My How-to Guide to Sourdough Bread Success
Sourdough bread baking is not for the faint of heart, but I can honestly say that, if you have time, you can totally do this.
I seriously get so much joy from every step of this process. The end result of a hot crusty sourdough bread straight from the oven with a chewy inside and tons of tiny little air pockets is just to die for.
This guide will share my favorite methods for achieving that glorious loaf of tasty bread each time.
My adventures with sourdough bread baking involved reading tons of recipes and watching online videos, but my favorite starter recipe and reference, where I first learned so much, is this one from homemadefoodjunkie.com.
This mom/daughter duo have created an amazing tutorial and video based on a Tartine style sourdough. Their instructions created an amazing loaf the first time!! Check them out.
A Note on Timing
After your sourdough starter is ready to go, this process takes about 2 days. Though this can seem intense, the hands on time is very minimal. I now really look forward to the steps when I can actually get my hands on the dough. : ) Because of the waiting time involved, and because some of the timings in general are approximate, you can usually work these steps around your schedule and still come out with a gorgeous loaf of bread.
When you first get your starter, it will be flat and not too bubbly. It may have a layer of liquid on top. After you give it a little love, a.k.a. feeding, your starter will bubble up, teeming with life, to bring a beautiful rise to your bread. There is nothing more satisfying. To get this rise, just add equal parts starter, flour and water every 6-12 hours for 3 “feedings.” After the third feeding, wait another 6-8 hours, until the starter is again doubled in size and very bubbly. When it’s ready to use in dough, it should look like this. In addition, it should float if you put a spoon of starter into a bowl of water. If it’s floating, you’re so ready!
A Bubbly Starter
It’s alive!!!! To get started, I highly recommend getting an established starter from a friend, like I did from my family friend, Jason. You can also buy a starter from a bakery. Then you can get right to the bread baking! If you would like to make your own, you can learn how and contribute to the science of sourdough at the Wild Sourdough Project.
What to do with Discard?
Each time you feed, you will have discard, which you can simply just throw away. If you are interested in cooking with it, I am in LOVE with these sourdough pancakes by Tastes of LizzyT which uses leftover starter. The pancakes are awesome!
Make The Dough
For the first step, we’ll use modified baker’s proportions (100% flour, 75% water, 15% starter, 3-4% salt.) I get the best results with the following: Dissolve the starter in water. Then dissolve the salt in the water. Add the flour. Mix with a utensil. I personally love to finish the mixing with my hands. There’s just something about getting your hands on that dough, just enough to mix the flour fully in. Love.
Your end result should look something like this and will be wet. Your hands should be covered in sticky dough, but you will feel a warmth in your heart that negates any sticky hand feelings. Do you feel it? I always have a taste of the dough at this step. Is that bad?
Stretch and Fold
Let this sit for a half hour, and then the fun really begins. The “stretch and fold”. Every half hour you will wet your hands, dig into the bottom of the bowl, and stretch the dough out and fold it over itself. The gluten will be developing here, and your dough will go from breaking apart to a stretchy consistency that is nothing short of magical. Do this every half hour about 4 times. If you notice that the dough is still tearing, and not getting increasingly stretchy, repeat the stretch and fold cycle a couple more times to develop the gluten further.
After 4-6 stretch and folds, you then leave it alone for 12-24 hours in the fridge covered with saran wrap. I usually leave mine in the fridge overnight and pull it out when I get up in the morning. After 12-24 hours, remove the dough from the fridge, and leave it on the counter covered for 2 hours so that it comes to room temperature. The dough generally looks like the photo below at this point.
Shape and Rise
You’ll now want to flip this onto a clean counter without flour, and split the dough in half, ideally using a bench scraper. With the two halves, each will become one of your loaves of bread. Yep, you get 2!
You’ll use your bench scraper to shape these into neat circles/rounds, and then let the dough rest for about a half hour, covered with a clean dish cloth.
Prepare the Proofing baskets
While you wait for the next step, you can prepare your “bannetons” or “proofing baskets”. These shown to the left are round ones I bought at a baking shop. I’ve left one lined with cloth and removed the cloth from the left one. You can also use a simple bowl about the same size if you don’t have a banneton. Flour them generously so the dough doesn’t stick to them when you eventually try to remove it. The banneton with cloth removed will leave those gorgeous rings imprinted on the dough’s surface when it bakes, giving a different (very pretty, in my opinion) look to your bread.
Shaping the Dough Method 1
Final Shaping
Finally, you get to shape the dough to build tension, and then place it in the floured “banneton” seam side up. These two videos show two slightly different methods for shaping your dough in a round shape.
Shaping the Dough Method 2
After shaping, place each dough in its own floured banneton or bowl. Cover each bowl with a dish towel, and return to the fridge for 2 hours. At about 1 hour and 15 minutes, you’ll want to start pre-heating your oven at 450F. Once preheated, place the empty Dutch Oven in at 450F for 30 minutes before your dough is ready to bake.
After Proofing
This image shows the dough with the ring imprints after the final shape and rise in the bare, unlined proofing basket. This dough has been turned onto parchment paper before baking.
Scoring
Almost there! Score the bread using a sharp knife (or bread lame). Elaborate designs are allowed, but you can also keep it simple with a straight line or two or a cross. When the bread springs into a rise in the heat of the oven, the scoring allows the crust to break in a controlled way, adding to the beauty of your bread.
Baking
I highly recommend baking your bread at 450F in a covered dutch oven for 35 minutes, then removing the cover for another 20 minutes. Keep in mind that ovens are different, so you may need to adjust the timing for yours as you continue to bake bread. There are other ways to get steam into your oven, but this seems to be the easiest. A pro tip is to put a pizza stone on the rack beneath the rack with your dutch oven to prevent the bottom of the bread from burning. The end result will be a crisp, crusty bread on the outside with a chewy, airy, bubbly, moist crumb on the inside. It’s gorgeous. When you finish baking, a pro tip is to turn off the oven, and leave the bread in for about 20 minutes more with the oven door cracked open. This will give you an even crispier crust. It’s the best!
The Crumb!
Crumb refers to the texture of the bread. The goal is an open crumb, these gorgeous air pockets created in the bread as it bakes. This depends on a number of things, including the activity of the starter, the fermentation/rise time, and the hydration of your bread. When your bread looks like this, it’s magical.
Voila! Good luck waiting the hour you’re supposed to to let the bread cool out of the oven. Warm, crusty bread is hard to resist. Enjoy!!!
Check out more AComfyKitchen Recipes:
Saffron Risotto with Grilled ShrimpTahdig (Persian Crispy Rice)Mamani’s Fessenjoon (Persian Walnut and Pomegranate Stew with Chicken)
Reliably Amazing Sourdough Bread
Equipment
- Dutch Oven
- kitchen scale
Ingredients
- 1000 grams Flour (approx 8 cups) Bread Flour Preferred
- 750 grams Water (approx. 3 cups) lukewarm
- 150 grams established Starter (approx 2/3 cup)
- 40 grams salt (approx 2 tbsp)
Instructions
- Feed Starter equal portions starter, flour, water (approximately a half cup each or 50 grams)
- Repeat feeding 3 times every 12 hours until the starter is bubbly, doubles in size, and floats in water
- When the starter is ready, place water into a large bowl and mix starter into the water to mostly dissolve.
- Add salt to the starter water and stir.
- Add flour to the water and stir until fully incorporated. The dough should be wet.
- Let dough sit covered with clean dish cloth for 30 minutes.
- Stretch and fold the dough every 30 minutes for about 2 hours.
- Place the dough, covered with saran wrap, into fridge for 12-24 hours.
- Remove dough from fridge and allow to come to room temperature for 2 hours.
- Remove the dough from the bowl onto clean counter top and split dough in half using bench scraper.
- Form rounds with each half of dough and cover with clean dish cloth for another 30 minutes.
- Create tension in the dough by shaping each round into a ball and placing into a floured proofing basket or bowl, seam side up.
- Cover dough with clean dish towels and return to refrigerator for 2 hours until ready to bake.
- Preheat the oven to 450 45 minutes prior to baking, with dutch oven and cover inside.
- When oven is ready, remove one dough bowl from the refrigerator. Cover with parchment, and flip the dough onto the parchment paper.
- Score the dough using a sharp knife. Salt the bread with coarse Kosher salt.
- Transfer the dough using the parchment paper to the dutch oven and cover the dutch oven.
- Place dutch oven, covered, into the oven. Bake at 450 for 35 minutes.
- Remove the cover off the dutch oven at 35 minutes, and bake uncovered another 20 minutes.
- Check the color of the bread to be sure it's browning well. Then turn the oven off, and open the oven door a crack for 20 more minutes before removing from the oven.
- Wait one hour before cutting into bread.
I just found your post to reach soudough success! I’m excited to embark on this adventure as I have an active, bubbly starter but I don’t have bread flour! Tried to find it locally in stores but everyone is out of bread flour. Can I use unbleached all purpose instead? What is your advice?
Hi Joanne! Yes! unbleached all purpose flour will still work great. I’ve made many loaves with it when I couldn’t get bread flour during quarantine, and they are still delicious! Then when I find some bread flour, it seems like it takes the bread over the top. I can’t wait to hear how it goes. Let me know!
So I made it! But sadly there was no rise at all. Good flavor and crust was nicely browned but it was more like a pancake bread. Lol. Maybe you can help me troubleshoot. I fed my starter before I started and waited about 4 hours for it to double in size. It passed the float test. Maybe I should have waited a bit longer for more bubbly action? Another spot where I sensed trouble was in the stretch and fold phase. It wasn’t stretching much from the get go. Really tight tension if that makes any sense. Also, after the 12-24 hours in the fridge, I didn’t get any bubbles like in your picture. Sigh. Any ideas of where things went wrong? I’m ready to try again!
Hi Joanne, Awww, that’s so frustrating after all the effort it takes! I love that you are trying again. That’s what I would do!
Sounds like the trouble was in getting the rise, and that does happen sometimes…there are so many variables! I think the most important is getting the feeding of the starter right, and using it at the peak of bubbling/rising. I’ve also found that when you put the salt in for the dough matters. For me, putting the salt in after dissolving the starter in the water gives me good rise. If i put the salt in after the flour is mixed in with the liquids, I don’t get a great rise.
A few other ideas: When I feed my starter in preparation for making bread, I feed it 3 times (about twice a day) before I use it in a bread. After the third time, I might wait a little longer than your 4 hours, like maybe 6-8 hours for it to rise to its peak.
The other thing you can do if the stretch and fold is not “stretching” is to give it a couple more rounds of stretch and fold for a couple more half hour increments to see if it develops a little more gluten. The more times you do that step, the more stretchy it should get.
The other tip I’d consider is the temperature of the water you’re using when you make the dough. I’d use lukewarm, like comfortable to keep your hand in, but not too hot and not too cold, as too hot or cold inhibit the yeast.
If it’s helpful, send me pictures as you go. I’m happy to see if I can help further. Good luck!!!
Now you see why I call this “adventures” in sourdough. It never turns out exactly the same! But it’s always fun. : )
Appreciate your very detailed response! I am determined and will try again. Thank you, thank you for your response! You’re too kind.
This is by far the most comprehensive sourdough explainer! I love how you used videos to show the different steps involved. You make it so easy to understand and I feel confident to tackle sourdough! Thanks so much for all of the helpful info!
Thanks Erin! I’m so glad you found it helpful.