Sourdough Bread for Beginners: Your First Loaf, Made Simple

Baking bread at home sounds like something only a fancy bakery does. It is not. It is flour, water, salt, and a little patience.

Sourdough adds one more thing: a living starter made from flour and water that wild yeast and good bacteria have taken hold of. The starter does the rising. Everything else is just waiting and folding.

This guide walks you through your first loaf from start to finish. You do not need special equipment. You do not need years of experience. You just need four ingredients and about eight hours spread across a day.

What Is Sourdough Starter?

Sourdough starter is a mixture of flour and water that has been left out long enough for wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria to settle in. You feed it regularly, and it stays alive. When it is active and bubbling, you use a portion to leaven your bread.

Every starter is slightly different, and that is fine. The goal is not a perfect starter. The goal is a working one.

If you do not have a starter yet, you can make one in about seven days using only flour and water. Just combine equal parts by weight, feed it daily, and wait. By day five or six it should be bubbling and smelling pleasantly tangy. At that point it is ready to use.

Getting Your Starter Ready

Most home bakers keep a small jar of starter in the fridge and feed it once or twice a week. When you want to bake, you take it out, feed it, and wait for it to become active again.

Here is a simple feeding schedule:

• The night before baking, take your starter from the fridge
• Mix one part starter with one part flour and one part water by weight. If you have 20 grams of starter, add 20 grams of flour and 20 grams of water
• Stir well, cover loosely, and leave it on the counter
• By morning, or about 8 to 12 hours later, your starter should have doubled in size, be bubbly, and pass the float test

The float test is simple. Drop a small spoonful of starter into a glass of water. If it floats, it is ready to use. If it sinks, give it a few more hours and try again.

What you are looking for is a starter that is alive and active at the moment you mix it into your dough. The exact timing depends on room temperature. Warm kitchens speed things up. Cool kitchens slow things down.

The Recipe

Here is the bread. It is designed to be forgiving for a first attempt.

• 500 grams bread flour or all-purpose flour
• 350 grams water (about 70 percent hydration, which is easy to handle)
• 100 grams active, bubbly starter
• 10 grams salt

That is it. Four ingredients. Nothing fancy.

You do not need a kitchen scale, but I recommend one. Measuring by weight is accurate and removes the guesswork. If you only have measuring cups, use that. Your bread will still be good.

The Process

This is where the actual bread making happens. The whole process takes about 8 hours, but most of that is hands-off waiting. Here is the breakdown:

1. Mix the dough (5 minutes)

Combine the flour and water in a large bowl. Stir until no dry flour remains. This step is sometimes called autolyse, which is just a fancy word for letting flour and water sit together so the gluten can start forming before you add the starter and salt. Let it sit for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, add the active starter and the salt. Mix everything together until the starter is fully incorporated and the salt is dissolved. The dough will look shaggy at first. That is normal.

2. Stretch and fold (20 minutes total, spread over 2 hours)

Instead of kneading, sourdough relies on a series of stretch and folds to build structure. Here is how it works:

• Every 30 minutes for the first two hours, grab one side of the dough, pull it up, and fold it over the center
• Rotate the bowl and repeat on all four sides
• You are doing this twice, so it takes about 20 minutes of actual work, spread across two hours

After the folds, the dough should feel smoother, more elastic, and a little airy. If it still feels loose and slack, give it one more round of folds and wait another 30 minutes.

3. Bulk fermentation (4 to 6 hours)

Cover the bowl and let the dough rest at room temperature. During this time the starter works its magic. The dough will grow, bubble, and become jiggly.

How do you know when it is ready? Look for these signs:

• The dough has grown by about 50 percent
• The surface has bubbles
• The dough jiggles like soft gelatin when you shake the bowl
• It looks full and alive, not flat and dense

At 70 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit, bulk fermentation usually takes about 4 to 5 hours. In a cooler kitchen it may take 6 hours or more. Do not rush this step. Underfermented dough makes dense bread.

4. Shape the loaf (5 minutes)

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured counter. Shape it into a round or an oval, depending on your baking vessel.

For a round loaf (boule), gently fold the edges toward the center and flip it over. Tuck the edges underneath to create surface tension. Place it seam-side up into a floured banneton, a bowl lined with a floured cloth, or a small bowl dusted with flour.

5. Cold retard (8 to 12 hours)

Cover the shaped dough and put it in the refrigerator overnight. The cold slows the fermentation, which does two useful things. It deepens the flavor, and it makes the dough firmer and easier to handle the next day.

6. Bake (35 to 45 minutes)

The next day, take your dough out of the fridge. Preheat your oven to 475 degrees Fahrenheit with a Dutch oven or heavy lidded pot inside. The pot needs about 45 minutes to get hot.

Turn the dough out onto a piece of parchment paper. Slash the top with a sharp knife or razor blade, about a quarter inch deep. This is called scoring, and it controls where the bread expands in the oven.

Place the dough (on the parchment) into the hot Dutch oven. Cover with the lid and bake for 20 minutes. Then remove the lid and bake for another 15 to 25 minutes, until the crust is deep golden brown.

The loaf is done when the internal temperature reaches about 205 to 210 degrees Fahrenheit, or when the bottom sounds hollow when tapped.

7. Cool (at least 1 hour)

This is the hardest part. You have to wait. Let the bread cool on a wire rack for at least an hour before slicing. Cutting into hot bread releases steam and leaves the interior gummy. I know it is tempting. Do it anyway.

Common Problems and What to Do

My bread is dense and heavy.

Your starter may not have been active enough, or the bulk fermentation was too short. Make sure your starter doubles after feeding and passes the float test before mixing. Let the dough ferment until it jiggles and bubbles, not just until the clock runs out.

My bread tastes too sour.

Sourdough will always have some tang, but if it is overwhelming, try a few adjustments. A shorter bulk fermentation produces milder bread. So does using a cooler kitchen for fermentation. You can also feed your starter more frequently before baking, which keeps it younger and less tangy.

My dough will not hold its shape.

This usually happens when the gluten has not developed enough. Do your stretch and folds consistently and give the dough time during bulk fermentation. A higher hydration dough (more water relative to flour) is naturally softer and harder to shape. For your first attempts, stick with the 70 percent hydration in the recipe above.

My bread spread out flat instead of rising up.

Your starter may have been over-fermented by the time you mixed it. You want it at its peak, right before it starts to collapse. If the dough was underproofed in the fridge, it will spread when it hits the oven heat. The cold retard should firm up the dough enough to hold its shape.

Making It Yours

Once you have baked your first loaf and eaten it warm with butter, you will understand why people get drawn to sourdough. It is not about perfection. It is about the rhythm of it. The daily feeding. The morning check. The smell that fills the kitchen.

A few notes on going forward:

• Keep your starter in the fridge and feed it once a week. You can skip feeding for up to two weeks if needed. Just feed it when you take it out and bake within a day
• Experiment with different flours. Whole wheat, rye, and spelt add flavor but behave differently. Start by substituting no more than 25 percent of the white flour until you understand how the dough changes
• Practice your shaping. Your first few loaves will not look like bakery bread. They will taste great anyway
• Share your bread. Sourdough is meant to be shared. Give loaves to neighbors. That is what this whole thing is about

A Few Things I Wish Someone Told Me

• Your first loaf will not be a masterpiece. That is okay. It will be bread you made yourself, and that is worth more than a perfect loaf from a store
• Temperature matters more than you think. A warm kitchen ferments faster. A cool one is slower. Learn your kitchen
• A Dutch oven is the single easiest way to get a good crust at home. The lid traps steam, which gives the bread that professional crackle
• Do not worry about timing charts. Your dough tells you what it needs. Watch the bubbles. Feel the jiggle. Trust what you see, not the clock

Bread baking is one of the oldest skills humans have. It is not complicated. It just asks for attention and a little time. You already have both.

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— C. Steward 🥕