Super easy beginner sourdough recipe

Originally written in 2020 for reddit - rehosting here on substack. Might add pictures at some point.

I wanted to make a guide for what is IMO the easiest sourdough recipe that will produce great results. When I was starting out baking I saw a lot of "beginner" recipes that seemed way too involved, took way too much hands on time, and way too much technique to be successful. I eventually settled on this recipe for my weekly bakes because it's super forgiving and hands-off, while still producing really good bread. No autolyse, no slap and fold, no levain. I also keep a low volume of starter, which means that I don't have to discard extra starter - the amount I feed is about the same as the amount I use in my recipes. I'll be adding an example schedule in brackets, but this can be adjusted to suit your schedule - times are all very flexible!

Caveat: everybody's starter, room temperature, oven, and sourness preferences are a little bit different. I highly suggest taking down notes every time you bake with what you did and how the results turn out. My recipe might not work perfectly for you the first time, and you may need to tweak it.

Short version: 75% water, 2% salt, 15% starter that's been fed right out of the fridge & left overnight. Hand mix all ingredients 5 min, bulk ferment 8-12 hr with 1-4 folds, proof in fridge overnight, bake 500F 20 min covered and 15-25 min uncovered.

Long version:

Step 0.5. Feed the starter. (Friday, ~10pm) I take my starter out of the fridge two nights before I want to bake the bread. For me, this usually means that on Friday night I’ll take out the starter so I can bake on Sunday morning. I keep a low volume of starter (~50-100g), and feed it with about 30g all purpose flour and 30g water. (Usually I just eyeball it.) If you have more starter in the jar, or if you want to bake big/multiple loaves, you'd need to increase the amount you feed. At this point, I leave the starter out on the counter overnight. Usually people do about 4 hours between feeding and making dough/levain, but overnight works for me, for two reasons. First, I like the bread to be on the sour side, and second, it's coming out of the fridge and will be much less active than a starter that's kept at room temp. It needs some extra time to "wake up."

Step 1. Make the dough. (Saturday, ~9am) Mix the dough ingredients in a large bowl. I do 75% water, 15% starter, 2% salt. I usually make this recipe with 400g flour (small loaf), 500g flour (medium loaf), or 600g flour (large loaf). If you're unfamiliar with baker's percentages: calculate the non-flour ingredients by multiplying the % by the amount of flour. For example, in a medium loaf I'd do 500g flour, 375g water, 10g salt, 75g starter. Just dump it all in a bowl and mix it with your hands. They will get sticky - I like to keep a spoon nearby to scrape dough from my hands back into the bowl. It won't look like a very good dough at this point, and that's fine. It'll probably take a good 5 mins to come together, try to get it nice and homogeneous. Also, I frequently swap out 10-30% of the flour for whole wheat, rye, or spelt flour. This recipe creates a loaf with ~77% hydration. (2023 update: at some point I stopped using a scale altogether and have just started going by feel, so who knows what the actual hydration of my loaves are these days. Once you do this recipe enough times you’ll develop a feel for it, but until then, I’d recommend a scale.)

Quick note on ingredients: Ideally you'd want to use a nice bread flour here. If you don't have access to bread flour, you can use all-purpose with a little bit of extra wheat gluten. I've also made this recipe with all-purpose only and it turns out fine! Water - I've always used tap water and it's fine. My water is pretty hard. Salt - you can use whatever salt you want as long as you weigh. Some people think you should avoid iodized salt, but iodine is probably fine for your microbes and it’s never given me an issue.

Step 1.5. Refresh the starter. (Saturday, ~9:10am) If you keep a low volume of starter like me, adding the 15% starter to the dough should've used most of your starter. Feed your starter again with ~30g water and ~30g flour, mix with a spoon, and stick it back in the fridge. It'll be ready to go next Friday for baking this recipe again.

Step 2. Stretch and fold. (Saturday, ~9:30am) Pick a side of the dough, stretch it up, fold it back over the dough, rotate the bowl 90 degrees, and repeat around all four sides. Here's a video example.

Recommended: You can give the dough more sets of folds every 30 min (e.g., at 10am, 10:30am, 11am, etc.) but if you don't do additional folds, the bread will still turn out pretty good. I usually aim to do 4 sets folds, but sometimes life gets in the way.

Step 3. Bulk ferment. The time between mixing the dough and proofing is the bulk ferment. Let bulk ferment go for 8 to 12 hours, so for our example schedule it started at 9am, we'd let it go until 5pm - 9pm. When to stop is your preference. In my experience, longer bulk ferment = more sour taste, which is I like. This is a longer bulk ferment than most recipes, this is to help additional gluten to develop from lack of kneading (think Jim Lahey's overnight no-knead bread), and to give the starter some more time to work.

Step 4. Shape and proof (Saturday, ~9pm) Take the dough out of the bowl - it should have expanded quite a bit. Plop it onto a counter and basically do another set of stretch and folds to pull it into a taut ball. You don't need to worry about super specific shaping techniques or anything - just get it into a ball and put it into a well floured banneton. If you don't have a banneton, you can line a colander or bowl with a well-floured non-fuzzy towel. You really don't want this dough to stick or it'll ruin the oven spring. Once it's in the banneton, put it in the fridge overnight (8-12 hours ideally but you can go longer).

Step 4.5. Preheat the oven. (Sunday, ~9am) Put a covered Dutch oven into the lower-middle part of your oven, and preheat at 500 for one hour.

Step 5. Score and bake. (Sunday, ~10am) Take the banneton out of the fridge and invert to plop the dough onto some parchment. (2023 update: I’ve started putting a small splash of water (~1T) on my parchment before plopping the dough on. This helps prevent the bottom from getting too dark and also adds more steam to the Dutch oven, which is good for oven spring.) Score the bread with a razor/lame/knife (slash it along the entire length, aim for about 1/2" depth and a 45 degree angle, do additional scoring if you want it to look fancy). Very carefully remove the Dutch oven from the oven, put the dough in using the parchment as handles, cover, and put the Dutch oven back in the oven. I bake covered for 20 min, then take the cover off and bake an additional 15-25 min until the top looks nice and dark brown. Cool the loaf on a rack and try to wait 1-2 hours before slicing. Yes, it's bad for the texture if you slice too early, but sometimes it's worth it! If you are baking multiple loaves, keep the Dutch oven lid in the oven while it's uncovered, and preheat the Dutch oven, covered, back in the oven for at least 20 min before you put the next loaf in.

Bonus pizza tip: You can use this same recipe for a pizza dough. Just do 100g flour per smallish pizza - I usually do 200g flour for two people.