My Favorite Go-To Sourdough Bread Recipe
on Mar 27, 2020, Updated Aug 22, 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 LOVE this recipe. I’m new to bread baking and I give my loaves to friends all the time now!
Question, I’ve read the final rise should be in the fridge, rather than room temp? Would that change anything for the better?
If you move to the fridge it’s going to change things and it’ll take it a lot longer to rise, so plan on it taking 12 or so hours in the fridge. I prefer to not do any of my rising in the fridge.
I’ve had awful luck with sourdough bread at high elevation until now! Absolutely love this recipe and the outcome is perfect. Thank you!
I’ve been making sourdough dishes for about two years. Lots of good recipes but bread has always been a challenge. This recipe is amazing! It was easy and had none of the problems othe recipes have. This is totally a keeper!
Argh. This recipe doesn’t work for me. Way too much flour-dough is way dry. Darn.
Did you measure it in cups or weigh it? It sounds like something is just off a little on your end.
What’s the longest the bulk fermentation can go at room temp (68-70 degrees)?
I’ve done 24 hours no problem, you could play with it a bit for sure.
Hey there! What do you consider a serving in your nutrition facts?
It’s for 1/12 of the loaf.
first time I made this two weeks ago was very delicious !
Today I baked two loaves and turned out a thousand times better than the first time ! I got two bannetons for proofing the bread with and lowered the oven heat to 425 F because it was a bit dark on the bottom the first time. I’m learning so much more each time I’ve made it and sooo happy with the results second time tastes so much better than first yet first loaf was still very delicious ! Thank you for your detailed helpful recipe im gonna keep following to perfect it and now looking for a lame and bread slicer … thinking of things to add in like herbs etc ? Do you recommend anything ? Kind of just love the plain bread though
Yes! You can add all kinds of things. I generally add them after the first hour rise, keep it at about 100 grams or less of add-in’s and chop things really small so they don’t weigh down the dough (like cheese for example, I’ll grate it so that it’s not big pieces).
I usually don’t take time to leave reviews, but I had to rave about this recipe! I’m new to sourdough and this seemed like one of the easier recipes I found. I figured the quality would be lower just because it wasn’t as complicated or involved as many other sourdough recipes. I was so wrong and SO pleasantly surprised by the results! I’ve made 3 loaves now and they come out perfect every time! Not only do they look pretty, but they taste amazing as well! This will be my go-to recipe for sure.
I’m so glad that you have found success and love it as much as I do! Welcome to the sourdough club Cal!
Made my first loaf. It taste great. Is the inside supposed to be a bit chewy? The bottom crust is very hard, but not burned. I cooked in cast iron Dutch oven.
Yep, it’s a thick sturdy chewy bread!
Thank you for this easy sourdough recipe! This is my second year trying homemade sourdough bread. Last year I had extremely mixed results using a bricolage of Internet advice on hydration, crumb, proofing temperatures, flour types, starter feedings, and enough microbiology & organic chemistry lessons to qualify as a Ph.D curriculum.
YOUR RECIPE, on the other hand, should be the starting point for anyone trying to learn the craft. At face value, this sourdough recipe will indeed result in a viable, attractive, and tasty boule…as long as the starter is viable and happy. Using these steps, I’ve been able to make small tweaks to “dial in” the process to perfection for my baking environment. Nevertheless, I’ve been able to bake one boule a day for the past week and it really took very, very little time and effort. The largest challenge is with the last step — waiting for the gorgeous heap of baked goodness to cool completely before defiling with my bread knife. Cheers!
Yes!!! This is how I feel about it too and once you get this recipe down with a working knowledge on how different elements effect your bread, you can branch out! It’s such a good place to start and get some experience under your belt. Thank you for the review!