The busy people's guide to baking sourdough

(a.k.a. The non-trad-wife’s guide to fitting bread baking - an extremely approachable hobby (even if it may not look that way!) - into your life)

The secret to good bread? Good ingredients.

That's it!

Our sourdough starts with 50% freshly milled whole wheat flour. Order it in our shop, don't stress, and bake away!

[Don’t feel quite ready for sourdough? This recipe for no-knead bread is a great way to get into bread baking.]

Sourdough is easy to make.

I promise. Below I lay out the bread making process I’ve honed for myself over the past ten-ish years that has adapted to my life as I’ve gone through a lot of job, life, house, and pandemic transitions. 

Don’t be intimidated by all the hype, content, and apparent precision out there about bread baking. Humans have been making bread for thousands of years, perhaps even before we started farming 10,000 years ago (meaning when we first started to domesticate wheat, of course!). Before scales, proofers, induction steam ovens, commercially available yeast, electric countertop mills, we were making bread. While technology has made it easier to bake bread, it has also made the whole process a bit more convoluted and unnecessarily specific than it needs to be.

Below is my attempt to show the flexibility and inexactitude we can bring to making some unrefined bread with wonderful ingredients (including freshly-milled flour), including some timing variations to suit diverse schedules: 

Baking sourdough consists of four key elements:

1. A recently fed, active starter,
2. A recipe to bake bread with that starter,
3. A process to turn that recipe + fed starter into delicious bread, and
4. Equipment to measure, mix, and bake. (The basics are: a food scale, a couple different sized mixing bowls, a sharp knife, a bench scraper, and a dutch oven. This will be detailed in a later post.)

Below is my process for baking bread on the weekend when I’m home most of the day on Saturday:

1. Active Starter:

I mix 100g of inactive starter from my fridge with 100g of AP (all purpose) flour, 20g of Whole Wheat flour, and 100ish g of warmish water (not too hot, not cold) at 7am (or when I wake up).

I usually have a pretty active starter so I only feed it once before I’m going to bake (meaning I feed it and mix my dough in the same morning). If I’ve been traveling or haven’t baked bread in a while, sometimes I’ll feed it twice (for example, 9am or 12pm or 8pm on Friday and then start this process at 7am on Saturday). Is it better to feed it twice? Yes. Necessary? No.

2. Recipe:

500 grams of Bread Flour

500 grams of Freshly-Milled Whole Wheat Flour from Unrefined Foods Co.

725 grams of warmish water (more if you are a master of sourdough shaping)

200ish grams of active starter (fed from 1. Active Starter)

20 grams of Kosher Salt

 

3. Process (see alternative timing below):

Day 1, e.g. Saturday:

• 7am: mix active starter (100g inactive starter, 100g AP flour, 20g whole wheat flour, 100g water – see 1. Active Starter)
• 10:30am: mix flours & water (500g of bread flour, 500g of whole wheat flour) in a large mixing bowl (see equipment below). I make sure my hands are wet and incorporate all the flour into water. This part of the process is referred to as an “Autolyse” and is optional, but I find it especially helpful with freshly-milled flour to ensure the water has time to absorb into all the flours.
• 12:00pm: mix in starter from 7am (200g; in the winter I use ~220g) into the flour and water. I again use my hands and recommend the “pincer method” (example)
• 12:30pm: mix in salt (20g of kosher salt) using the pincer method
• 1:00pm: stretch and fold your bread dough (example)
• 1:30pm: stretch and fold again
• 2:00pm: stretch and fold again
• 2:30pm: stretch and fold one last time (or, go ahead - do it one more time if it strikes your fancy!)
• Bulk fermentation: leave the dough for about 4-5 hours. This step allows the dough to rise and do all the good stuff that makes sourdough so delicious. You may also place the dough in the fridge at any point here. (See alternate timing note below.)
• 7pm: Preshape dough - this adds a bit of structure to the bread. This recipe yields two loaves (most sourdough recipes do). Remove dough from container, divide in half, and loosely shape into two round loaves (example).
• 7:30pm: Shape dough. I’ll admit, of all the steps, this is the one that takes practice. I highly recommend reviewing this (7:30 minute) video if you are brand new to baking bread. (If you are short on time, just review the 3 minutes starting at 2:40.) 
• Overnight: Proof dough in fridge (a.k.a. the final rise). I place my loaves in floured batards (you may also use a mixing bowl lined with a towel) inside of plastic grocery bags (to retain moisture).

Day 2, e.g. Sunday:

• In the morning: preheat oven to 450*F. Place your baking vessel (I use a cast iron dutch oven) in the oven to also preheat. I allow the oven to come to heat and then heat the vessel another 30-45 minutes. While the oven is preheating, remove loaves from the fridge.
• Bake loaves:
  • Line a cutting board with parchment paper. Invert batard or bowl over cutting board (to face the floured side up)
  • Score loaves (example, including how to remove loaf from batard, here)
  • Using parchment paper, transfer loaf to preheated dutch oven and cover with lid
  • Bake for 40-45 minutes. Remove lid after first 20 minutes
  • Allow loaves to fully cool on a baking rack before slicing

Alternative timing:

A few key principles:

1. Any of the times above could have an “ish” added to them. I have kids. Life gets complicated. I don’t even always look at the clock. You don’t need to live and die by sourdough timing, I promise. 

2. Use the fridge to move the clock later. Think of cold temperatures as a pause button. Things will still happen in there, but much slower than at room temperature. (A digression: the low temps actually enable us to do a lot of amazing things with foods to bring out flavors we never would have tasted if not for the invention of the fridge – for a fascinating read on that, see this NYT book review). The fridge is your friend to slow things down and do what you need to do. 

3. Wait to cook the second loaf if you prefer. Keep it in the fridge a couple extra days, see how it ferments (and what the fridge does to bread – good things, I promise!), and cook it when you have some free time to enjoy even more fresh bread.

Actual examples of other schedules to help you brainstorm what could work for you:

If you are not a morning person:

Day 1:

• 12pm: mix starter
• 3:30pm: mix flours and water
• 4:30pm: add starter
• 5:00pm: add salt
• 5:30-7:30pm: stretch and fold 4 times, every 30 minutes
• Bulk fermentation: Allow dough to bulk ferment at room temperature until you go to sleep, then put in fridge to continue bulk fermentation.

Day 2:

• When you’re ready in the morning: shape dough 
• Proof at room temperature for about 2 hours
• About one hour after you shaped dough, preheat oven.
• Bake as usual
• [You may also proof the dough in the fridge again if you would prefer to bake the dough later in the day or on Day 3 or 4.]

If you work outside the home and want to bake during the week:

Day 1:

• When you wake up: mix starter
• Before you leave for work (ideally after about an hour): put starter in fridge
• 5pm: mix flours and water
• 5:30pm: add starter
• 6:00pm: add salt
• 6:30pm - 8:30pm: stretch and fold 4 times, every 30 minutes
• Leave dough in fridge overnight to Bulk Ferment

Day 2:

• Either in the morning or when you come home from work, shape your dough. Then place the two shaped loaves back in the fridge again.
• Option 1 for baking: if you shaped your loaves in the morning, you have the option to bake your loaves in the evening. (Remove loaves and let proof at room temperature while the oven preheats.)

Day 3:

• Option 2 for baking: either in the morning (if you have enough time!) or after work, bake loaves.

Some final thoughts:

Why sourdough bread seems so overwhelming and intimidating are the potential variations on each of the steps above. There are literally thousands of variations on the subcomponents of these three elements. Some instructions say to do things one way, others another way. And guess what, they’re usually all right and they usually all work out. 

Stay tuned for future information on all the variables associated with bread baking, and how you can continue iterating and keeping things interesting.

How to be flexible (a.k.a. things I wouldn’t worry about if I were you):

• An exact schedule. Some of my absolute best loaves have come from dough in my fridge that I’ve *sort of* forgotten about. The fridge is your absolute best friend to adding flexibility to your bread baking schedule. Don’t have time to shape loaves at night? Or like me and it’s just the time of day where you need to sit down? Put your dough in the fridge and wait to shape it until the next morning or evening. The same goes for shaped loaves ready to be baked. The more time you keep dough fermenting in the fridge, the more flavor develops. Changing timing is a wonderful tool!
• The exact activity level of your starter. Yes, more active is better. Yes, it’s great to get in a regular cadence of feeding your starter. But do you need to? No. You can always add a little more starter to your bread dough if you’re worried your starter isn’t active enough.
  If it’s Sunday, you forget to feed your starter on Saturday, and the only thing preventing you from having bread on Monday is that you didn’t feed your starter, just feed your starter now! [You will, perhaps, get a less “lofty” bread, but it won’t sacrifice the flavor.]
• The exact number of grams of flour or water. Don’t go overboard, but I used to hem and haw over every last gram if a recipe called for 637g of bread flour. And then I realized, how could our ancestors have gotten that precise 10,000 years ago? That’s why there’s a lot of “ishs” in my recipe. Certainly I try my best to be exact, but more than any other baking, you don’t need to be that precise with bread! 
• The exact temperature of your water. You don’t need a thermometer. Don’t use water that would hurt a newborn (that can also kill the yeast), don’t use cold water (that won’t promote much activity in your bread), and use warmer water on colder days (to help offset cold room temps).
• Stretching and folding your bread exactly every 30 minutes, or exactly 4 or 5 or 3 times. This schedule worked for me in an era of remote work when we consistently stuck to meetings <25 minutes (pretty great, right?!). But sometimes a girl needs to take a nap on a Saturday and I let the dough go 40 minutes. Or usually I just forget about the dough and fold it again after an hour. It’s OK! More than anything, creating more structure in the dough earlier on is better. So if say, you need to run an hour long errand at some point in the afternoon, it’s better to push your stretch & folds closer together at the beginning (say, do three every 15-20 minutes) and then do a last stretch & fold when you get home.

Sensing a theme? Your end result may not always be the same because there is no one right way to make sourdough! (See some of my failures below…) That diversity of process is exactly what makes it such a flexible style of feeding ourselves. No matter what, your hard work will feed and nourish you and your loved ones, in the same way bread has done so through history. It’s a beautiful thing!

Thank you for exploring this with me – don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions via our contact us page and good luck exploring our freshly milled wheat!

Shop our flours here.

P.S. you may have noticed there is hardly any scientific information here about what is happening at various steps of the process. That’s not because it’s not interesting, but because I’m trying to keep this as simple and straightforward as possible

If you are very interested in sourdough baking and have the time, I highly recommend more learning. Here are a few sources that I love:

• Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast by Ken Forkish. This book is getting older - first published in 2012 - but I attribute most of what I have learned about baking bread from Ken. He speaks minimally about using freshly-milled flour, but his recipes do include whole wheat flour (for which you of course may substitute any of our flours).
• Mastering Bread by Marc Vetri. Back in 2022 I was looking to take my fresh-milled flour bread to the next level. This was a great resource for me to learn more about what makes fresh flour so different and how to harness it as such a special ingredient
• The Perfect Loaf website: this guy (why are they all guys?!) gave me a ton of information when I was getting started out. I found his videos invaluable and his descriptions of some of the factors above very helpful! My personal sourdough recipe came after a lot of trial and error, but his 50/50 sourdough loaf was absolutely an inspiration
• The Bread Code: man have I learned a lot from this German man! His videos are extremely helpful and some are linked above. He has a video for essentially any issue you may come across and I highly recommend investing time in certain “issue” areas if you have any!

Above all, enjoy the process and the results of your testing and iterating. It is an amazing thing to develop a new hobby. Even better is a hobby that involves such yummy and nourishing outputs - while supporting an agricultural system that grows a better commodity.

Thank you!