Basic Sourdough Bread: A Step-by-Step Guide

It takes extended home confinement to finally prompt me to organize this basic sourdough bread post — together with a step-by-step guide, including photos and video. Lately, there are growing interests in baking sourdough breads. So I think a post like this can be helpful to bakers, beginners and seasoned ones alike. By and large, the framework of this guide is adapted from a New York Times article published a few months ago. There are tips and adaptations in the areas such as: use of the mixer, stretch-and-fold technique, fermentation duration, shaping technique, proofing and baking temperature.

Perhaps you’ve seen them on social media — sourdough loaves with burnished, intricately scored crusts and expansive, holey interiors — and wondered if you too could make this kind of bread. The answer is yes, you absolutely can. The method below will walk you through all the key steps and core concepts a first-time sourdough baker needs to bake naturally leavened bread at home with good, even great, results. You’ll need to invest in some essential equipment, find a starter, and set aside three days (though only the second requires serious tending — you can start on Friday to have loaves on Sunday). But for those dedicated to learning an age-old craft, it’s the start of a deeply rewarding journey. Your first loaves won’t be perfect, and that’s fine. Any sourdough bread made by your hand will still be delicious. ~ New York Times

Equipment and Ingredients

DAY 1: Prepare Starter

• Feed your starter (refreshing). In the morning, three days before you plan to serve your bread (Friday morning, for example, for loaves on Sunday), pull your starter from the refrigerator and decant 20 grams of it into a clean, clear container. Return any remaining starter to the refrigerator for future use. Stir in 100 grams of room-temperature tap water until the starter is evenly dispersed, then stir in 100 grams of white flour until you have a smooth paste.

Why? The yeast and bacteria in your starter become sluggish in the cool environment of your refrigerator. They must be energized through successive feedings, a process called refreshing, to be active enough to raise the dough.

• Cover the container, and let sit at room temperature until it has at least doubled in volume and its surface teems with sudsy bubbles, 10 to 12 hours, depending on your kitchen’s temperature.
• Feed your starter a second time. Once the starter has doubled in size (the evening of the first day), discard all but 20 grams of starter. To the 20 grams of starter, add 100 grams of water, then mix and incorporate another 100 grams of white flour. Cover and set aside at room temperature to be used in your dough the next day.

DAY 2: Mix and Rest Your Dough

The bulk of your work occurs on this day, so you’ll want to set aside some time to tend to your dough. Depending on environmental conditions, your dough may take anywhere from five to nine hours to finish its rises. It’s not active time, but you’ll want to stay close to keep an eye on it.

• Mix together flour and water and let sit (autolyse). Early on the second day, weigh 700 grams of white bread flour and 300 grams of whole-wheat or whole-grain rye or spelt flour (or a blend) in a large mixing bowl. Mix to combine. Weigh out 750 grams of lukewarm tap water (about 90°F) and add to the flours. Mix gently with a clean hand or a flexible bench scraper until all the flours are hydrated and no dry spots remain. Cover with a damp dish towel, and let sit at least 30 minutes while you wait until your starter is ready.

Why? If starter is the life force of bread, then the stretchy strands known as gluten are its backbone. When two proteins in flour come into contact with water, gluten forms a network inside the dough, trapping the gas produced by the yeast. To build lots of gluten from the get-go, bakers employ a technique known as autolyse, in which flour and water are mixed and left to rest, usually before adding the starter. During autolyse, gluten bonds form that create the basic structure of the dough. As little as 30 minutes of autolyse can be effective. Generally speaking, a couple of hours is optimal. It will give your gluten a head start and decrease the amount of mixing down the line.

• Make sure the starter is ready to use (perform a float test). When the sudsy bubbles on the surface of a starter form a dome and it appears on the verge of collapse, drop about a teaspoon of starter into a small bowl of room temperature water. If it floats, the starter is full of gas and ready to use (ripe). If it sinks, let it sit, checking every 30 minutes, until you see even more activity and then try the test again.
• Combine the autolyse and starter. Add 200 grams of ripe starter to the bowl with the flour-water mixture. Pinching with your thumb, forefinger and middle finger on one hand and rotating the bowl with the other, mix until the starter is completely incorporated.
• Assess texture and add salt. At this point, the dough should be wet but also extremely extensible (having the ability to stretch without snapping back). Sprinkle 20 grams salt and 20 grams of water across the dough, and pinch, as before, to incorporate. Cover with a damp towel and let sit for 10 minutes.

Why? Adding salt tightens the gluten network, so the dough will go from very extensible to more elastic (having the tendency to snap back after being stretched) and stringy.

• Mix the dough. Uncover the dough. Slide a wet hand down along the inside of the mixing bowl and underneath the dough. Grasp a handful and stretch it upward until you feel resistance, then fold it back onto the dough mass. Repeat this motion continuously for 10 minutes, rotating the bowl about 90 degrees each time. As you work the dough, it will progress from very slack and sticky to smoother and more elastic. (The mechanical shortcut is to knead the dough in a KitchenAid mixer with a dough hook attachment until the dough is smooth.)
• Check if the dough has built enough gluten (perform the windowpane test). After 10 minutes of hand mixing, pinch off a golf ball-size piece of dough and gently stretch it with your fingertips, working it both longer and wider until you have a thin, even membrane through which light can pass. If the dough tears before this point, continue to mix and check again every 10 minutes. (If you’re mixing for more than 20 minutes and the dough is not yet at this point, feel free to move on. Your bread will still turn out.) Use a flexible bench scraper to scrape dough out onto an oiled clear container.

Why? This will help determine if the dough has developed sufficient gluten to give it strength, which enables it to hold its shape.

• Prepare for the dough’s first rise (bulk fermentation). Mark where the dough hits the side of the container with a piece of tape. Note the time, and the temperature of the dough. It should be 76° to 80°F. Cover the container and let the dough sit for 45 minutes.

Why? Bulk fermentation is the period after the starter has been added during which the dough undergoes its first rise. The yeast and bacteria produce gas and flavor. So a longer fermentation will result in a more flavorful bread. If your dough is above or below the optimal 76°F to 80°F range, that’s fine, just note that it will accelerate or slow the bulk fermentation accordingly. If fermentation seems to be moving slowly (in the winter), you can move your dough to a warmer place, like the inside of the oven with the oven light on.

• Stretch and fold the dough: With moistened hand, reach underneath the dough and pull out about one-quarter of it out and up to stretch it until you feel resistance. Then fold it over the top to the other side of the dough. Repeat four or five times, making a full rotation of the container, until the dough has tightened into a ball. Grab the entire ball, invert it with seam side down. The top of the dough should be smooth. With each fold, the dough firms up a bit.
• Cover the container, wait 45 minutes, then perform the same series of four folds. Cover and repeat, until the dough feels pillowy and filled with air, which can take at least 3 hours and as many as 7. Each time you stretch and fold the dough, it should feel lighter and sit higher in the clear container.

Determining when bulk fermentation is complete can be difficult. The dough should more or less double in size — use the mark on the container as a reference — but that’s not a guarantee. You should see lots of bubbles on the surface and sides of the dough. “It’s like cream versus whipped cream,” said Avery Ruzicka, the baker and an owner of Manresa Bread in California. “You should be able to see that there’s volume to it.” Or as Ethan Pikas, of Cellar Door Provisions in Chicago, said, “It should feel very smooth and aerated. It will feel very alive.”

• Shape dough for the first time (pre-shaping). Clear and lightly flour a work surface. Gently turn out the dough, letting its weight coax it out of the container and loosening the sides with the bench scraper. Divide the dough in half with the bench scraper. Using floured hands and working with one piece of dough at a time, gently pull all the edges of the dough toward the center to create a round, tidy packet. (The non-floured surface will readily stick to itself.) Use a bench scraper to turn the loose ball of dough over so it rests seam-side down. Cover with a clean towel and repeat with the second half of dough. Let both pieces of dough rest, covered, on the work surface for about 20-30 minutes (bench rest).

Why? Pre-shaping the dough guarantees uniform loaf size and helps to organize the gluten strands roughly into the final shape of the baked loaves. The following rest period relaxes the gluten and makes final shaping easier, leading to bread with a better overall rise.

• Prepare the shaping baskets. As dough rests, line two baskets or mixing bowls with clean kitchen towels. Stir together a 50/50 mixture of white bread flour and rice flour. (Rice flour will prevent sticking.) Dust the interiors of the baskets generously with the 50/50 flour mixture. Set aside.
• Shape the dough a last time (final shaping). Uncover one piece of dough and lightly dust the top with the 50/50 flour mixture. In one decisive motion, use the bench scraper to lift and turn the dough over floured-side down. Slide your fingertips beneath the dough and stretch it gently into a squarish shape, taking care not to deflate the dough.
• Fold the third of the dough closest to you up and over the middle third of the square. Stretch out the dough horizontally to your right and fold this right third inward over the center. Repeat the same on the left. Now you have a neat package resembling an open envelope.
• Stretch out the remaining third of the dough farthest from you and fold this flap all the way toward you, over the previous folds. Anchor it in place with your fingers. Then grab the dough end closest to you, stretch and wrap it up and over while rolling the dough away from you into a bulky package. Now the smooth underside of the dough is on top and all the seams are on the bottom.
• Cup your hands around the dough and pull it toward you, rounding it against the work surface to tighten the tension and stretch the outer surface to close the seam underneath.
• Let the dough sit for a minute or two on its seam to help it seal, then use a bench scraper to lift up the dough and place it seam-side up in one of the prepared baskets. Lightly dust the exposed part of the dough with more of the 50/50 flour mixture, and cover with a kitchen towel. (Personally, I like to use a clear shower cap.) Repeat with the second piece of dough.

• Let the shaped dough rise inside the baskets (proofing). Rest loaves at room temperature, checking on them periodically, until the surface of the dough has settled and the entire loaves have slightly increased in volume, about 2 hours.
• Check if dough is proofed (the poke test). Press a floured finger about 1/2 inch into the dough. If the dough springs back immediately, it needs more time — check again every 20 minutes. But, if it springs back slowly and a slight impression remains, the dough is proofed.
• Chill the dough. (This step is optional. You might skip the chill and go to day 3 baking, if you like.) Once the dough passes the poke test, cover the baskets with plastic wrap and transfer to the refrigerator. Chill overnight and up to two days before baking. The longer the dough spends in the refrigerator, the tangier the final bread will taste.

DAY 3: Bake

• Prepare the oven. About an hour before baking, arrange a rack in the lower third of your oven and place a large Dutch oven inside. Heat the oven to 500°F.
• Prepare and invert the dough. Remove one loaf from the refrigerator and uncover. Lightly dust the exposed dough with the 50/50 flour mixture, massaging it into the surface. Place a piece of parchment paper over the basket, making sure the parchment is longer and/or wider so that your fingers can hold on to it as a sling for loading. Invert the loaf onto the parchment paper. Remove the overturned basket.
• Make a slash in the dough. Use a lame or a serrated knife to make a long slash about 1/4-inch deep, angling the blade toward the midline of the loaf.

Why? Slashing the bread will help the bread expand predictably in the oven.

• Bake the dough. Remove the heated Dutch oven while taking care not to touch the sides. Use the parchment paper sling to lower the loaf into the Dutch oven. Cover and return it to the oven. Bake for 20 minutes. Then, carefully remove the lid and reduce the oven temperature to 460°F. Continue to bake the loaf uncovered until the surface is deeply browned, another 25 to 35 minutes. Remove the Dutch oven from the oven, and pull out the loaf. Transfer the Dutch oven back to the oven, and set the oven temperature back to 500°F. Repeat the process with the second loaf of bread. (Skip the last steps if you have two Dutch ovens.)
• When the crust is well colored and the loaf sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom, the bread is ready. The interior temperature of the loaf will read 212°F.

Why? The bread is baked covered in the beginning to trap stream. This is replicating the effect of a steam oven in a commercial setting, which helps the loaf expand and the crust caramelize in the process.

• Cut and serve! Allow the loaves to cool completely, for a few hours, before cutting into them. Whole loaves can be stored uncovered at room temperature for 1 day. Once cut, you can store the bread in paper bags at room temperature and will keep for a week or longer. After the second day, it benefits from light toasting.

How to Maintain Your Starter

Keep your starter in a container with the lid on, labeled clearly. Once a week, discard all but 25 grams of starter (discarding most of the starter helps avoid building up a massive amount with each successive feeding).

Using a digital scale for accuracy, stir 100 grams of room temperature tap water into the starter until the starter is evenly dispersed. Then stir in 100 grams of high-quality white bread flour until you have a smooth paste. Cover and place in the back of the refrigerator. Set a calendar reminder to feed your starter at the same time every week.

Why? The yeast and bacteria in starter feed on sugars in the flour, and you’ll need to replenish this food source on a regular basis. Cooling it down will significantly slow the level of activity, or how quickly the micro-organism consume its food source. Bakeries generally keep their starter at room temperature and feed it at least once a day because they are mixing and baking dough constantly, but for most home bakers, refrigerating your starter and feeding it once a week is sufficient. Think of it as a low-maintenance pet!