Sourdough Bread Beginner Recipe

Here’s an easy sourdough bread beginner recipe – no special equipment or fancy ingredients! This article includes a simple explanation of sourdough instructions to empower you to experiment. Plus, tips and troubleshooting to help you be successful. Make this sourdough bread with 4 ingredients, no weighing, and a minimal time investment. Sourdough bread doesn’t have to be complicated!

Before you begin reading, you should know that this article includes a lot of information and troubleshooting that you may or may not need. If you have some experience with sourdough, simply scroll down to the recipe and try it out.

If you’re completely new to sourdough baking, you may want to take time to read the entire article before beginning. For those with impulsive natures who simply love to jump in and try something, if you skip the following information before baking, just now that it will be here if you encounter any problems.

You can always come back to the article, if you need it!

To help you keep track of the steps of sourdough baking, including mixing and fermenting times, as well as other important steps, feel free to join our member newsletter and get your Sourdough Baking Worksheets.

 

No Stress Sourdough Bread Beginner Recipe

If you’re just starting out with sourdough, you may have noticed that there are a lot of articles online about the best methods, ingredients, and recipes. Like, a lot.

It’s fantastic that so many people are sharing their experiences – that’s one of the best things about online learning. However, it can be a little intimidating and overwhelming if you’re new to sourdough baking.

Especially so when an author makes strong statements about how their method is the ONLY way to make sourdough bread! Their hope is for you to make the best sourdough bread you can and to share all they’ve learned.

While that’s a noble goal and a good intention, the truth is: It’s just bread.

You don’t need to be a chemist or a master baker to bake up a good loaf of sourdough. You don’t need to use a kitchen scale, know the specific hydration of your starter, or even know any of the fancy sourdough terms like natural leaven, autolyze, or boule.

• You’ll learn all that in time and find your own way with this amazing baking tool. Sourdough will become your friend, never fear!

Sourdough Bread Stages

If you’ve ever made bread with commercial yeast, then you will probably recognize the steps to making this sourdough bread beginner recipe. In order to take the ingredients and turn them into a loaf of bread, certain steps need to be followed.

Please Note: Many sourdough recipes make it sound like the following process is super intense and time consuming, and I guess it can be. However, the recipe we share today does NOT require myriad steps and 3 days of your life.

We’ve kept this simple on purpose!

Understanding the phases of sourdough will help you adapt any recipe to your life and not require that you adapt your life to your sourdough recipe.

Sourdough Bread Beginner Recipe Steps:

1. Feed your starter 1 cup of flour and 1 cup (or slightly less) water in a container that is large enough to have room for twice the size of starter you start with. The container should also have a loose fitting lid; like a quart canning jar with a lid barely tightened.
2. The starter is ready to use when it has doubled is size and is full of bubbles. It should smell slightly sweet and tangy.
3. Assemble your bread recipe ingredients and mix. You may choose to knead the dough at this point.
4. Allow your dough to ferment for at least six hours. You may choose to perform stretch and folds in lieu of kneading at the beginning of the fermentation time.
5. Form the dough into a smooth shape and place into a container to rise. The container should be the shape of your desired finished loaf.
6. If you haven’t raised your dough inside your bake pan, place the dough inside the pan now. Score the top of the loaf.
7. Place the pan into a cold oven to bake.* Cover it with a lid, if using something like a Dutch Oven, or with an inverted bread pan, or oiled aluminum foil.

*This is what I do but many sourdough bakers preheat both their oven and their baking pans before baking.

Be aware that all ovens are different and bake times may vary. Taking the internal temperature of the finished loaf is the best way to determine if it is completely baked.

A baked sourdough loaf should also sound hollow when tapped and not be gummy when you’ve cut into it after letting it rest for 12 hours after baking.

The center of the loaf will always be the coolest, so take temperature reading from one end and the center.

Feeding Your Starter

This is a step that takes place before you even get out your ingredients and get started making bread. If you’re completely new to sourdough bread baking, please read the following before you begin this recipe.

• If you need to create a brand new starter, visit the Clever Carrot: Beginner Sourdough Starter Recipe.
• Visit Little Spoon Farm if you need to learn how to Feed and Maintain a Sourdough Starter.

The following are a few personal sourdough caveats about the articles above.

Using a Scale for Sourdough Baking

I never use a scale to measure anything when baking. Why? Because I don’t have time or patience for that. Also because I have found that sourdough is very forgiving and doesn’t require tedious measuring to achieve success.

If you have a more precise personality and prefer to measure your ingredients, great! Do it, and your results will be very consistent.

You can disregard my experience and simply label me a rebellious sourdough lady!

Do I Keep My Starter on the Counter?

I keep my sourdough starter on the counter because I bake several times during the week. During the summer, when my house is warm, this requires that I pay more attention to my starter’s needs because heat will cause my starter to process its food (flour and water) quicker.

If you have time to only bake once or twice a week, start by keeping your starter in the fridge where the cool temps will slow down your starter’s processes.

Switching between the counter and the fridge might possibly change your starter’s flavor and behavior. Some of the yeast and bacteria in your starter are thermosensitive, or changeable according to temperature.

Feel free to experiment with where you’d like to keep your starter! If you have a starter that is doing really well and you’d like to try keeping it somewhere new, preserve some of the starter before you make the change in case you don’t like the results.

• Instructions for preserving your starter are at the bottom of the article.

What About Ratios?

Sourdough authors give you ratios of water to flour to starter to give you precise and consistent results.

However, I hardly ever pay attention to ratios and eyeball my starter’s consistency. Here’s what to remember about how your starter should look:

• The more water in your sourdough starter, the heavier it will be and the heavier it will make your finished  bread.
• A very wet sourdough starter will have a hard time rising your finished loaf; your bread won’t be as tall when baked.
• Sourdough starter shouldn’t be runny like water. Super wet starter won’t have the strength to raise bread.
• Sourdough starter shouldn’t be super stiff. Dry starter will mess up the moisture of your finished recipe.
• Sourdough starter for most recipes should be fed about equal amounts of water to flour to achieve a consistency that looks like soft and loose cookie batter. Not too runny, not too dry.
• If you end up with a wet starter, use it for pancake batter, cookies, or brownies. You may also add some extra flour and let it ferment a little longer to get a drier starter.
• When I want to make bread, especially a whole grain bread which is going to be a bit heavier, I use a slightly dry sourdough starter. To achieve this, I simply add a little less water when feeding my starter so that it is a bit more firm.

After making 10 loaves of bread, you’ll start to see what works for you!

There’s no other way to get the experience you need to determine which sourdough starter consistency is best for your recipe besides practice. So, practice without fear! You’ll get it!

Sourdough Bread Beginner Recipe Ingredients

You can include any  number of delicious things in your sourdough bread loaves from chocolate chips to sundried tomatoes to herbs. For now, we’re going to keep things super easy and straightforward for this beginner recipe.

Here’s what you need to make today’s sourdough bread.

Your Favorite White Flour

White flour will result in a taller, lighter dough than wheat flour. You may substitute one cup of white flour for wheat flour in this recipe, but since you’re just beginning, don’t use any more than that.

• Wheat flour responds to sourdough recipes differently that white flour and you can certainly learn to use it! Not today, though. Keep it simple as you’re starting out.

You can use all purpose white, bread flour, whatever. Sourdough is very forgiving, especially where white flour is concerned. 

• Organic white flour is always preferred because, as per USDA standards, organic white flour is the only white flour that is not enriched or bleached.

Active Sourdough Starter

For best results, be sure that your sourdough starter has been fed within the last 4-12 hours and that is has doubled in size and is full of bubbles. 

• The starter shouldn’t be runny like pancake batter, but slightly firm and sticky. A little like loose cookie batter.

If your starter isn’t exactly doubled in size and doesn’t have lots of big bubbles, it will still work. The truth is, you can make this recipe with unfed starter that’s flat and tired.

Using an active starter will simply result in slightly lighter and taller bread. Sometimes, your unfed starter can achieve the same results, so don’t stress this too much.

Let me say this again, you can make sourdough bread with unfed starter.

We’ll talk about why in a different article, but just let that thought ferment in your brain awhile.

The results will vary depending on certain factors but, yes, your unfed starter will be fed by the flour and water in your recipe and CAN be used to raise a lovely loaf of bread.

Water

Use cold or lukewarm water, but not hot (you don’t want to shock the starter). 

If you live in a city and use municipal water, you may want to measure your water and let it sit for about 15 minutes uncovered. Stir it a few times to aerate out the chlorine, which can harm anything living, including your sourdough starter.

You don’t have to do this, but if your loaf isn’t as tall as you’d like, try it. Some people discover the water doesn’t make a difference in their loaf; others swear by aerating out the chlorine.

You can use well water or bottled water, too.

Sea Salt

I specify sea salt because that’s all I use at my house, but if all you have is table salt, use that. No worries. 

A Few More Sourdough Recipes to Try Later:

Mini Sourdough Cinnamon Rolls (with Caramel Cream Cheese Drizzle)

Sourdough Pitas

Sourdough Crunch Pancakes (with Blueberry Sauce)

Sourdough Bread Beginner Recipe

With four simple ingredients you can make this sourdough bread beginner recipe. You’ll need six hours for fermenting the dough, 1-2 hours to let it rise and around 50 minutes to bake the loaf.

• You will have the option to knead the dough or to perform 2-3 stretch and fold actions instead of kneading.

Kneading the dough will result in a crumb (the inside of the baked bread) that looks a lot like any other homemade bread you’ve made before with a few bubbles inside.

The stretch and fold action will result in a crumb that looks like the sourdough loaves you see in books – bigger holes and a crustier top.

 

Sourdough Beginner Bread Recipe Notes

Here are some random notes and observations that might make baking this beginner bread a little easier:

• Mix the dough with a spoon or by hand. The dough will initially be a little shaggy and will clear the sides of the bowl when mixed enough.
• You may place all the ingredients in the bowl and mix them altogether. Mixing the starter into the water first simply makes the mixture more even and easier to incorporate.
• The recipe offers you the choice between kneading and simply performing a few stretches and folds of your dough. The truth is, you may also ignore your dough entirely after mixing it. This is called a no-knead dough. Your texture may not be as fine, but if you don’t have time to mess with your dough, then don’t!
• If you oil the parchment paper you use to line your bread pan, it can easily be reused several times before you need to toss it into the compost pile (or garbage).
• If you forget to slash your bread dough before baking, don’t freak out. I’ve done that more times than I can count. Your loaf will simply create its own breaks in the finished bread, which can often result in awkward formations that make the top hard to slice through. It looks really artisan-y, though, so you can just tell people you totally did it on purpose.
• You can experiment with which bread pans produce the shape you like the most. Sourdough bread bakers sometimes prefer more narrow pans, like cast iron, to get a taller loaf for sandwiches.
• Be aware that all ovens are different and bake times may vary. Taking the internal temperature of the finished loaf is the best way to determine if it is completely baked.
• Allowing the bread to cool completely firms up the loaf and prevents it from turning gummy. If you want to eat it right away, give it at least 30 minutes to firm up. Cut it carefully or rip it into chunks to serve with hot soup.

Ambient Temperature & Fermenting Time

The sourdough starter raises your bread by consuming starches and sugars in the flour. This consumption causes gases to be released (like sourdough burps) that double the size of your dough. (This is what commercial yeast does, too.) This process is called fermenting.

If your house is warm, the dough will be done fermenting easily within 6 hours (the minimum time for the sourdough to successfully process the flour). If it’s cold, it may take a little longer.

During fermentation, look for the dough to bulk in size, slowly but not fully return a gentle finger print, and to have small bubbles beginning to form on the skin of the dough.

The only thing you really need to pay attention to is that the fermenting dough doesn’t over ferment, or over-proof. A dough is over-proofed when it’s sat too long and the sourdough has basically masticated it to death. Over-proofed dough will be super loose, runny, and unable to hold its shape.

This can happen during fermentation or rise time. If you know you have to leave the house hours longer than your dough needs, put the dough into the fridge or cold storage to slow down the fermentation process. If you’re called away for a day or more, place it in the freezer.

Again, sourdough is a collection of living bacteria and yeasts and they are far more active when they’re warm. If the temperature around your starter, fermenting dough, and/or rising dough is warm, the processes will move along more quickly.

If you want to slow those processes down, place your fermenting or formed dough into the fridge or root cellar.

For example, I will often ferment and shape dough at night and then place it in the fridge to bake up in the morning. Or even a day or so later!

This works with any sourdough recipe for the most part – cookies, pita bread, whatever. (Results may vary if your recipe includes another leavening agent like baking powder, FYI.)

To keep track of my sourdough times, I use the free worksheets that I shared with our newsletter family at the beginning of the article. I also write the times on the lid of my fermenting dough with a dry erase marker.

Keeping two records ensures that I don’t lose track of what I’m doing!

Keeping Moisture in the Oven

By inverting another bread pan on top of your baking bread, you trap just the right amount of moisture in the baking area to produce a lovely sourdough crust – cracked, chewy, delicious!

If you don’t have an extra bread pan, you can place one cup of water in a baking safe dish into the oven with your bread pan. Place it to the side and it will steam while your bread bakes.

• Be sure to allow the container to come to temperature with the oven. Do NOT place a cold glass dish into a hot oven or it might break. Violently.

If your bread doesn’t brown lightly on top with the pan inverted on top of it, remove it for the last 5-8 minutes of bake time.

Instructions for Stretch & Fold for Sourdough

Don’t over think this! That’s the first instruction.

1. After your dough has sat 30-60  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. Use your clean hand to 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.
5. Rotate the bowl until you’ve stretched the dough 4-8 times on all sides.
6. Recover the bowl and allow it to sit another 30-60 minutes.
7. 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 bonds that will give good structure to your loaf. This is a good thing!

With white flour, these gluten bonds form very easily. Which is why you can also simply leave this dough to ferment, form it into a loaf shape, and bake it up without kneading or stretching (no-knead bread)!

No-knead bread may not always be as tall as a manipulated dough but it’s delicious and simple and can thrive on you ignoring it for the bulk of the process. 

FAQs Sourdough Bread for Beginners

Here are only a few of the questions you might have about making sourdough bread. If you have one we don’t cover here, feel free to leave a comment!

What is the Secret to Good Sourdough Bread?

No secrets! Anyone can make good sourdough bread with simple ingredients.

For best results, however, use an active, healthy starter that has a slightly sweet, tangy smell. It should be full of bubbles and poofy.

If you have unfed starter that you’d like to use, go ahead because it will still work! However, if your sourdough starter smells bad and is super runny, you will need to tend it before you use it for baking.

If your starter is yucky:

1. Pour off any liquid on the surface. This is called hooch and its simply a collection of alcohols from the starter’s processes.
2. Remove any gray starter and put it in the compost.
3. Feed your starter a generous amount of flour (1 cup) and an equal amount of water.
4. Allow your starter to feed and check it regularly. If your starter has been severely neglected, plan to feed it this way at least 2 more times. Remove at least 1/2 cup of starter each time you feed to renew the starter well. Use this in sourdough discard recipes or simply put it in the compost. You can also feed it to your chickens for a probiotic kick for their crops.
5. It may take several days to bubble up and start to smelling better, so be patient. Repeat the feeding cycle as often as you need, removing a little starter each time.
6. Once your starter is active, sweet and tangy smelling again, you can use it for recipes with confidence.

How Long Should I Proof My Sourdough on the Counter?

After you mix the ingredients of a sourdough loaf, you allow it to sit on your counter and ferment. This process is called proofing.

Proofing should last at least 6 hours to ensure that the sourdough starter has processed all the flour in your recipe. This processing is what ensures your bread will rise.

It also means that your bread will be as nutrient dense as possible and less likely to cause the stomach upset that occurs for some people from eating non-sourdough bread. You can read a little more about that in this article: Healthy Bread & Natural Leavening.

You  may ferment your dough a bit longer if you like a stronger sourdough flavor. You may also need to ferment longer if you would like it to bulk up further, especially if your house is cold.

Where is the Best Place to Let Sourdough Rise?

If you need to be gone all day and can’t watch your sourdough as it ferments, the best place to allow your sourdough to rise is in a cool place. The refrigerator is suitable, as is a root cellar or other cold storage.

Ideally, your sourdough should rise in a place that ranges between 65°F – 75°F (18°C – 24°C). This temperature range will ensure an even fermentation that is neither stagnant nor accelerated.

You should also be sure to put your sourdough in a place where children, cats, and accidents are less likely to interfere or disturb your dough. Your sourdough should be undisturbed and remain covered the entire time that its rising.

I often put my fermenting dough in my cold oven or even a closet. I set a timer on my phone so that I don’t forget about it!

What Should Sourdough Look Like Right Before Baking?

Your raw sourdough loaf should have doubled-ish in size from when you first set it to rise. It should slowly but not completely return a gentle finger pressure.

It may also have some minimal bubbling on the surface. Large bubbles and/or soggy, limp dough is a sign of over-proofing. You can try baking this dough but the resulting loaf will most likely be dense and flat.

• You could, instead, fry up over-proofed dough in a frying pan to make a fry bread.
• Or you can try rescuing your over-proofed sourdough following these instructions from My Daily Sourdough Bread.

What Happens if you Don’t Cut Sourdough Before Baking?

Cutting your sourdough dough before baking is called scoring. If you forget to score your dough, it will crack in unpredictable places.

That’s all.

I forget to score my dough all the time and my bread is still delicious.

However, scoring is a good idea because it creates a predictable pattern on the top of your bread loaf. This pattern can make it easier to slice.

People also use scoring to create decorative patterns on their sourdough loaves making them extra lovely!

How to Preserve Sourdough Starter the Easy Way

If you’re starter is doing really well – great smell, great structure, performing wonderfully – it’s a good idea to preserve some in case something goes haywire.

Sometimes, life happens and you neglect your starter, or it goes weird, or you change flours and it goes off, or whatever! Having preserved starter on hand means you can begin again at any point.

This takes the pressure off you to be a perfect sourdough steward all the time! You can mess up and know that you have perfect starter sitting in your cabinet.

To preserve 1 cup of starter:

1. Spread a cup of sourdough starter evenly over a piece of parchment paper placed on a flat surface like a cookie sheet.
2. Cover the starter with a breathable cover like a bacon screen, tea towel, or air fryer tray. If you need to, prop up the screening material so that it’s not sitting directly on the starter to prevent sticking. This cover will keep the bugs off while the starter air dries over the next several days. You may put a large, light towel over the whole set up to further protect it.
3. Allow the drying starter to sit for several days. Stir it every now and then with your finger to break up patches that are still wet. 
4. Once the starter is completely dry, scrape it off the paper and into an airtight container. Label it with the date; it will store indefinitely in a cool, dark place.

You may also use a dehydrator set on its lowest setting to preserve the starter a bit quicker.

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