Beginner Sourdough Bread

We know why you are here, and we have the recipe for you. This sourdough recipe is pretty straightforward and makes excellent bread. I have used many recipes for sourdough, and this is my favourite one so far. Being the easiest is an extra added bonus.

This recipe does not teach you how to make a sourdough starter from scratch. There are many Internet resources that will help you there, like this one. Or, get some starter from someone you know who makes sourdough bread.

If you have never made bread before, I would not advise starting with sourdough. Wild yeasts are temperamental, and your initial result, unless you are incredibly lucky or preternaturally talented as a baker, will be less than awesome. Instead, I would strongly advise you to try no-knead bread first, which you can find on this site. No-knead bread, like this sourdough recipe, is “high hydration” (large amount of water to flour), which is trickier to handle than a typical recipe made with commercial yeast. My version of no-knead bread has a dough-stretching step that is typical in sourdough recipes, and is baked in a dutch oven, like this recipe. It’s great training for sourdough.

Before you make sourdough bread, make sure that you have a very active starter that has been fed every 12 hours for several days (doubling in size after eight hours) and then has been put to sleep in the fridge. Then, by using the sourdough reactivation schedule in this recipe, you will waste the least amount of flour, which can be a problem with sourdough. Many beginner sourdough bakers get very enthusiastic about feeding their starter twice every day and accumulating a very large amount of discard. You can use it to make pancakes or waffles, but one is quickly overwhelmed and most of it ends up in the compost.

This recipe starts the evening before, and you will have a wonderful loaf of bread the next afternoon. You should plan your day so you are not far from your kitchen on the baking day, as the bread will rise on its schedule, not yours.

If you are going to make sourdough, please invest in a digital kitchen scale. The ratio of flour, water, and starter is very important, and is done by weight. In fact, many sourdough recipes are written in “bakers’ percentages”, which means that the ingredients are expressed as a percentage of the total flour used. Sourdough breads tend to be in the range of 70% to 85% water in weight as compared to flour. A five-percent difference will be noticeable, so you should be accurate. Lower hydration breads are easier to handle, so this recipe has two alternates, one at about 69% hydration, and the other at 75%. The lower one is for real beginners, and then you can try increasing it.

There is one very important variable that relates to the flour percentage, and to the outcome, and that is the quality of the flour. Bread needs a minimum flour protein level of around 13%. Canadian all-purpose flour is sufficient for bread, and you may get better results with “bread flour”, though it is not necessary. If you are not in Canada, you really must use flour labeled as “bread” or “strong”. Even among high-protein flours, the more, and better quality, the protein, the more water it will absorb. It is much easier to handle high-hydration bread dough made with high-quality flour, and if you think your flour is up to it, try increasing the water the next time you make this recipe. If your bread dough acts like a blob that spreads out on the counter under its own weight, you have used too much water, or you need to get better flour.

The first time you make this bread, try it with white flour. Then you can try adding different types to change the taste and texture. Whole wheat, rye, and spelt flour all contribute excellent flavours to bread, but if you use too much, the bread won’t rise as much as one made with white flour. Start by replacing 20% of the flour with some alternate type. If you want to make a high-percentage whole wheat bread (like 50%), try sifting the whole wheat flour through a very fine sieve to remove the bran. The little flakes of bran are hard and sharp and interfere with the formation of gluten strands necessary to make the bubbles that lift the bread. Save the bran for muffins.

Preparing your Starter and Making a Levain

The night before you bake the bread, take a clean jar and measure 25 grams of starter into it. Add 50 grams of water, and stir to dissolve the starter. Add 50 grams of white flour, stir very well to combine, put a lid on loosely, place an elastic band around the jar to mark the height of the starter, and let it sit on the counter at a comfortable room temperature overnight. Early the next morning, check to make sure that the starter has at least doubled. If it has not, leave it for an hour or two longer. If it doesn’t double, your sourdough is not ready to make bread. You will have to feed it again that morning by discarding all but 25 grams, and adding 50 grams each of flour and water. Then restart the procedure in the evening. Notice that my feeding ratio is always 1 part starter, 2 parts water, and 2 parts flour, by weight.

The morning that your starter is ready, make a levain, which will go into your bread dough. A levain is just a very young sourdough starter, and I prefer using it because it makes a less sour bread. Sourdough starter is a symbiotic culture of wild yeasts and lactobacillus bacteria, the latter being what makes yogurt and sourdough bread sour. Yeast eats the flour, and the bacteria eats the leftovers and by-products. Young starter has more yeast and less bacteria, so makes a less sour bread.

You will need 235 grams of levain in this bread. Put 50 grams of your morning starter in a fresh jar (large enough to handle the expansion), add 100 grams of water, and then 100 grams of flour. Stir vigorously to combine well, and then let sit in a warm place to accelerate the rise, such as an oven with the light on. Mark this jar with the elastic band. It should double in 3 hours. Sometimes it will be temperamental and take a bit longer. If it is taking too long (say, longer than 5 hours), the levain is cold or there is some other problem. You can’t make sourdough bread unless your starter is really active, so you will have to experiment with feeding to get it more active and make sourdough bread another day. But if you have bubbly, doubled levain, you are good to go.

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