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Mastering the art of baking breads has been on my list of things to do for a very long time. While I dabbled in no-knead bread, crusty dinner rolls, and Portuguese rolls, I’d only ever baked bread casually, and decided that it was time to get serious and advance to an artisan loaf.
Breakfasts usually consist of avocado toast or morning PB&J, and we often like to slice a few pieces for snacking on cheese and olives before dinnertime, so learning how to make sourdough bread just made sense.
Easy Sourdough Bread Recipe With Starter (prozimi)
Of experimenting in lockdown—and many mediocre or outright failed loaves—I finally got into the groove of making a very reliable and delicious artisan sourdough worth documenting.
I now make a loaf once a week with consistent quality! And we almost never need to go to bakeries, where bread quality and costs can vary.
I will humbly say that I’m the only engineer of the family, so take it from me. I’ve made the mistakes and ran the numbers. And I’ve even attempted the shortcuts.
World's Easiest Yeast Bread Recipe
But now, I’ve finally nailed down the right formula, and this sourdough bread recipe is the result of a year’s worth of intensive lockdown bread baking!
Below, we’ve made a quick diagram of the different stages across the 1 1/2 days it’ll take to bake this bread. (As long as you have a sourdough starter ready to go. If not, see my guide on How to Make a Sourdough Starter!)
The process on Day 1 does take about 10-12 hours (mostly inactive time), so we recommend starting your bread in the morning—probably no later than 12:00 noon!
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Bread baking isn’t just about following instructions. It’s more of a hobby that requires time, attention, and love throughout the day, though the actual active time is relatively little.
This isn’t one of those no-knead bread recipes that have become popular over the last year. But in my opinion, when it comes to bread, a little extra effort and time means reaping big benefits.
Baking sourdough is a perfect background task when working from home or around the house, so you can bake any day of the week. If you can step away from work for a few minutes at a time over the course of a day and a half, baking sourdough may just be the perfect hobby for you.
Baking Bread With Your Own Bread Starter And Yeast Substitutes
If you, a family, or friend have a gluten intolerance (i.e. a digestive sensitivity to gluten…NOT a serious gluten allergy or Celiac Disease), you may find that sourdough bread does not result in adverse symptoms!
This is because sourdough naturally ferments for hours, allowing the yeast and bacteria in your sourdough starter to break down the gluten proteins in the flour. This in turn makes it easier to digest! Everyone is different, and some people may need their dough fermented longer than others. Read more about this phenomenon: “Why Some Gluten-Sensitive People Can Still Eat Sourdough Bread”
As always, consult your doctor before trying anything new, but we have a family member who has a gluten sensitivity and can eat our sourdough bread without issue. Cool, huh?
Sourdough Bread Recipe: How To Make It
All that said, there are plenty of great recipes out there. I started with Claire Saffitz’s guide on How to Make Sourdough on NYT Cooking. It helped me gain hands-on experience, which is the only way to truly master bread baking—it definitely won’t be a slam dunk the first time.
It probably took me 5 or 6 loaves until I got what I thought was a perfect loaf and another 10 or more to get consistent results.
There were some things that I noticed, adjusted, and tweaked over time with numerous iterations on flour types, starter volume, the mix of seeds to coat the outside of the loaf, and even the pattern of cuts on the dough before baking. I wanted to document my experience for family and our readers.
How To Make Homemade Sourdough Bread Recipe By Tasty
There are many styles and variations of sourdough bread out there. This is what I call an “everyday” sourdough loaf. It has great chew with an airy structure, a nice crispy crust, and a very light sourdough flavor that doesn’t hit you in the face! (If you want your bread to be more sour, you can cold ferment it longer, but we’ll get to that in the recipe.)
It’s great for sandwiches, any kind of toast, crostini, making breadcrumbs (if it’s gone stale!), and more. Take a look at the photos, and decide if this type of recipe is what you’re looking to make.
Most bread recipes require using a digital kitchen scale for the most accurate measurements. I also highly recommend you purchase one. Measuring flour can vary greatly depending upon how you do it, but a quality digital scale is always accurate and easy to use.
How To Adapt Any Recipe To Become A Sourdough Recipe
I can’t tell you how many questions we’ve gotten in comments about varying results in dough texture and final results due to differences in measuring flour. (You’ll see that all of our new baking recipes include weight measurements.)
When measuring by weight, there’s no losing count of how many cups you’ve put in, no variations in measuring cup size or measuring methods, and I get the exact same amount of flour and water every time, which results in consistently delicious bread.
If you’re itching to make this bread and you don’t have a digital scale yet, we do include cup measurements. If using cup measures, spoon the flour into the cup rather than scooping it, which can pack down the flour and result in too much being added to the recipe.
Authentic Sourdough Crusty Bread
You need a natural yeast starter to make sourdough bread. We have instructions in a separate post: How to Make your Own Sourdough Starter.
Another tip—ask a friend who has a mature starter to divide theirs and give some to you. With the 2020 we had, chances are you can find someone without too much difficulty!
In my experience, a combination of white unbleached bread flour (75%) and whole wheat flour (25%) has the best balance of flavor and texture.
Sourdough Bread: A Beginner's Guide
If you’d like to prioritize a springier, softer texture, you can use a larger percentage (80% or more) of white unbleached bread flour.
Using more whole wheat flour, on the other hand, will result in a heavier, flatter loaf with not as much of a rise or “oven spring” (a term for the growth of a loaf after it is put into the oven, but before the crust hardens).
If you use stone ground wheat, graham, or coarser artisan flour, you may have to add even more water. You will also need more starter. I’m working on perfecting that, so stay tuned for my whole wheat sourdough recipe!!!
Basic Sourdough Bread Recipe
Dough hydration is the percentage of water to flour, a common metric for bread baking. Sourdough breads generally have a minimum of 75% hydration.
At first glance, we have 375g water/500g of flour, which makes the hydration 75%. However, if you take into account that our sourdough starter is made with equal amounts of flour and water or 100% hydration, a more accurate calculation would take that into account. 375+60g water/500g+60g flour = 78% hydration, which is perfectly fine.
Now you can understand why having a digital kitchen scale to make precise measurements is so important. Following my advice and directions carefully will save you time and frustration!
Natural Starter Bread Recipe
Long story short, we do not recommend substituting all-purpose flour for bread flour in this recipe. All-purpose flour absorbs less water than bread flour, so if you do make the substitution, you’ll end up with a wetter, stickier dough.
All-purpose flour also has less protein/gluten, which will affect the texture of the bread. If you have it, you can make an approximate substitution for bread flour by replacing 5g of all-purpose flour with 5g (1 1/2 teaspoons) vital wheat gluten per cup (125g) of flour.
That said, we have tried this in the past, and found the resulting bread to be much more dense due to the fact that all purpose flour absorbs water less well. If you try the AP flour/vital wheat gluten substitution in a pinch, use 350g water rather than the 375g we call for in the recipe.
Delicious Everyday Sourdough Bread Recipe
To make it easier to visualize the timing of these steps throughout the day, I’ve added sample times for each step. Note that they are approximate times, and serve only as a guide!
Don’t have a starter yet? You’ll need a week or so to make one (or you can get some discard from a friend who bakes in order to start your own). Head to our Sourdough Starter Recipe to see how it’s done.
Update: If you stored your starter in the refrigerator for a week without feeding, take the sourdough starter out of the refrigerator the night before assembling the dough, and feed it with equal parts (25g) of water and flour.
Natural Yeast Sourdough Sandwich Bread
This gives the starter the time to warm up and activate overnight, and will improve your bread’s rise and drastically reduce the time it needs to get going the next morning.
Take the starter out of the refrigerator, and stir
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