Easy Sourdough Bread (With Active or Unfed Starter)

Make this easy sourdough bread for lunches or dinner tonight! Long-fermented for the best rise and health benefits, this sourdough bread has a soft crumb and classic sourdough crust. You can choose to knead, do stretch and folds, or leave this recipe as a no-knead sourdough bread! Adapt sourdough to fit your life; not the other way around!

Easy Sourdough Bread

 We all know that bubbly, recently fed sourdough starter will raise delicious loaves of bread and other baked goods. However, you can make great sandwich bread with your sourdough discard, too!

Pretty much any recipe you would make with fed starter, you can make with sourdough discard. I promise, I’m not leading you on!

For example, these recipes will work for both active and discard starter:

Sourdough Breakfast Cookies

Sourdough Discard Sandwich Bread

Sourdough Crunch Pancakes (with Blueberry Sauce)

Let’s discuss sourdough discard for just a bit, in case that’s what you have on hand today to make this easy sourdough bread recipe.

What is Sourdough Discard?

Sourdough discard is the mix of flour and water that has been fermenting in your sourdough starter container. Incidentally, sourdough starter is also a mixture of flour and water that has been fermenting in your sourdough starting container.

The difference between the two is that sourdough discard is the portion of the sourdough starter that is removed in proportion to the new flour and water being added to your sourdough container to feed the mother.

The sourdough mother is that portion of the sourdough starter that remains in the container.

Sourdough discard is usually removed when the starter needs feeding, so it will not have many bubbles and will be a little limp and loose.

Even unfed and limp, you can still use it to make discard sourdough sandwich bread!

I Never Have Discard! 

I have a confession to make. I never discard sourdough starter. Ever. I never, ever throw away older sourdough starter, which is what discard implies.

There’s no need to throw it away when you can always use it!

We have several discard recipes on Homestead Lady, but there are also great ones at sites like:

• Clever Carrot
• Little Spoon Farm
• The Perfect Loaf
• Farmhouse on Boone

If you need Einkorn sourdough recipes, including discard ones, a great site is A Modern Homestead. In fact, Victoria has a course on baking sourdough with einkorn flour. She created it because einkorn flour has a really different structure than white and modern wheat flour. It takes some practice to make great sourdough einkorn loaves but you CAN learn it, especially with Victoria’s class!

Confessions of a Sourdough Pirate

If you read through any of my sourdough recipes, you’ll see I’m a bit of sourdough pirate. I don’t really follow the rules of artisan sourdough, even though I get artisan results. 

I fear that modern sourdough culture (no pun intended) has become a bit elitist. Some authors make you feel like you can’t bake with sourdough starter without special equipment and 36 hours of your constant attention.

These authors are well-meaning – they just want you to bake the best sourdough you can!

But, repeat after me, it’s just bread. You’ve got this!

You can adapt your sourdough bread to your lifestyle, and that’s one of the reasons why baking with sourdough culture is superior to commercial yeast!

What About Proportions & Discard?

First of all, I never pay attention to proportion when removing any amount of discard. I take what I need for the recipe I’m making and then feed the remaining mother starter.

• I don’t run myself out of sourdough starter, of course; I never use all I have!
• I always leave enough mother in the container to keep my starter going and happily feeding on the new flour and water I feed it each time I use it.

How much do I feed it? Eh, typically 1 cup of whole wheat flour and 3/4 cup of well water. If my starter looks a little dry, I use as much as 1 cup of water.

• There are lots of schools of thought on feeding sourdough starter, but the bottom line is to learn how yours works and how much it likes to have to eat and drink at one time.

It’s not rocket science, I promise. You’ll make friends with your starter and serve each other well. 

To help you keep track of your sourdough baking, especially as you’re learning, get your copy of our Sourdough Baking Worksheets when you join our newsletter family. These are the sheets I created for myself to track recipes, experiments, fermenting times, etc. Download them and print right away to use with this recipe!

 

Can I Make Sourdough Bread with My Discard? 

Yes! Remember when I said that both sourdough discard and sourdough starter are made up of the same things, flour and water?

When you feed sourdough starter, it perks up in size and fills with bubbles. This is the chemical reaction that takes place as the bacteria and yeast that make up the starter begin to digest the yummy sugars in the grain. 

As the starter consumes the carbs, it burps out gas that raises the starter and will do the same for your bread as it digests the large quantities of flour in your bread recipe.

• The fact is, the process is the same even if you’re using sourdough discard to make sandwich bread. The discard eats the flour in your recipe just like your active starter does.

It might take your sourdough discard sandwich bread recipe a bit longer to ferment to double in size and get nice and poofy. However, the process is exactly the same for discard as it is for fed (aka active) starter.

Can I Use Sourdough Discard Instead of Starter?

Over the years, I have made almost every sourdough bread recipe I have with both active and discard starter and they both work wonderfully. 

The only time I would use active starter instead of sourdough discard is if I didn’t have extra time to raise my bread dough. Honestly, if the ambient temperature is between 65°F – 75°F (18°C – 24°C), your bread probably won’t need much more time.

Maybe an hour or two. Maybe.

• You can also go ahead and bake up your loaf even if it’s not perfected raised and ready! Your finished loaf will be a bit more dense and not as tall, but it will still be delicious. Here’s a photo example of some differences when you don’t ferment long enough or do any stretching and folding.

The key is to learn how to read your dough and know when it has fermented long enough to shape into a loaf. Your dough has fermented long enough when it:

• Has doubled or nearly doubled in size
• Returns a gentle finger press, though not all the way
• Has some blisters (bubbles) beginning to form under the skin of the dough

A Note on Long Fermenting

All my recipes are long-fermented, FYI. Long-ferment in a sourdough recipe means that the dough has fermented at least six hours, sometimes more.

The purpose for this long-ferment is to be sure that starter has had time to sufficiently consume the sugars to raise the dough. This also means that the sourdough bread will be healthier!

A short list of health benefits to sourdough include:

1. Lower carbs than other grain breads.
2. Usually easier to digest for people with gut problems.
3. Contains probiotics, as does any fermented food.

It’s also filling as far as a fiber-rich food is concerned.

These factors are very important to me and what I require in healthy bread. It’s the only kind of bread I feed my family because we DO NOT eat empty carbs for health reasons.

I don’t even use flour to work my dough or line my pans because I won’t use any flour that hasn’t been through a long ferment. I’m pretty adamant about it!

• My Daily Sourdough Bread has a great article here to answer the question Is Sourdough Bread Healthy?

If a long ferment is important to you, be sure to double check each recipe you want to try before you begin to be sure they include a ferment window of at least six hours.

If it doesn’t, you can still try the recipe and just add a long ferment to the process and take notes on how it works out.

Easy Sourdough Bread Recipe

Use this super easy sourdough bread recipe for weekly sourdough bread baking. It’s simple and delicious!

You can do a few stretch and folds, knead it, or simple make this as a no-knead sourdough bread. Any of those techniques will work, so do whatever you have time for today.

Easy Sourdough Bread Notes

Here are just a few things to note when making this easy sourdough bread recipe:

• I like to use organic white flour when I need to use white flour because only organic flour (in the U.S. at any rate) is unbleached and unenriched.
• I add a little honey to this recipe for classic sandwich bread flavor. You can omit it, if you’d like. You can also use an alternative sugar like coconut, raw, or turbinado.
• I like to use my hands when mixing, so that I can feel the texture. The dough will stop sticking to the side of the bowl and will look a big shaggy.
• Cover the dough and set it aside to ferment. Note the time!
• Sourdough recipes will culture and rise evenly at an ambient temperature of 65°F – 75°F (18°C – 24°C). If it’s warmer, the bread will ferment and raise quicker; if it’s colder, the process will be slower.
• Before you bake the bread, be sure to cut slashes in the top of the dough to control how the finished loaf will split.
• When it’s time to bake, invert a bread pan over the top to control the release of moisture and create a classic sourdough crust.

To Knead or Not to Knead?

I no longer knead my sourdough bread, although I used to do so. A kneaded sourdough will result in a nicely dense crumb (the inside of the loaf), but it’s not necessary if you don’t want to or have time to do that.

Stretching and folding the dough will create a more artisan type texture with lots of holes in the crumb. 

You can also leave this dough un-kneaded entirely and only interact with it when you shape it into a loaf for its final rise.

• For which method do you have time today and which one produces the results you like? Experiment and find out!

If you don’t have time to bake your loaf today, get it to the shaping stage, place it in the pan, cover it, and put it in the fridge. You can bake it up to a week later, though I recommend baking it within the next 36 hours.

Parchment and Foil

You can omit the parchment paper, if you don’t have any. The parchment paper, once oiled can be reused several times. It makes it easier to remove the loaf from the pan.

If your bread is browning too quickly, remove the inverted pan and loosely cover your loaf with foil for the last few minutes. The pan helps the water escape the baking bread in a measured way, which creates the traditional artisan sourdough crust.

However, it can sometimes trap heat and over-brown your loaf at the end of the bake time. This can especially happen in a smaller oven like a toaster oven.

Cutting & Storage

If you cut into the loaf while it’s still warm, you risk condensing/pressing down the loaf and possibly turning the crumb a bit gummy. If you need to cut it, do so carefully.

Or rip it apart and eat it in chunks with tonight’s dinner!

Store for 7-10 days in a container with a sealed lid. You can refrigerate for 2 weeks or more. You may also freeze these loaves for several months before the flavor begins to suffer.

Stretch and Fold Sourdough 

The following is an excerpt from our article, Sourdough Bread Beginner Recipe, which has TONS of information on getting started with sourdough bread baking.

If you’re just starting out, go read that article in its entirety and you should, I hope, feel much more informed and empowered.

Instructions for Stretch & Folds for Easy Sourdough Bread

1. After your dough has sat 60 minutes, remove the lid, and wet your hands to prevent sticking.
2. Rest one hand on the bowl to keep it steady, and use your other hand to pull up on one side of the dough.
3. Stretch the dough up a bit and fold it over itself. 
4. Rotate the bowl a bit and repeat the stretch and fold process. Pull up on one side of the dough, stretch it, and fold it over on itself. Rotate the bowl until you’ve stretched the dough 4-8 times on all sides.
5. Recover the bowl and allow it to sit another 30-60 minutes.
6. Stretch and fold the dough 1-2 more times, and then allow it to rest.

You’ll notice that each time you stretch and fold the dough, it gets more resistant to your stretching. This means the gluten is forming strong strands that will give good structure to your loaf. This is a good thing!

How to Store Sourdough Bread?

Store this loaf brad for 7-10 days in a container with a sealed lid on the counter. You can use a zip storage bag.

You can refrigerate the loaf in a sealed container for 2 weeks or more. Check for spots of mold in white and blue. If you see any, go ahead and feed it to the chickens. If black mold is spotted, compost the bread.

You may also freeze these loaf for several months in an air-tight, freezer container before the flavor begins to suffer. To thaw, simply remove from freezer and defrost on the counter.

What is the Difference Between Sourdough Bread and Sourdough Discard Bread?

Nothing, really.

The first is made with active starter; the latter is made with discard.

• Both bake up wonderfully well and taste delicious!

Why is My Sourdough Sandwich Bread so Dense?

There are several reasons why your finished sourdough sandwich bread ends up too dense for your liking. We’ll go through some of those reasons, but it is important to point out that sourdough bread will always be more robust than commercial white bread.

Commercial white bread, and even wheat bread, achieve that airy, light texture because commercial yeast ferments far more quickly than sourdough.

It’s not nearly as healthy, can be squished down into a tiny ball, and doesn’t have much flavor, but commercial bread is light. I’ll give it that.

• Sourdough bread, on the other hand, has been through a fermentation process and is full of beneficial bacteria, yeasts, and probiotics. The nutrition is available and active and just waiting to fill you full of vitamins.
• The crust is chewy and full of flavor; the crumb is spongy and fills your mouth with joy.

I’ll take sourdough over commercial bread any day of the week – even commercial sourdough is better than commercial yeasted bread!

Some Other Reasons Sourdough Bread is Dense

If you don’t perform any stretches and folds, you may not end up with as many bubbles in your finished crumb. It depends on how long you ferment it and the specific temperature conditions, but if you’d like a more airy crumb, consider doing 2-3 stretch and folds in the first few hours of fermentation.

If you’re fermenting entirely in a cold atmosphere, your bread may end up more dense. If you don’t have central heat and it’s winter, try placing your fermenting dough next to a warm woodstove. (Next to, not on!)

• Any radiant heat source will slowly and evenly ferment the dough.

If you knead your dough, it may end up slightly more dense than a stretched and folded bread.

• It will most likely also have great structure and lift, but it might be more chewy than you like.

If you haven’t fermented your sourdough discard sandwich bread long enough, it will bake up shorter and much more dense.

• It will most likely still taste good, but try to be more patient next time and let it ferment long enough.

If you need to, you can ferment the dough in the fridge overnight.

• When you’re ready to bake the bread, take it out to let it warm up, form it, place it in the pan, cover it, and then let it do its final rise. Bake as per your recipe.

Whole Grain Flours Will Be More Dense

• When using any whole grain flour, you will have a denser finished product.

For example, I loooooooove Einkorn flour bread. It’s healthy, has an incredible flavor, has a lower carb content, and is generally a fantastic bread flour.

Einkorn is an ancient wheat has a weaker gluten and lower gluten content than modern what flour. This makes it heavier and more limp in finished bread loaves.

• Furthermore, if you use a whole grain, as opposed to an all-purpose flour, the bran will weigh down the bread.

Again, I use whole grain Einkorn, which means that, not only am I using weaker Einkorn, but I’m also keeping in the bran which interferes further with the gluten bonds that form to make sandwich bread rise.

This will result in a much denser bread, but one that tastes just like I like it for toast!

How Do You Make Sourdough Bread More Airy?

Along those same lines, if you want your finished sourdough bread a little more airy, be sure to:

1. Perform 2-3 stretch and folds during the first 3 hours of fermentation time. Fold 4-16 times. This will build the gluten structure of the bread and result in a classic, airy rise.
2. Be sure you are patient and ferment the dough at least six hours at 65°F – 75°F (18°C – 24°C).
3. Allow the bread to cool completely, and refrain from cutting into it for 12 hours.

Do you have any easy sourdough bread tips to share? Leave a comment!

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