Sourdough guide




While there are many sourdough recipes out there, this is the method I found works best for me (and my starter). It is an easy and fairly simple recipe to follow - as far as sourdough making goes!

Ingredients 

  • 125g active starter. The thing to look for with an active starter is one that has (at the very least) doubled in size, and has concaved slightly in at the top. It should be bubbly and, if you tap the jar / container on your work surface, it should sink slightly. 
  • 300g warm water 
  • 500g bread flour. You can use strong white bread flour and / or wholemeal bread flour. I usually do 4 parts white (400g), 1 part wholemeal (100g)
  • 10 - 15g fine sea salt. I usually do 15g, but I know some people find this to be too salty. Do not do more than 15g of salt - it is too much even for people who like salty things!


What an active starter might look like...

Method 

Part 1 
  1. Mix the water and the starter until the starter has fully dissolved. The mix will look slightly bubbly - that is good! 
  2. Add the flour and salt (there is no need to sieve here) and mix again until everything is combined. The dough should be slightly wet but still hold its shape. 
  3. Let sit in the bowl at room temperature, covered with a tea towel or something similar, for an hour. 
  4. After this, once every 30 minutes perform 10 stretch and folds (lift the dough up from one side and fold it over to the other, rotate and repeat), 4 times over. Wet your hands before you do - it stops the dough from sticking as much. 
  5. Let the dough sit at room temperature for up to 4 hours. If you don’t have time for this, you can skip this step, but if you can do it, it is recommended.
  6. On a lightly floured surface, stretch the dough out into a rectangle, fold it in on the sides, roll it up and shape it into a ball. There’s no specific way to shape the dough, but there are plenty of helpful videos online that show how to do this if you are unsure. 
  7. Place the dough into a lightly floured banneton, or a bowl with a lightly floured tea towel in it - both work equally well. Cover and place in the fridge for at least an hour, but ideally overnight. 

Part 2 
  1. Take out of the fridge and allow the dough to come to room temperature - about 30 minutes to an hour. Tip the dough out of the bowl onto on some baking paper and score it. 
  2. Preheat the oven to 220°C (fan) with a dutch oven (a cast iron / ceramic pot with a lid) inside. 
  3. Bake in the dutch oven with the lid on for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, take the lid off and bake for another 15 - 20 minutes, until lightly golden brown. 
  4. Let cool on a drying rack for about an hour. Do not cut into it straight away or the bread will likely turn out gummy. 
  5. Slice and enjoy!


The progression of my sourdough loaves over time.


Tips 

  • This recipe can be doubled - just follow the steps the same and divide the dough into two balls on step 6. 
  • If you forget to include the salt in with the flour (as I once made the mistake of doing!) you can slowly incorporate it in with your stretch and folds. 
  • If you don’t have a dutch oven or something similar, preheat the oven with a baking tray inside of it. When the oven is preheated, place the dough on the tray with some baking paper and put a dish of boiling hot water at the bottom of the oven. This achieves the effect of creating steam that would otherwise be created with the lid on top of the dutch oven. While not quite as effective, it still works and makes a delicious loaf. 
  • You don’t need all the equipment that some people online have - i.e. a dough whisk, a banneton, a bench scraper, etc. The only thing I would really recommend having is a razor blade for scoring - it works much better than a knife. There are some good basic dutch ovens online which I would really recommend investing in if you can afford it. 
  • The dough can be left in the fridge for up to 3 days, but any longer and it won’t rise well when baked.


Final advice 

As much as sourdough baking is a science to some extent, it is also something that should not be stressful or too precise. The friend who gave me my sourdough starter insisted that baking sourdough is ‘just vibes’, and he wasn’t completely wrong. I often leave a little more time than I should in between stretch and folds and never follow the recipe quite perfectly, outside of ingredients of course. I have also found that baking process is not the same every time and is likely to change depending on the environment I’m in (e.g., if the room is warmer, the dough will rise faster and so doesn’t require as much time on the counter). Be prepared to be flexible and adapt!

While making sourdough does take time and effort, it shouldn’t rule the day when you do make it. Let the sourdough making be a bonus activity to your day, rather than the central one, and it shouldn’t feel too time-consuming. 

Additionally, even if you are a good baker, don’t expect making sourdough to be perfect the first time, or every time after you do eventually master it! Part of the fun is that figuring out your starter and how it bake is slightly challenging. No sourdough recipe or method is perfect for everyone. I wanted to simplify it as much as possible with this recipe, but do adapt it to your starter and environment if you find it isn’t perfect for you.
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