My Favorite Sourdough Bread
Beginner Sourdough Bread
This is the original, timeless Beginner Sourdough bread recipe. It’s a very good and reliable Sourdough Bread recipe you can always fall back to. It’s very forgiving and gives you a lot of wiggle room.
- Prep Time: 4-6hrs for your Starter to come to peak
- Fermentation Time: 6hr bulk fermentation + 20-24hr cold proof (36F) OR 3hr room temp proof
- Cook Time: 20 min with the DO lid on + 20 min with the DO lid off
- Total Time: 22hrs 40 min
- Yield: 1 Sourdough Bread 1x
- Category: Sourdough Baking
- Method: Dutch Oven steam baking
Ingredients
Scale
- 500g bread flour
- 300g water (60% hydration)
- 100g sourdough starter (20% starter)
- 10g salt (2% salt)
- 10g olive oil (optional)
Instructions
The sourdough bread baking process can be boiled down into 7 Steps:
Step 1 – FEED STARTER – 4-12hrs
- Feed your sourdough starter and use when it’s at peak –basically when it can no longer rise and it starts to crater a little
Step 2 – MIXING – 5-15 min
- In a bowl, mix ingredients together thoroughly until there are no dry clumps
Step 3 – FOLDING – 30 sec. x 2 times over the course of 6hrs
- Fold your dough at least 2-3 times in 6 hours, can be spaced out however long you want
Step 4 – SHAPING – 1 min
- After 6hrs, your sourdough dough should’ve risen 1.5x its size and should hold its shape after folding.
- Shape your sourdough dough, place into your proofing basket, and cover your dough
Step 5 – PROOFING
- Option 1 – 20-24hrs – Cold proof your dough in your fridge at 36F (ideal, preferred)
- Option 2 – 3hrs – Proof your dough at room temp (70F)
Step 6 – SCORING – 1 min
- Preheat your Dutch Oven in your oven at 485-500F,
- take our your dough out from the fridge,
- flip it onto parchment paper and score it
Step 7 – BAKING – 20 min + 20 min
- Immediately bake in a Dutch Oven with the lid on for 20 min at 485-500F;
- then bake for another 20 min with the Dutch Oven lid off
- wait 1-2hrs before cutting into it
- enjoy! Post pics in the comments, please!
