I’ll assume you have an existing sourdough starter. If not, you’ll need to start seven days earlier by creating one, following the steps in this recipe. It works just as well with white or rye flour.

2 days before you plan to bake your bread (or the morning before, if your kitchen is very warm)

• Take 50g of your existing sourdough starter. Add 50g all-purpose flour (or bread flour) and 50g filtered water (or good quality drinking water). Leave it in a lightly covered container on your kitchen counter until the next day. If your kitchen is particularly warm, especially in summer, preparing it the morning before baking might be best.
• Alternatively do this in the morning of the day before you want to bake. It’ll still work. Especially in summer, when your kitchen is very warm, this might be the best time.

1 day before baking

Blend the wet ingredients

• In the afternoon start by blending the cottage cheese with some of the water and the protein powder until smooth.
• Using a bread whisk, stir in the remaining water and 100g of the sourdough starter.
• You could probably blend it, but I’m trying to be respectful of the little sourdough bacteria and treat them gently. Not everyone appreciates the wild ride in a blender!
• Keep the remaining 50g of the starter for your next bread. You can keep it in the fridge, and it’ll last for at least a week.

Mix the dry ingredients

• In a large bowl stir together the bread flour and salt. I’m using kosher salt, which has a higher volume per gram, so for me this is 2 tsp. If you are using sea salt, use 1 tsp.

Stir the Wet into the Dry Ingredients

• Using your dough whisk or spoon, make a little well in the middle of your flour then pour in your wet ingredient blend, stirring as you go. Mix until no dry flour patches remain.
• The dough will be very sticky and lumpy at this point, that’s totally fine.
• Leave it to rest for 30 minutes to 1h.

Stretch and Folds: Building Structure (Optional but Recommended)

This part, while flexible and not absolutely crucial to making decent bread, helps developing the gluten rapidly, gives the dough structure and helps trapping air inside for those large bubbles you keep seeing in the pictures of sourdough bread. I find it also very satisfying.

How To Do Stretch And Folds

• Wet your hands. This will mostly prevent the sticky dough fingers. Contrary to flour, which makes them worse.
• Push both hands under the dough and lift one side up. Stretch it until nearly the whole dough is lifted out of the bowl, then fold it over itself. Turn the bowl by 90 degrees and repeat. Do this 4 times, until the bowl has turned back full circle. Cover.
• Repeat the process 2-3 more times after 30 minutes each, until you feel the dough is much smoother, easier to handle and shapes into a neat (if wobbly) loaf.
• After the last stretch and fold, either shape or cover and leave to ferment overnight in the fridge.

Shape Your Loaf

• You can do this the evening before or on the day of baking. If you do shape on the day of baking your dough will need another hour of resting to puff up again.
• On a floured surface, tip your dough out of the bowl.
• Gently stretch it into a rough rectangle, then fold the corners into the middle. Rotate the dough and keep doing this, pinching the dough slightly in the middle, until you feel a good surface tension and it looks relatively round.
• Add a little more flour, then turn around and push the dough underneath itself with either the side of your hand or a bench scraper, until you have a pretty smooth ball.
• Flour your banneton or bowl well and flip your dough ball upside down inside. Cover with clingfilm or a shower cap and store in the fridge overnight for the cold ferment.
• Or, if you decided to shape it in the morning before baking, allow to rise, covered, for another hour or two.

Bake Your Protein Sourdough Bread

Measure out Baking Parchment
(Optional but practical)

• I started doing this after one of my earlier rye breads got stuck on the bottom and it was a mess to clean up. Using parchment or a silicone baking mat helps keep the pot clean and your bread come out easily. Even when it, for whatever reason, didn’t work perfectly well.
• Turn your Dutch oven upside down on your worktop.
• Get a piece of baking parchment that’s about 2cm/1in wider than your Dutch Ovens bottom.
• Fold in half, then in half again and keep folding into a triangle about 2-3 times.
• Hold it on top of your pots bottom with the tip roughly in the middle of it. Fold it over the edge to measure about 2cm/1in down the side and cut the rest off with a pair of scissors.
• Open out and admire your perfectly measured baking parchment, ready to hold your dough.

Pre-heat Oven

• With the Dutch oven inside, pre-heat your oven to 475°F/245°C for 30 minutes to 1h.
• Even if is shows as pre-heated after a shorter time, this is when the temperature evens out and reaches the optimal temperature.
• Score Your Bread
• While the oven heats up, carefully tip your dough onto the center of the prepared baking parchment. If necessary, gently push it back into shape. Sprinkle the top with a little flour, then, using a lame or a sharp knife, score your bread.
• You can get as creative or simple as you like.
• For the perfect scoring patterns you see online, you can freeze your bread for 10-20 minutes, which hardens the surface and makes precise scoring much easier. I admit I usually don’t bother.
• One long score, about 1cm deep, at about a 45-degree angle slightly towards the side of the bread gives you the “classic” opening flap when the bread rises in the oven. Without scoring it would just break wherever it wants under the surface tension and might not rise as high. So one score is a good idea. Anything else is decoration.

Bake

• Using oven gloves, take your pot out of the oven onto a heat proof surface. Take off the lid. Be mindful about where you put this. I managed to burn a dark ring into a wooden chopping board. Ever since I put it either directly on my hob or an oven tray.
• Using the edges of the baking parchment, carefully lower your loaf into the Dutch oven. Close the lid and put it back into the oven.
• Immediately lower the temperature to 425°F/220°C and bake for 25 minutes.
• After that time take off the lid and bake for 20-30 minutes longer or until deep golden brown with darker edges on the scored parts, where it puffs up.

Cool

• Remove the bread from the oven. You can allow it to rest for about 20-30 minutes inside the Dutch oven. After that transfer to a cooling rack to avoid condensation and soggy crust.
• Now comes the hard part. I know this smells really, really good and you want a slice right now!
• But be patient. Leave to cool for at least 2 hours, to get a nice clean cut.
• Enjoy your bread with some creamy cold butter.