How To Bake Simple Sourdough Bread: A Beginner's Guide

This beginner's sourdough bread recipe is really easy to follow. I'm going to show you, step by step, how to use your sourdough starter to make a crusty loaf of sourdough bread with a beautiful open crumb. And the best thing is that this sourdough bread recipe is very hands-off! Perfect for making sourdough on a busy schedule.

The full, printable recipe is at the end of this guide, complete with videos and photos to help you along the way. You can also use this table of contents to jump to any point in the post you would like.

What is Sourdough Bread?

Sourdough bread is made with a wild yeast starter, giving it that signature tangy flavor and long, slow fermentation. The result is a loaf with a soft, airy crumb and a crispy, deep golden brown crust that’s hard to resist. Take a peek at what a true sourdough loaf should look like.

Why You'll Love This Recipe?

Forgiving for beginners – even if you’re new to sourdough, this recipe is approachable and easy to follow, with plenty of instructional photos and videos.

Perfect for Busy Schedules – With three kids and a hectic life, I bake sourdough in the middle of chaos. This recipe is my go-to for creating delicious bread with plenty of hands-off time, making it easy to fit into any schedule.

Consistently delicious results – soft, chewy crumb with that perfect golden crust every time. This recipe has been used by thousands of home bakers in my sourdough community to create consistently great sourdough bread.

What Do You Need?

These are the basics that you'll need on hand to have success with this recipe.

Ingredients

Sourdough Starter - The absolute most important thing when making this sourdough bread recipe is to have a super bubbly, active sourdough starter. New to sourdough? You can follow my step-by-step guide on how to make a sourdough starter. You can check if your sourdough starter is ready to bake with. If your sourdough starter isn't ready to bake this sourdough bread just yet, why not try this crusty sourdough discard loaf or this easy sourdough discard sandwich bread.

Bread Flour - High protein bread flour is essential for making sourdough bread. If you want to use whole wheat flour, I recommend this whole wheat sourdough bread recipe.

Salt - use a good quality, non iodised salt to add flavor to your dough and help to strengthen the gluten of the dough. You might like this post on the role of salt in sourdough bread.

Water - just like when you make sourdough starter, good quality, filtered water is best.

Rice Flour or Semolina Flour - You'll need rice flour or semolina flour to prevent your sourdough from sticking to the banneton.

Digital Scale - This is so important! Weighing your sourdough ingredients will ensure you're measuring accurately and give you a much better chance at sourdough success.

Equipment

Spatulas & Dough Scrapers - A long spatula or jar spatula is handy, not just for your sourdough starter, but also for mixing sourdough bread in the initial pre mix and autolyse stages. A dough scraper is handy to flip your dough out of the mixing bowl.

Banneton - I highly recommend using a banneton (proofing basket) to place your shaped dough into. If you don't have a banneton, a bowl or other banneton alternative is fine. I generally use a 9" or 10" banneton, but you can find the right one for you in this banneton sizing guide.

Parchment Paper - A piece of parchment paper is essential for lifting the shaped dough into your Dutch Oven.

Dutch Oven - A Dutch Oven or Cast Iron Baking Pan will give you the best results when you bake your sourdough loaf. If you don't have a Dutch Oven, you can check out these ideas for baking sourdough without a Dutch Oven.

If you want a more in depth look at the equipment I use in The Pantry Mama kitchen, check out this guide to sourdough baking equipment. You might also like this guide to the best Dutch Oven for sourdough bread.

What I do differently ... and why you should too

There are literally thousands of sourdough recipes out there. Why should you use this one? What do I differently that will make this recipe work for you in your kitchen?

• Amount of sourdough starter - I recommend 50g of sourdough starter when you first start out, but you can easily increase this to 100g if it's cooler. I've written a guide to changing the amount of sourdough starter in a recipe to help you do this when you need to.
• Overnight Bulk Ferment - I love using an overnight ferment, which many people try to avoid, particularly with a beginner's sourdough bread recipe. You can do the bulk ferment during the day, but once you're confident in how your dough looks when it's ready to shape, an overnight bulk ferment is a game changer in helping you fit sourdough into your busy schedule.
• Let the dough double - If you don't allow your dough to fully bulk ferment, you'll be short changing your yourself (and your bread). The dough needs to be puffy, like a giant marshmallow, while still maintaining some of it's energy so that it gives you the best oven spring when it hits the oven. Trust me on this, give your dough time to develop and bloom.
• Semolina Flour - I recommend using semolina flour to flour your banneton or proofing basket rather than rice flour. This is just personal preference, but if you haven't tried semolina, I urge you to give it a go. You might just love it as much as me. Plus, it's the best for stopping your sourdough discard pizza dough from sticking to pizza peels, so it's super handy to have around.

How to Make Simple Sourdough Bread

Making this easy sourdough bread recipe is really easy! There's no kneading and a lot of the time will actually be hands off. You're going to read a lot of terminology in this sourdough bread recipe. If you aren't sure of some of the words, you can use this sourdough glossary.

Here's an overview of what you need to do to make delicious sourdough bread in your own kitchen (you can find step-by-step instructions in the recipe card).

1. Mix the ingredients - this is where you'll do a quick autolyse or fermentolyse in this case).

2. Form Up the Dough - turn the clumpy dough with dry bits in it into a more cohesive dough ball by moving the dough around the bowl to start the gluten development. 

3. Stretch & Fold - this is a technique used to move the dough around the bowl and develop the gluten network in your dough. It basically means to stretch the dough up and then fold it over itself. You move clockwise around the dough and perform a stretch and fold at 12, 3, 6 and 9 o'clock. You can see me doing this in the video inside the recipe card at the end of this post.

4. Bulk Fermentation - The bulk fermentation in any sourdough recipe refers to the "first rise" or the longest fermentation period. It's always done at room temperature. It's when the magic happens. You're looking for your dough to double. You'll know your dough is perfectly fermented and ready to shape when it has a smooth, domed top. It will be soft and pillowy - but not sticky (just slightly tacky). Use this guide to check whether bulk fermentation has finished.

5. Shaping - shape your dough into either a batard or a boule and place it seam-side up into your banneton basket Surface tension is really important here!

6. Cold Fermentation - Often referred to as the cold proof, this is the time when your dough will develop it's signature flavor. You can leave your dough in the refrigerator for up to 36 hours. You might like to read this information on proofing sourdough in the refrigerator.

7. Let's Bake - You'll need to preheat your oven, with your Dutch Oven inside. You need to place your cold fermented dough into the hot Dutch Oven using parchment paper.

Don't cut your sourdough loaf right out of the oven. Allow it to cool completely before slicing (usually around 4 - 6 hours). Of course you can cut into your loaf sooner, but there are so many benefits to waiting until the loaf has fully cooled. Check out the best bread knife for sourdough bread and my best tips for slicing sourdough bread.

Baking Timeline 

One of the other keys to successful sourdough is create a sourdough baking timeline that works for you. Many of my sourdough failures (and indeed any cooking failure) occur because I start and then I get distracted by kids and I'm not able to come back and finish.

Or you have to go out right when you are supposed to be doing stretch and folds (you can see how I deal with this in my Sunday Sourdough baking timeline).

So while my sourdough baking process has a few different stages and some suggested timings, it's not absolutely critical that you follow them to the letter. If your starter is super active and you weigh your ingredients correctly then you will be off to a fantastic start.

Let the rest unfold. Listen to your instincts. Watch the dough, not the clock.

My timeline for this baking simple sourdough bread looks something like this - but it's all negotiable.

Troubleshooting Tips

I've baked thousands of loaves of sourdough bread using this very recipe. Everyday, I get asked for advice on what went wrong in other people's bakes. There are generally 5 areas that go wrong when baking sourdough bread:

• A weak starter - this is generally the root cause of "failed" sourdough. Remember, a young starter can still quite weak. If you're not sure whether your starter is mature, read about when sourdough starter is ready to bake with. You can also read my post on how to strengthen a sourdough starter.
• Under Fermentation - under fermentation will give you gummy bread that doesn't seem to bake through. Not sure how to fix under fermented sourdough? My guide to under fermented sourdough will walk you through the process.
• Using too much water - all flour absorbs water differently, but higher protein bread flour is always best. Too much water will cause sticky, unmanageable dough. Read more about how to fix sticky sourdough.
• Over Fermentation - while less common than under fermentation, over fermentation can occur during bulk fermentation, but also during cold fermentation. Read more about bulk fermentation vs cold fermentation.

For even more troubleshooting solutions, you can read these common sourdough bread troubleshooting tips.

One Last Thing ...

We all see photos of the lacy, holey sourdough bread - they really do look amazing and it is certainly an achievement. But don’t let these photos make you feel unhappy about your loaves. Some questions to ask yourself - is my bread edible? Does it have good flavour?

While there is always room for improvement, the perfect bread is bread you enjoy baking and eating. I don’t like my sourdough with too many holes - I can’t slather butter on it when there’s too many holes 😉

Embrace the imperfection and know that your sourdough is a completely unique result of the different flours, water, wild yeasts and bacteria in your town, home & country.

That's pretty special if you ask me!

What's Next On Your Sourdough Journey?

• Learn how to add inclusions into sourdough bread.
• Try a higher hydration sourdough bread recipe.
• Learn how to bake sourdough in a loaf pan.
• Want a smaller sourdough loaf? Try this small batch sourdough bread recipe.
• Make these sourdough baguettes.
• Learn how to make sourdough at higher altitude.

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