The Best Easy Sourdough Bread Recipe

This Weekly Sourdough Bread Routine Makes Baking Homemade Artisan Bread with Natural Yeast so Simple with Very Little Hands-on Time.

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Creating Your Routine

If you’ve been thinking about making simple sourdough bread at home, this homemade sourdough bread routine can make the process simple and sustainable. In my opinion, baking bread can be one of the most rewarding ways you use your kitchen. But if the process doesn’t fit into your life, then it’s likely to become a one-time experience. This recipe is all about giving your sourdough long periods of time to grow and develop flavor. These windows of time allow you to work bread baking around your life and create a crusty, artisan loaf with a well-rounded taste and a soft, airy crumb.

You’ll want to make sure starter is nice and active before making your bread. Because I only make bread once a week, I primarily keep my starter in the refrigerator. About 12 hours before I want to bake fresh sourdough bread, I will remove it from the fridge and feed it with equal parts water and flour. (Ex: 150 grams water to 150 grams flour) The final consistency should be similar to pancake batter. If you mix it together and it seems thin, just add a bit more flour. Too thick, add a bit more water. When feeding your starter, make sure you double the volume so that the natural yeast has enough food to sustain it 12 hours.

After 8-12 hours the starter should have doubled again in size and be nice and bubbly. You now have an active sourdough starter! Now you’re ready to bake! After I measure my 200 grams of starter out for the bread dough, I will place the active starter back in the refrigerator until next week!

Mixing the Ingredients for Weekly Sourdough Bread

Sourdough Bread is made with four simple ingredients: an active sourdough starter, flour, water, and salt. I love that no special tools are required. You can make an amazing loaf of bread with just a mixing bowl and your hands! I start by adding my active starter to a large bowl and then pouring in the water. Using a fork, Danish Whisk, or my hands, I mix the two together until the starter begins to break up. Add the salt, give it a stir, and then add the flours.

Use your hands to mix everything together until the flour is fully incorporated and the dough starts to form a rough ball. At this point it will look very shaggy, but you want to make sure there are no dry bits of flour. Cover the mixing bowl with plastic wrap or a damp towel and set the dough aside for 30 minutes. As it sits, the flour will continue to absorb water and the dough will become more pliable.

Side note: If you do not have a kitchen scale, I can’t recommend one enough. When you weigh out your ingredients, there are no measuring cups to fuss with or wash, everything simply goes in one bowl to be mixed together. While I try to keep my kitchen knick-knacks to a minimum, I love investing in solid pieces that I will rely on every day and a kitchen scale falls into this category. It is the best way to measure ingredients. For more information on my favorite baking tools, check out Tools Every Baker Needs and Sourdough Baking Essentials.

Baking with Fresh Milled Flour

This recipe calls for 100 grams, or 20% of the total flour to be whole wheat. I love using fresh milled wheat flour for sourdough bread because it adds another dimension of flavor and increases the protein and fiber. I love being able to mill my own flour with my Komo Classic Grain Mill. The flavor is unbeatable and being able to choose a fine grind makes the flour better for bread baking. You can also use all purpose flour, all bread flour or store bought wheat flour. 

However, any wheat flour will work great in this recipe and if you prefer to use 100% white bread flour that works great as well! Sometimes when I’m making this for my kids, I like to use up to 200 grams, or 40% wheat flour. Using more whole grains increases the nutritional value of the bread but will result in a slightly different finished product. Your crust will be slightly softer, and the crumb will be a little denser. I love the taste of whole wheat flour and love incorporating as much as possible, but just know that it does take away slightly from the artisan quality of the bread. If I use more whole grain flour, I also increase the water amount to 350 grams.

Stretch and Fold the Dough

Instead of kneading the dough, this recipe uses a series of folds and streches to develop strong gluten structure. Stretching and pulling the dough is an efficient way to activate and strengthen the gluten and is so much easier than kneading! To do this, start with one side of the dough. Grab the edge of the dough working with wet hands, and stretch it up, about a foot out of the mixing bowl. Stop pulling if you feel like the dough is about to break. Fold the dough back over and press it into itself. Turn the bowl a quarter turn and repeat this process three more times.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a damp kitchen towel and allow your dough to rest at room temperature for thirty minutes. You will perform this series of stretch and folds twice more every thirty minutes. Each time you’ll notice that the dough becomes a little smoother and more pliable and by the last time you’ll have a beautiful and supple dough.

Bulk Fermentation

After your last stretch and fold, your dough is ready for the first rise which will take 7-10 hours, or until it has doubled in size. This bulk rise time is what allows this recipe to fit so nicely into my daily routine. Most of the time I will mix my dough after the kids go to bed and let it rise overnight. In the morning I can shape it and have it ready to bake before breakfast. Another way to do it is to mix the dough in the morning and let the bread rise all day. Then it can be shaped and baked in the evening.

You’ll know your dough has completed the bulk rise when you see air pockets forming under the outside of the dough. It should be about doubled in size and feel light and full of air. Over-proofed dough will rise and then collapse, and your final loaf will turn out dense and overly sour. Personally, I think it is much easier to under proof during this phase than to over proof. If in doubt, maybe let it go a bit longer. When I first started baking sourdough, I always let it proof for the full 10 hours. At that point I didn’t feel like I had a good idea of what a well proofed loaf looked like, and it was easier to lean on the recipe then on my non-existent experience. This worked pretty well for me, and I slowly developed the ability to read my dough.

Temperature and Rise Time

The temperature of the room will have a big impact on how your bread dough rises. I like to let my dough rise in an environment between 68-72 degrees. This is pretty easy to do in the winter, however in the summer you may notice that your dough wants to proof more quicky. Either anticipate that your dough will be done proofing after 7 hours or find a cool place to store it.

Shaping your Weekly Sourdough Bread

When you’re ready to shape your dough, dump it out of the mixing bowl onto a lightly flour surface. You’ve just spent ten hours trying to incorporate air into your dough, so we want to be very careful that we don’t squash that air out as we shape it! Gently pat the dough into a rough rectangle and shape your loaf using four folds. I start at the back and carefully lift with two hands and fold the back edge 2/3rds over the dough, like and envelope fold. Gently press the edge into the dough to seal. Repeat this with the left edge, then the right edge.

Finish by folding the bottom edge all the way across the dough, flipping it seam side down in the process. Use the edges of your hands to gently pull the loaf towards you in a circular motion, to seal the seam and create more surface tension.

Line a medium sized mixing bowl or proofing basket with a tea towel or cloth napkin and dust with flour. Transfer the dough to the bowl flipping it in the process so that the seam is facing up. Cover and allow to rise for 1-3 hours. You will know your dough is ready to bake when it passes the poke test. When you make an indention in the dough with your finger, it should spring back slightly. If the dough springs back all the way, it is under proofed. If it collapses under your finger, it is over proofed.

Baking your Weekly Sourdough Bread

Place a Dutch oven or a heavy-lidded pot in the oven and preheat it to 475 degrees. Baking your bread in a preheated hot Dutch oven or heavy-lidded pot will trap moisture during the beginning half of your bake. This keeps the crust from forming before the bread has a chance to fully rise in the oven. It also allows for a crisper, more artisan crust.

When you’re ready to bake your bread, you’re going to lay out a piece of parchment on the counter and dust it lightly with flour. Flip your bread out onto the parchment so that the seam is facing down. Now you can score the top of the dough with a sharp knife however you like. Feel free to experiment with detailed and artistic cuts, but you will want to make sure you score it once from top to bottom, about 1/4 inch deep, to ensure that your loaf doesn’t “pop.”

Note: I recently purchased this reusable baking mat for a Dutch oven to use in place of parchment paper and I absolutely love it! It’s so easy to place your dough into the pot and remove it without parchment tearing!

Carefully remove the pot from the oven and use the parchment as a sling to place the dough carefully into the pot. Replace the lid and bake covered for 20 minutes. Remove the lid and continue to bake for 15-25 more minutes. I always use an instant read thermometer to make sure that my bread is baked to 200 degrees. The loaf should be dark in color and feel light when you remove it from the pot.

The beauty of Sourdough is that you really do not need anything fancy to make it. However, as it becomes a part of your weekly or daily life, you may want to invest in it. Many of my links are amazon products, but if you are looking for higher end items I recommended checking out Another worthy investment if you are starting to work with sourdough is the Thermapen. It not only helps to ensure your bread is done, it also can help you not to overbake your bread by understanding internal temperature. This also comes in handy when making other sourdough baked goods like scones, biscuits or muffins.

Keep Baking!

My number one recommendation for being a successful bread baker is to keep baking! Take this recipe and make it every week. It’s so hard to understand what a well proofed loaf looks like until you do it over and over again. But more than that, baking weekly sourdough can feel like an intimidating process when it’s new, but after just a few weeks it will begin to feel second nature and you will start to see how it truly can become an easy part of your routine.

No matter what’s going on in the house that week, I feel like I can handle anything if I have a fresh loaf of bread in the breadbox. If all I can manage is peanut butter sandwiches, I feel really good about those sandwiches! And my family does, too. One of my favorite parts of the week is when I pull fresh bread out of the oven and begin to see little people lining up by the counter, waiting for their slice with butter!

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Sourdough Bread

This Weekly Sourdough Bread Routine Makes Baking Homemade Artisan Bread with natural yeast so Simple with Very Little Hands-on Time.

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 1 day d

Cook Time 40 minutes mins

Course Breakfast

Cuisine American

Servings 1 loaf

Ingredients

  

• 100 grams active starter
• 325 grams water
• 12 grams salt
• 100 grams whole wheat flour preferably freshly milled
• 400 grams bread flour

Instructions

 

• Add your starter and water to a large mixing bowl and stir with a fork or Dutch whisk to combine. Add your salt and gently stir, then add in the flours. Use your hands to mix until fully incorporated and there are no bits of dry flour.
• Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a damp towel and set aside for thirty minutes.
• Stretch and fold your dough every thirty minutes for a total of three times.
• Bulk Rise: allow your dough to rise for 7-10 hours until it has doubled in size and is nice and puffy
• Dump the dough onto a lightly flour surface. Gently pat the dough into a rough rectangle and shape your loaf using four folds. I start at the back and carefully lift with two hands and fold the back edge 2/3rds over the dough, like and envelope fold. Gently press the edge into the dough to seal. Repeat this with the left edge, then the right edge. Finish by folding the bottom edge all the way across the dough, flipping it seam side down in the process. Use the edges of your hands to gently pull the loaf towards you in a circular motion, to seal the seam and create more surface tension.
• Place the formed dough upside down into a mixing bowl or proofing basket lined with a floured tea towel. Allow to rise for 1-3 hours until it passes the poke test. Press down on the dough with your finger, it should spring back slightly but not collapse under your finger.
• Preheat oven with a Dutch oven or heavy-lidded pot to 475 degrees.
• When ready to bake, set parchment on the counter and dust with flour. Flip the bread onto the parchment and score as desired with a sharp knife or lame. Us the parchment to transfer the bread into the pre-heated pot. Decrease the oven temp to 450 degrees and bake with lid on for 20 minutes. Remove lid and bake an additional 15-25 minutes, until the bread has a dark golden brown crust and registers 200 degrees with an instant read thermometer.
• Let your sourdough loaf cool completely before slicing. Enjoy with good butter!

Keyword Sourdough Bread