It is now 10:50 a.m. Now that the dough has been sitting for about four hours, it looks like this:
Mo' bubbles, mo' bettah.
It's going to get all kinds of exciting up in here now, because now we take the dough out of the pot.
Wild.
Okay, so I clear a spot on my counter (possibly the hardest part of this whole process, given my paucity of counter space) and wipe it down, then make sure it's dry and scatter a heavy layer of flour in an area of about a foot. I just use my hand to scrape the dough out of the pot out right onto the counter. Fingers are excellent tools for scraping.
Directly onto the surface of the dough, I sprinkle about five teaspoons of salt. Usually it's more like 4.5 teaspoons, but I'm making a bit of extra dough this time for garlic bread.
Anyway, I usually use plain old table salt, although this time I was out of that and just used canning and pickling salt.
Kind of hard to see white salt on white dough, but it's there.
I fold each side of the dough up and over to keep the salt from coming off, then start folding and flipping the dough. Otherwise known as kneading. Just for you, I counted how many times I folded: fifteen times exactly. I stopped once about halfway through and lifted the dough to re-distribute the flour under it so it wouldn't stick.
Sourdough requires very little kneading compared to breads made with commercial yeasts. This is one reason I like it. None of this "knead for five minutes." Five minutes is far longer than I want to knead.
Anyway again.
After kneading, I drop the dough right back into the pot:
As you can see, I don't bother washing the pot out first.
Incidentally, if you have a lot of loose flour still on the counter--I had about a quarter cup this time--sweep it back into your measuring cup to save for the next step.
And now! We wait. Again. Sourdough baking could accurately be called The Waiting Game.
To be continued . . .
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