Sourdough for Beginners: The Complete Guide

Sourdough for beginners comes down to four things: a lively starter, a simple dough of flour, water and salt, enough time for that dough to ferment, and a hot oven. Make a starter over about a week, build a levain, ferment the dough for several hours, shape and proof it (often overnight in the fridge), then bake it hot and covered.

That is the whole map. The rest of this guide fills in each stop, gives you a first-loaf formula you can trust, and helps you work out what went wrong when a loaf disappoints. It will happen. Every sourdough baker has a drawer of flat, gummy early loaves, and every one of them taught something.

What do you need to start baking sourdough?

You need less than the internet suggests. Here is what actually earns its place:

• A digital kitchen scale. The single most useful tool. Sourdough is about ratios, and cups of flour vary too much to be reliable.
• A glass jar for the starter, with a loose lid. Clear glass lets you see the rise.
• A large bowl for mixing and bulk fermentation. A clear, straight-sided container is even better, because you can see how much the dough has grown.
• A bench scraper for handling sticky dough and shaping.
• A proofing basket (banneton) or a bowl lined with a well-floured tea towel.
• A Dutch oven or other heavy lidded pot that can take 500°F (260°C).
• A razor blade or lame (a sharp serrated knife will do) for scoring.
• An instant-read thermometer, useful for checking water temperature and doneness.

Ingredients: flour, water, salt. That’s it. You do not need commercial yeast, sugar or oil.

Step 1: Get an active starter

Everything starts with the starter, a fermented mix of flour and water that carries wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria. Colorado State University Extension points out that wild yeast is already on the flour and in the air; you do not need to capture it from anywhere special.

You can get a starter from a friend, buy a dried one, or make your own. Making your own takes about a week. King Arthur Baking’s method starts with whole wheat or pumpernickel flour and water, then moves to daily, then twice-daily feedings of all-purpose flour and water at a warm room temperature of about 70°F (21°C). Our step-by-step guide to making a sourdough starter from scratch walks through each day, including the confusing burst of bubbles that often fades around day two to four.

When is a starter ready to bake with? King Arthur’s test is simple: it should at least double in volume within about 6 to 8 hours of a feeding, with bubbles throughout and a pleasantly tangy smell. Do not rely on the popular float test alone. King Arthur notes that a starter that is still rising can float before it is truly ripe, and that whole-grain starters often sink even at their peak.

Once it is going, you keep it alive with regular feedings, either daily on the counter or weekly in the fridge. See how to feed a sourdough starter for ratios and schedules.

Step 2: Build a levain

A levain is simply a portion of starter that you feed specifically for one bake. Some bakers use their starter directly; building a separate levain keeps your main jar small and lets you time things precisely.

For the loaf below, the night before or the morning of your bake, mix:

• 20 g ripe starter
• 40 g flour
• 40 g water

That is a 1:2:2 feeding, which takes a little longer to peak than equal parts and gives you a wider window. You want it bubbly, domed and roughly doubled before you mix the dough. Whatever starter is left in the jar can be fed as usual; what you would otherwise throw away becomes sourdough discard.

A simple first-loaf formula (with baker’s percentages)

Bakers write formulas in baker’s percentages: every ingredient is expressed as a percentage of the total flour, which is always 100%. It makes formulas easy to scale and compare. A dough with 70% water is described as 70% hydration.

This is a deliberately moderate dough, wet enough for an open crumb but not so wet that it is hard to shape.

Makes one round or oval loaf. If you count the flour and water inside the levain, the true hydration is a little over 72%. If your flour is very absorbent (whole grain, high protein), you can add another 10–20 g of water next time; if the dough is soupy, hold back 25 g of water and add it only if needed.

Step 3: Mix the dough

1. In a large bowl, stir the levain into the water until it is milky.
2. Add both flours and mix by hand until no dry flour remains. The dough will be shaggy.
3. Cover and rest for 30 to 60 minutes. This rest (often called an autolyse, though strictly that term means flour and water only) lets the flour hydrate and gluten start to form on its own.
4. Sprinkle the salt over the dough with a splash of water and squeeze it through with wet fingers, then fold the dough over itself for a minute or two until the salt disappears.

Step 4: Bulk fermentation, the step that matters most

Bulk fermentation is the first rise, when the whole mass of dough ferments in one piece. It is where flavour and structure develop, and it is where most beginner loaves go wrong.

How long? It depends on temperature, and that is why recipes give ranges. King Arthur’s pain au levain bulk-ferments for about two to three hours at room temperature, with a fold partway through. A cooler kitchen can take much longer. Treat any time in a recipe as a starting estimate, then watch the dough.

Stretch and folds. Instead of kneading, give the dough three or four sets of stretch and folds in the first two hours, about 30 minutes apart. With a wet hand, grab one side of the dough, stretch it up until you feel resistance, and fold it over the top. Turn the bowl a quarter turn and repeat until you have gone all the way around. Each set takes under a minute. You will feel the dough go from slack to smooth and springy.

How do you know bulk is done? Look for:

• Noticeably more volume, and a domed, slightly rounded surface
• Bubbles on the top and along the sides of the container
• A dough that jiggles as a whole when you shake the bowl
• Edges that pull away from the bowl cleanly, and a light, airy feel

If it still looks dense and flat, give it more time. Under-fermented dough is the most common cause of tight, gummy crumb. Over-fermented dough, at the other extreme, turns slack, sticky and sour-smelling and will not hold its shape.

Step 5: Pre-shape and shape

1. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured counter. Use the bench scraper to tuck it into a loose round. This is the pre-shape.
2. Leave it uncovered for 20 to 30 minutes so the gluten relaxes.
3. For the final shape, flip the round so the floured side is down. Fold the bottom third up, the sides in, then roll it from the top towards you, building tension on the surface. Drag it towards you on an unfloured patch of counter to tighten the skin.
4. Place it seam side up in a floured banneton or towel-lined bowl. Rice flour is the best non-stick dusting.

Shaping takes practice. A loaf that spreads in the oven is usually under-shaped (not enough surface tension), over-proofed, or both.

Step 6: Cold proof (the overnight retard)

You can proof the shaped loaf at room temperature until it is puffy, but most home bakers prefer to cover it and put it in the fridge overnight. King Arthur’s pain au levain allows either about two hours at room temperature or up to 24 hours refrigerated.

A cold proof has three advantages: it moves your bake to a convenient time, it deepens the flavour, and a chilled loaf is firmer and much easier to score cleanly.

The poke test. Flour a finger and press it about half an inch into the dough. If it springs back quickly and completely, it needs more time. If it springs back slowly and leaves a small dent, it is ready. If the dent stays and the dough feels fragile, it is over-proofed: bake it right away, and expect a flatter loaf.

Step 7: Bake

1. Put your Dutch oven, lid on, in the oven and heat to 500°F (260°C) for 45 to 60 minutes. A properly hot pot is what gives you oven spring.
2. Turn the cold loaf out onto a square of parchment, seam side down.
3. Score it with one confident cut about a quarter inch (6 mm) deep, at a shallow angle, along one side of the loaf. The score gives the loaf a place to expand.
4. Using the parchment as a sling, lower the loaf into the hot pot. Cover it and turn the oven down to 450°F (230°C).
5. Bake covered for 20 minutes, so the steam trapped inside keeps the crust soft while the loaf rises.
6. Remove the lid and bake another 20 to 25 minutes, until the crust is deep brown. King Arthur’s pain au levain is done when the inside reaches 195°F (90°C); many bakers take lean sourdough a little higher for a drier crumb.
7. Cool the loaf on a rack for at least an hour, ideally two, before slicing. The crumb is still setting as it cools, and cutting early makes it gummy.

No Dutch oven? Bake on a preheated stone or steel and pour about 1½ cups of boiling water into a preheated cast iron pan on the rack below to make steam. That is how King Arthur’s pain au levain is baked.

A sample schedule

One way to fit a loaf around a working day:

Shift everything earlier or later to suit your kitchen’s temperature and your life.

Troubleshooting your first sourdough loaves

Where to go next

Once you have one loaf under your belt, you can play: swap in more whole grain flour, try a little rye, add seeds or olives at the last fold. Meanwhile, the discard from your feedings piles up fast. Turn it into crisp discard crackers or fluffy discard pancakes, or browse the full list of sourdough discard recipes.

If you are baking sourdough because you heard it is better for you, read is sourdough bread healthy? for what the research actually shows. And if anyone in your house has celiac disease, please read is sourdough gluten-free? first. The short answer is no.

For more from-scratch staples, visit our pantry hub and the homestead hub.