My Favorite Go-To Sourdough Bread Recipe
on Mar 27, 2020, Updated Jun 27, 2024
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This basic go-to sourdough bread recipe creates the perfect crusty on the outside, tender on the inside loaf that’s just waiting to be sliced, toasted, and slathered with butter and jam!
I’m here to tell you that sourdough bread baking does NOT need to be fussy or overly complicated. My method for sourdough baking does not include hydration rations, creating an autolyse, or any equipment that isn’t necessary. It’s simple and easy for anyone to get a handle on. This bread is delicious dipped in my creamy chicken noodle soup, or as the bread on my ultimate hummus and veggie sandwich.
When I first started making sourdough bread, I spent a MONTH trying a million recipes and failing over and over again (I made 7 loaves over one week until I got ONE that was kinda right). I just didn’t understand enough and they were too fussy, and you know that’s not my style. I tell you that for a few reasons. If it takes you more than one loaf of bread to get it perfect, that’s normal, but you also shouldn’t fail for a month trying, and I’m here to help prevent that.
Table of Contents
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- I love this simple sourdough bread recipe because it generates the best flavor and texture, and it’s sure to please everyone in your home.
- Your house will be filled with the aroma of fresh baked bread
- This recipe only uses four simple ingredients.
- You can customize the dough by using different flours or adding your favorite herbs and spices, making it adaptable to your preferences.
Recipe Ingredients
- Active sourdough starter
- Flour- all-purpose or bread flour
- Warm water
- Salt
See the recipe card below for full information on ingredients and quantities
How to Make Sourdough Bread
Step 1. Combine active starter, warm water, flour, and salt in a bowl. Stir well to form a rough dough. Cover and let it rest for 1 hour.
Step 2. After the hour, gently fold the dough edges into the center until it forms a ball. Let it rise for 8-10 hours or overnight.
Step 3. Transfer the risen dough onto parchment paper, score the top, and place it in a preheated Dutch oven. Bake covered for 30 minutes, then uncovered for 20-30 minutes.
Step 4. Once baked, let the bread cool on a wire rack for 1 hour before slicing. Serve fresh or store leftovers for later use.
Recipe FAQs
You only need a sourdough starter, flour, water, and salt. That being said, I have had the best luck using unbleached flour and, if you can, organic flour. The natural yeast in the starter seem to do better with these flours. And as far water goes, I use tap water. If your water is highly treated you might want to consider using bottled or filtered water. If you have a lot of chlorine in your water, you can let a glass of water set out overnight and that will give the chlorine time to dissipate a bit. Those are small things and you don’t have to worry about it, but if your dough isn’t rising as well as you’d like, you might want to see if changing up your flour or water matters.
Easy — simply feed it more! When you are getting it ready for baking, if you’d like to bake more than one loaf or make a recipe that uses more than 50 to 70 grams of starter, just feed it double: 100g of both water and flour. If you need even more than that, when the starter has peaked, feed it again. Repeat until you have the amount of starter that you need.
It will change how long it takes for your bread and starter to rise after being made or after a feeding. A cool house will take longer to rise, and in a warm house your bread will rise much faster. You’ll find that it takes longer in the winter for your bread to get ready, and it’ll be faster in the summer. That being said, you can do things to help even out the temperature. You can use warm water on cool days in your starter or in your bread or you can wrap a warm towel around your bowl or starter jar. There’s all kinds of tricks, I’d try a few if you are finding your starter or bread are being slow to rise.
Lucky for you I wrote a giant post all about how to start/keep/revive a sourdough starter and you can check that out with any sourdough starter specific questions.
You can get all kinds of things, but I’m here to tell you, you can make due with what you have at home, too. You’ll want a bowl and fork to mix the dough, a dish towel to cover the bowl with, parchment paper for moving the bread to the pan (though foil sprayed with cooking spray works in a pinch, too), an oven safe pan with a lid (a 4 to 5 quart pan is perfect), and a sharp or serrated knife to score the top.
Things that are nice to have: a scale for more accurate measuring, a dutch oven with a lid for baking (they trap the heat well and are just so nice to work with), a bread proofing basket instead of a bowl to let your shaped loaf rise in (it’s kind of fun to have), and a lame (or razor blade on a stick) is fun to make the marks on top. So you can go basic and if you get more into it, you can get a few specialty items like the bread basket, a dutch oven, and a lame.
One note on the bread proofing baskets or banneton: They come in a few sizes and shapes. I’d recommend getting a 9-inch round one. I have found that unless you have a really large dutch oven, the long or oval loaves don’t really fit in anything to bake them.
No! You certainly can but after a fair amount of testing I have found that starting my bread in a room temperature dutch oven worked just great, and it was so much easier to not deal with a pot that was 450 degrees F. and trying to get the bread into it.
Expert Tips
- Ensure your sourdough starter is at its peak before using it in the recipe. Feed it the morning before or at least a 2 hours prior to making the dough.
- Scoring the top of the dough allows for controlled expansion during baking.
- Let the bread cool on a wire rack for at least 1 hour before slicing and serving.
- To make your sourdough bread more sour:
- Feed your starter whole grains, like rye or buckwheat flour; they tend to make the bacteria happy!
- Keep your sourdough starter thinner by feeding it less often. The waste that the bacteria make (like the whey in yogurt) is called hooch and it’ll make your bread more sour tasting. Stir it in instead of pouring it off, and use after the starter has fallen (instead of at its peak in rise).
- Choose whole grain sourdough recipes; they’ll have a more sour taste then all white flour recipes.
- Let your sourdough bread dough rest longer. The longer it rests, the more sour it gets.
- Younger starters tend to be more mild; your starter will get more sour as it develops and ages.
- To make your sourdough bread more mild (less sour):
- Feed your starter white flour (like all-purpose); less whole grains lend to a milder flavor.
- Bake breads with all-purpose flour.
- Don’t ferment or rest your dough as long. I do an 8 to 10 hour first rise, but then I only let it rest for another 1 to 2 hours after it is shaped. If you’d like it more sour, you can rest the shaped loaves for another 8 to 10 hours or overnight.
- Feed your sourdough starter often, pour off any hooch that it might make, and use the starter when it is at its peak in rise.
How to Serve and Store Sourdough Bread
Enjoy freshly baked sourdough bread on the day it’s made for the best taste and texture. Serve slices of warm bread with butter, olive oil and balsamic, or your favorite spread. Sourdough bread also makes delicious sandwiches such as club, turkey, cucumber, and ham salad, and is perfect for a grilled Monte Cristo, pesto grilled cheese, or cheese steak sandwich.
Once cooled, store leftover sourdough bread in an airtight container or bread box at room temperature for up to 2 days. You can store sourdough bread in the freezer as well. Let the loaf cool completely, then wrap it in foil, and then wrap it well in plastic wrap (or store in a large zipper-topped bag). When you’d like to eat it, let it thaw at room temperature for 5 to 6 hours. Then remove it from the plastic and foil. Spritz the loaf well with water (2 to 3 good spritzes!) and then wrap it back up in the foil. Bake at 400 for 45 minutes. It’s almost as good as new.
I made a video too for visual learners!
More Sourdough Recipes to Consider
Sourdough Recipes
Chocolate Chip Sourdough Bread
From Scratch Recipes
Overnight Sourdough Muffins
Sourdough Recipes
Sourdough Banana Bread
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookies
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Easy Sourdough Bread Recipe
Ingredients
- 50 grams active starter, (1/4 cup)
- 350 grams warm water, (1 1/3 cups + 2 tablespoons)
- 500 grams all-purpose or bread flour, (4 cups and 2 tablespoons)
- 10 grams salt, (1 1/2 teaspoons)
Instructions
- The day that you’d like to make your bread, feed your starter. I like to feed mine the morning before I plan to make my dough or at least a few hours before. Your starter will be ready to use when it is at its peak and before it starts to shrink back down in size.
- To make your bread dough, measure out your active sourdough starter into a medium mixing bowl.
- Add the water, and stir well with a fork to combine well.
- Add the flour and salt, and use the fork to combine the mixture well. It will won’t look like like bread dough yet; just stir it well to combine and that’s good enough.
- Cover the bowl with a damp kitchen towel, and let rest for 1 hour at room temperature.
- After an hour, use your hands to gently pull the edge of the dough near the side of the bowl and push it down into the middle of the bowl. Do this, rotating round the bowl, until the dough starts to look like bread dough and comes together in more of a ball. This should take about a minute of going round the bowl 2 to 3 times pulling and tucking into the center.
- Cover the bread dough with a damp kitchen towel and let it rise for 8 to 10 hours at room temperature. This is known as the bulk rise. I typically let mine rise overnight.
- After the bulk rise, gently remove the dough from the bowl onto a lightly floured surface. Tuck the edges of the dough into the center and work around the edges until you’ve tucked them all in. Flip the ball dough over. Let it rest for 5 to 10 minutes.
- Using your hands, gently pull the dough ball towards you, letting its grip on the counter pull it into a tighter ball. Rotate the dough slightly and repeat around the edges until you’ve formed a tight ball (if this is confusing, watch the video on the post where I demonstrate how to do this! It’s not hard once you see it done once).
- Prepare a bread proofing basket by dusting it well with flour (if it’s new, you’ll need to season it by spraying it with a little water and then adding the flour so it sticks), or you can use a medium mixing bowl (about 8 inches across). To prepare the mixing bowl, you’ll want to coat it generously with cooking spray and then flour very well, or you can line it with a kitchen towel and dust it very well with flour.
- Place your dough ball, smooth top down, into your prepare basket or bowl, and cover with a damp towel.
- Let the dough rest for 1 to 2 hours, at room temperature, or until it’s spread out a bit and looks puffy.
- Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.
- Gently turn your bread dough out onto a piece of parchment paper (I like to put my parchment paper on top of a thin cutting board, put the paper and board on top of my bread basket, and turn it over gently).
- Remove the dough from the bowl. Score the top with a lame, or sharp knife (serrated knife works, too).
- Use the corners of the parchment paper to lift the dough into your dutch oven. Place the lid on the dutch oven.
- Place the dutch oven in the hot oven and cook for 30 minutes.
- Remove the lid and put the dutch oven back in the oven, uncovered, for another 20 to 30 minutes.
- The bread will be very dark and sound hollow when tapped when it is done.
- Remove the pan from the oven, and then remove the bread from the pan and let it cool on a wire rack for 1 hour before slicing and serving.
- Sourdough bread is best eaten the day of, though leftovers make great toast or grilled sandwiches.
Notes
- I’m sourdough obsessed and wrote a whole cookbook about it! It has step by step photos for this recipe if that’s helpful. You can buy a digital or hardcover copy of the sourdough cookbook here.
- If the bottom crust is too dark, try lowering your oven temperature by 25 degrees.
- I have SO many sourdough bread tips and tricks in the notes of this post. I highly recommend reading it and watching the video before starting if this is your first time.
- You can store sourdough bread in the freezer. Let the loaf cool completely, then wrap it in foil, and then wrap it well in plastic wrap (or store in a large zipper-topped bag). When you’d like to eat it, let it thaw at room temperature for 5 to 6 hours. Then remove it from the plastic and foil. Spritz the loaf well with water (2 to 3 good spritzes!) and then wrap it back up in the foil. Bake at 400 for 45 minutes. It’s almost as good as new.
- After I mix up my dough, to “refresh” my starter, I simple feed it. I’ll keep 25 grams of the leftover starter and mix it with 50 grams of water and 50 grams of flour by weight. If I’m baking tomorrow, I’ll just leave it on the counter. If I’m not baking again the next day, I’ll let it rest at room temperature for a few hours and then store it covered in the fridge until I’m ready to bake again. See my post on how to make a sourdough start for tips on sharing it with friends and keeping it healthy while not baking.
- NOTE! A few people are having issues with dough that is very wet, sticky, and will not hold it’s shape when worked with. It just turns into a blob of dough when they handle it and spreads as soon as it’s turned out of a container. I am finding that there is more variation in the amount of protein and gluten in all-purpose flour that I thought would be the case. I’d recommend getting Bob’s Red Mill or King Arthur Flour all-purpose flour, organic if you can. I have tested all my recipes using those two flours. If you find you are having this issue, please reduce the water by 50 grams and/or increase the flour by 50-100 grams when you are mixing up your dough the first time. It’s much easier to make these changes in the beginning instead of trying to add flour at the end. Please see the posts for pictures and video on an appropriate texture for your bread. It’s better if it’s a little on the thick side the first mixing than wet.
I have been struggling for years to make a decent loaf of bread. ,I was skeptical of this until I watched the video and you explained the long rise makes up for kneading. Anyway…..my loaf came out almost perfect! Any suggestions for having it come out a little more airy inside? Thank you😀
Airy isn’t this loaf in most cases, was it cooked through just with a tight crumb? That’s the kind it makes… airy loaves take a little more work and it’s not something I mess with most of the time.
Melissa,
By airy I meant like your photo. Mine is much denser. I’m using Lily White organic bread flour as its all I have ATM
Lorraine
How’s it rising? Does it seem to puff up some before you bake it? Is it expanding while it’s baking? You can email me too, happy to keep helping! blessthismessplease@gmail.com
Thank you so much for the video of sourdough bread! I made my first loaf today and it turned out absolutely perfect. I watched your video three times and it was super helpful.
I am wondering how this works out time wise. If my starter is ready at 3 and It takes a total of 14 hours, I will need to get up at 5am? Should I take the starter out of the fridge later in the day?
Thanks,
Pat
I don’t worry that much about the readiness of my starter! Make the recipe work for you, a little before or after peak is no big deal at all. My baking schedule is feed my starter in the morning or at lunch, mix up my dough in the evening, make my loaf in the morning, bake in the after! It’s more flexible than you’d think!
Thanks for the recipe, instructions, and tips. How does doubling work for sourdough bread? Will it work as long as my Dutch oven is big enough? Or does it become too much weight for itself?
If you are going to double it, divide it into too loaves before baking and before the second shaped rise, then juts bake them one after the other
This is a great recipe! So easy and delicious!!
Dear Scott, I’d like to suggest that you keep condescending, unnecessary comments to yourself and just go find the recipe you think you want. Many folks that are baking sourdough bread for the first time like intricate details. I honestly feel sorry for you.
Love it! Lol
Love this recipe and have been using it now for a while, tweaking it here and there as needed. I occasionally have a problem where, after the bulk rise when I’m shaping the loaf, the “skin” tears. I’ve solved the problem by kneading the ball to regain a smooth exterior. Why is this happening? Am I working it too much?
What brand of flour are you using?
I have been making this bread recipe for several weeks now and made a few tweaks (I’m that person). I upped the sourdough to 1/3 cup and the flour to 520 grams. Works very well. I just wanted a little more sourdough taste. It’s not much but it seems to work very well.
Then – I was making the dough in the morning and baking either that evening or the next morning. The past two times I have made it I made the dough in the morning, first thing, then let it sit on the counter (covered) during the day and then put it in the refrigerator. What I have found doing this is that the dough is easier to work with and when I score the top with a bread lame, that works much better as well. I shape the dough after my oven is fully warmed up (the dutch oven warms up with the oven in the oven). I have been doing the initial oven heat to 525 degrees and then baking the dough for 10 minutes at that temp and then turning down to 450 for 20 minutes. Lid comes off and then another 20 minutes at 450. Comes out beautifully. I JUST took one of two loaves out of the oven just now. The second one will be baked this evening after the oven has cooled off and I start all over again!
This has been an excellent recipe to work with!
Linda – are you saying you put the loaf in the refrigerator overnight? And are you putting the loaf into the hot Dutch oven?
Melissa,
How should the liner for the proofing basket be washed? I’m not familiar with proofing baskets.
I don’t use the liner so I’m not a good one to ask. I just flour the bowl well and tap the extras out after I’m done.
I have made bread with this recipe a few times now, and it is literally perfect every time. Thank you for the excellent instructions and recipe!
Congratulations on making sourdough!! And thank you for the review!
Great the bread turns out consistently good! After the bulk rise I let it rest 10 min and then shape liaf and put it directly into dutch oven for final rise. It seems to work
Sounds wonderful!