{"slug":"orange-cranberry-sourdough-bread","collection":"recipes","is_recipe":true,"visibility":"public","title":"Orange Cranberry Sourdough Bread","description":"A 70%-hydration sourdough boule with orange zest in the dough and dried cranberries — optionally soaked in the orange's juice — folded in during stretch-and-folds. Cold-proofed in a banneton and baked in a preheated Dutch oven.","body_md":"1. **Soak the cranberries (optional):** Juice the orange into a small bowl and add the 100g dried cranberries. Leave them to soak until they go into the dough. Skipping the soak is fine — soaked cranberries are juicier and carry more orange flavor into the crumb.\n\n2. **Autolyse:** Weigh 50g starter and 350g water into a large ceramic or glass bowl and stir briefly to disperse the starter. Stir in the 20g honey and the orange zest. Add 500g bread flour and 10g salt and mix to a shaggy dough — a dough scraper keeps the sides of the bowl clean. Cover with a damp tea towel and rest about 1 hour.\n\n3. **Form the ball:** Work around the bowl, grabbing dough from the outside, stretching it up and over into the centre — about 20–25 stretches — until a smooth ball forms. The dough will be sticky but turns smoother and shinier as it comes together. Cover and rest 30 minutes.\n\n4. **Stretch and fold, adding the cranberries:** Over the next ~2 hours, do 4–6 sets of stretch and folds: each set is 4 stretches up and over, with about 15 minutes between sets. If you soaked the cranberries, drain them well first and discard the liquid. Add a handful of the cranberries with each of the 2nd and 3rd sets, folding until they are evenly incorporated (or laminate them in — see Notes).\n\n5. **Bulk ferment:** Cover with the damp tea towel and leave the dough to ferment until it has *just* doubled — wobbly, full of bubbles, with large air pockets visible under the surface. In a warm kitchen this can be as little as a few hours; in a cool one, overnight (see Notes). Do not push past doubled.\n\n6. **Shape:** Shape the dough into a tight boule or batard.\n\n7. **Into the banneton:** Place the dough into a rice-flour-dusted banneton smooth side down, seam up, so the banneton's rings pattern the top. In a cloth-lined bowl instead, put it smooth side up. Lift the edges to dust in a little more rice flour if needed, handling gently to preserve the gas from the bulk ferment.\n\n8. **Cold ferment:** Cover the banneton loosely with a damp tea towel and refrigerate for a minimum of 5 hours.\n\n9. **Preheat:** Put the Dutch oven, with its lid, into the oven and preheat to 230°C (450°F) for about 1 hour. Leave the dough in the fridge until the last minute — cold dough into a hot pot gives the best spring.\n\n10. **Score and bake:** Turn the dough out onto a piece of baking paper large enough to use as a sling. Score deeply with a lame, razor blade, or sharp knife — a single large cross at minimum. Optionally spritz the dough with water. Lower it into the hot Dutch oven by the paper, lid on, and bake 30 minutes at 230°C (450°F). Remove the lid, drop the oven to 210°C (410°F), and bake a further 10–15 minutes until deeply colored.\n\n11. **Cool:** Get the loaf out of the Dutch oven and onto a wire rack as soon as it comes from the oven. Cool at least a few hours — 4–6 is best — before cutting.\n\n## Notes\n\n- **Source \u0026 transcription:** The Pantry Mama (Kate Freebairn); instructions rewritten to house style. US volume equivalents were added at transcription and are approximate — the gram weights are authoritative. The salt spoon count assumes Diamond Crystal kosher at 3g/tsp; the same volume of table salt would be roughly double the weight.\n- **Baker's percentages:** 70% hydration, 2% salt, 4% honey, 10% starter. The 10% inoculation is deliberately low — below the usual 15–25% levain band — to suit the long (~22-hour total) ferment.\n- **Bulk ferment timing (from source):** warm home = possibly done in a few hours; cool = overnight. Watch the dough, not the clock, on the first few bakes. For an overnight ferment in a warm home, cut the starter to 25g to slow things down.\n- **Incorporating the cranberries:** stretch-and-fold as written (keep the dough in the bowl — it gets messy), or laminate them in instead.\n- **Rice flour** was promoted from the method into the ingredient list at transcription; the source names it only while describing the banneton. Cornmeal substitutes well.\n- **Covers:** a damp tea towel throughout; the source also suggests cling film and a reused plastic bag.\n- **Dutch oven size:** the source doesn't state one; any roughly 4L (4qt) or larger pot suits a 500g-flour boule (estimate).\n- **Optional walnut topping (from source):** crush walnuts into the base of the banneton before the dough goes in; they stick to the loaf during the cold ferment.\n- **Bake troubleshooting (from source):** if the base tends to burn, put a baking sheet on the shelf below the Dutch oven. If the middle seems underdone, turn the oven off and finish the loaf directly on the rack with the door ajar — closed, the loaf sweats and the crust wrinkles.\n- **Flour:** written for strong bread flour; all-purpose will behave differently at this hydration.","draft":false,"servings":"1 loaf","prep_time":"4 hours","cook_time":"45 minutes","total_time":"26 hours 45 minutes","source_name":"The Pantry Mama","source_url":"https://pantrymama.com/orange-cranberry-sourdough-bread/","created_at":"2026-08-10T01:01:15.93257Z","updated_at":"2026-08-10T01:50:52.809868Z","categories":["Bread"],"tags":["Bread","cranberries","orange","Sourdough"],"methods":["Baked"],"themes":["Holiday","Thanksgiving","Vegetarian"],"ingredients":[{"section":"","items":["50g (about ¼ cup) sourdough starter, fed and bubbly","350g (350ml / scant 1½ cups) water","20g (1 tbsp) honey","500g (4 cups + 2 tbsp) bread flour","10g (3⅓ tsp Diamond Crystal kosher) salt","100g (about ¾ cup) dried cranberries","1 orange, zested and juiced (juice optional, for soaking the cranberries)","Rice flour, for dusting the banneton (or cornmeal)"],"parsed":[{"raw":"50g (about ¼ cup) sourdough starter, fed and bubbly","qty":50,"unit":"g","item":"sourdough starter, fed and bubbly"},{"raw":"350g (350ml / scant 1½ cups) water","qty":350,"unit":"g","item":"water"},{"raw":"20g (1 tbsp) honey","qty":20,"unit":"g","item":"honey"},{"raw":"500g (4 cups + 2 tbsp) bread flour","qty":500,"unit":"g","item":"bread flour"},{"raw":"10g (3⅓ tsp Diamond Crystal kosher) salt","qty":10,"unit":"g","item":"salt"},{"raw":"100g (about ¾ cup) dried cranberries","qty":100,"unit":"g","item":"dried cranberries"},{"raw":"1 orange, zested and juiced (juice optional, for soaking the cranberries)","qty":1,"item":"orange","prep":"zested and juiced"},{"raw":"Rice flour, for dusting the banneton (or cornmeal)","item":"Rice flour","prep":"for dusting the banneton"}]}],"qc":{"status":"passed","last_checked_at":"2026-08-10T01:51:12.423414Z","checked_by":"claude-code","standard_version":"2026-07-30","findings_count":0,"stale":false}}