples and leave them on your kitchen counter for 5 days or so, and it’ll be ready to bake bread.
If you are just here for the recipe, you can press the button underneath to be automagically transported to the recipe:
The dough in this bread with apple sourdough starter
Vitals
Total weight
1395 grams
Pre-fermented flour
0%
Hydration
80.2%
Yield
2 loaves of apple starter bread
Dough
The dough in this sourdough is made with 80% bread flour and 20% Øland wheat. If you want you can replace the Øland, you can use any whole-grain flour that you like, even gluten-free.
The hydration of the dough is 80%, which may be way too much for whatever bread flour you are using. If you’re new at baking and you’re maybe you are substituting with all-purpose flour, I’d recommend you try out 65% hydration. If the dough feels dry, you can always add more water.
The video gives the details about how to scale the water, but you can also use my Bread Calculator listed below.
You don’t need a sourdough starter for this bread, because we are making one with apples instead. The result will still be amazing bread.
The inoculation of the starter is 25%, which is a bit higher than usual. The apple starter is not AS powerful as a flour starter but will leaven your bread perfectly.
Weight
Ingredient
Baker's Percentage
600g
bread flour
80%
150g
øland wheat
20%
15g
salt
2%
440g
water
58.7%
190g
apple starter
25.3%
If you want to play around with the recipe: change hydration, quantity, or inoculation, you can do so here in my Bread Calculator.
The conclusion of this apple sourdough starter bread
So as I made this bread, I had never made an apple starter bread before, so I didn’t know what to expect, but here’s my opinion:
The crust smells delicious and is super crispy. It’s deeply caramelized but doesn’t have the bitter notes, you can usually smell on a loaf of sourdough bread. The smell of the crumb is slightly sour, but once you eat it you are surprised by how it tastes. There are almost no sour notes.
The smell is wonderfully pleasant, very bready and there are some sweet notes on the smell. You cannot detect any apple, though.
The crumb is relatively tight, but that’s to be expected with that amount of whole grain, and you can use 100% bread flour if you want lighter bread.
It’s great. If you like wonderful bread, this is the bread for you. Even if you’ve had sourdough you felt was too sour, this may be the one to convert you.
Please share this recipe for apple sourdough starter bread on social media
This is my recipe for bread with apple sourdough starter. If you like the recipe please consider sharing it with like-minded bread lovers on social media.
If you make it and post it on Instagram, please tag me as @foodgeek.dk so I can see it. That would make me very happy.
Core the apples and cut them into chunks. Don*t peel them. Process them in a food processor until finely broken up.
Then add to your blender and purée it completely. Add to a weck jar and seal it closed.
Vent the jar once a day to remove built-up CO2. Leave it for at least five days. It should rise during this time.
Make the loaves
Mix everything for the bread and leave it covered for an hour.
Then perform three sets of stretch and folds, spaced out by 30 minutes.
Put the dough in a cambro container and mark where the top is, then mark where the dough will have grown 25% or about a ¼ of its original height.
Then divide the dough into two equally sized pieces and pre-shape both pieces into loose balls. Let the dough rest for 20 minutes on the counter.
Final-shape the balls into either bâtards or boules, whatever your preference.
Put them into bannetons, and put them in the fridge for at least 8 hours, but up to 48 hours.
Bake the bread
Heat your oven to 230°C/450°F with a dutch oven inside for 30 minutes.
Grab a loaf from the fridge and dust the bottom with rice flour. Flip the loaf onto a peel.
Score the loaf and put it into the oven. Put the top of the dutch oven back and bake for 25 minutes.
Then prepare the other loaf. Move the half-baked loaf out of the dutch oven to the side, then put the unbaked loaf inside the dutch oven.
Cover it and bake for 25 minutes. Remove the finished baked bread and put it on a wire rack. Then remove the dutch oven cover and finish baking for 25 minutes.
Remove the finished loaf from the oven and let it cool on a wire rack.
This looks like my next experiment. Sourdough without the sourdough. Do you peel the apples?
Nope. Just core them. Importantly they should be organic and non-waxed.
Nope, I just core them. I also used organic non-waxed apples 🙂
After 3 days at room temperature the top of my apple purée started growing white mold, did yours too? I’ve used organic apple and I’ve kept their skin as you said to do in the video
It got white skin, but if it’s mold, it’s usually fuzzy, and it wasn’t. I think the top just dried out.
Mine is fuzzy unfortunately, I think I should throw away everything. But I’ve used a very clean jars and apples, what could had been happening in your opinion?
The same happened with my puree. And i wonder how this should work. Very disappointing…
Did you make sure to wash the apples beforehand?
When I make soakers I usually put a pinch of salt in it to prevent mold and undesired bacteria formation that can be really dangerous, so I’ll try again putting a little pinch of salt in the purée to prevent mold formation. I think it’ll work
My first try making the apple starter was unsuccessful. It grew white mold and did not rise or ferment. I think the problem might have been fermenting it in a spot that was too cool. I’m trying it again today with a fresh batch of apple puree. I’ve put the jar in a warm place and intend to stir it down daily for 5 days. Crossing fingers!
Second time trying to make the apple starter, second fail. Same issues as the first: no fermentation, no rise, white fuzzy mold on the surface at days 4 and 5. Any chance you’d be willing to provide a step-by-step for creating the starter, with pictures, process details and the ambient temperature your starter container was in? Thanks, Sune!
What you see in the video was what I did. I used organic non-waxed apples. Washed them, puréed them, and left them on the counter in my kitchen (around 21C/70F) for 5 days. In that time it rose and stayed kind of inflated. I didn’t do anything to it because I stirred it for the video.
Thanks. And during this time, you only cracked open the starter container daily to vent the CO2? Would really love to get this to work. Found this fascinating research paper today (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2212429213000333) when trying to find additional details for creating the starter. I ordered the PDF and will share anything that might be helpful, if you or your followers have any interest.
Yes, exactly. It should vent itself, but I just wanted to make sure I didn’t get exploding starter 🙂 Thanks, that sounds really cool 🙂
OK – I’ll try again. Maybe third time is the charm! 😀 Thanks, Sune.
how can the apple juice “rise” in 3 days without flour to feed on???
This looks like my next experiment. Sourdough without the sourdough. Do you peel the apples?
Nope. Just core them. Importantly they should be organic and non-waxed.
Nope, I just core them. I also used organic non-waxed apples 🙂
After 3 days at room temperature the top of my apple purée started growing white mold, did yours too? I’ve used organic apple and I’ve kept their skin as you said to do in the video
It got white skin, but if it’s mold, it’s usually fuzzy, and it wasn’t. I think the top just dried out.
Mine is fuzzy unfortunately, I think I should throw away everything. But I’ve used a very clean jars and apples, what could had been happening in your opinion?
The same happened with my puree. And i wonder how this should work. Very disappointing…
Did you make sure to wash the apples beforehand?
When I make soakers I usually put a pinch of salt in it to prevent mold and undesired bacteria formation that can be really dangerous, so I’ll try again putting a little pinch of salt in the purée to prevent mold formation. I think it’ll work
My first try making the apple starter was unsuccessful. It grew white mold and did not rise or ferment. I think the problem might have been fermenting it in a spot that was too cool. I’m trying it again today with a fresh batch of apple puree. I’ve put the jar in a warm place and intend to stir it down daily for 5 days. Crossing fingers!
Second time trying to make the apple starter, second fail. Same issues as the first: no fermentation, no rise, white fuzzy mold on the surface at days 4 and 5. Any chance you’d be willing to provide a step-by-step for creating the starter, with pictures, process details and the ambient temperature your starter container was in? Thanks, Sune!
What you see in the video was what I did. I used organic non-waxed apples. Washed them, puréed them, and left them on the counter in my kitchen (around 21C/70F) for 5 days. In that time it rose and stayed kind of inflated. I didn’t do anything to it because I stirred it for the video.
Thanks. And during this time, you only cracked open the starter container daily to vent the CO2? Would really love to get this to work. Found this fascinating research paper today (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2212429213000333) when trying to find additional details for creating the starter. I ordered the PDF and will share anything that might be helpful, if you or your followers have any interest.
Yes, exactly. It should vent itself, but I just wanted to make sure I didn’t get exploding starter 🙂 Thanks, that sounds really cool 🙂
OK – I’ll try again. Maybe third time is the charm! 😀 Thanks, Sune.
how can the apple juice “rise” in 3 days without flour to feed on???