I went to visit my family over the holidays and asked my niece if she’d teach me how to make sourdough bread while I was there. Sourdough bread was all the rage during covid quarantine, but I’m just now jumping on the bandwagon. As a millennial who came of age in the late 90s/early 2000s, I had terrible body image role models, think Tara Reid, Kate Moss, skinny skinny skinny. Also add in the toxic diet culture rhetoric of carbs being evil (along with eggs, fat, dairy, pretty much anything with flavor). So I’ve always thought that I should just avoid bread.

Well I’m in my forties now and over that. I want to eat bread. But not grocery store bread that is taste-less, texture-less, borderline always stale, and has an ingredient list a mile long. I wanted something that was good for me, enter my niece and her exquisite culinary skills.

She taught me how to make sourdough bread and then gave me sourdough starter to fly home with (I doubled bagged it in my checked luggage and it survived!).

I got home and immediately went to work with the instructions she gave me. It was a flop.

So I did what anyone would do, I went down a pinterest and google rabbit hole. According to the interwebs, I had some work to with my starter. After feeding the starter, it should grow in size and be bubbly; mine was not.

After a little bit of work, I now have a healthy starter and I was able to create a delicious loaf of sourdough bread!

Ready to learn too? Below I will share the recipe and tips I learned. It is NOT as hard or intimidating as one might think so don’t give up!

What You Need

Sourdough starter (keep scrolling)
Water
Salt
Bread Flour
Olive Oil
Digital kitchen scale
Dutch Oven
Plastic Wrap
Parchment Paper

Sourdough Starter

My niece bequeathed some of her starter to me, I don’t know how to make it from scratch. However there are a ton of websites out there with recipes and I’m willing to bet that a friendly, neighborly social media post asking for a donation of surplus starter would yield results.

Once you make* or obtain* your starter you will need to “feed” it to make it bubbly and expand.

*Note: You will need to store sourdough starter in a glass jar with an airtight lid. Weigh your jar BEFORE you put starter in it. You need to know how much the jar weighs when it is empty, this is crucial.

Feeding Sourdough Starter

On your digital kitchen scale, weigh your starter.

2. Subtract the weight of the jar and then do a little math to figure out how much flour and water to add.

For example: Let’s say the scale reads 200 grams. You know that your jar weighs 100 grams when it’s empty, therefore you have 100 grams of starter. So you would need to add 50 grams of warm water and 50 grams of bread flour.

3. Stir it together until all the flour is incorporated, scraping every last bit off the spoon (a mini rubber spatula works well).

4. Put it somewhere warm, not hot. A good place for me was the microwave with the door cracked open (the light bulb will warm up the microwave). Leave the lid off the jar, but cover it with a paper towel to prevent anything from getting in. It needs around 70 degrees to ferment properly. Live somewhere warm and your kitchen is hot?…it should ferment on the counter just fine.

Tip: I microwaved a dish towel first before and wrapped it around the jar and then left it in the microwave with the door cracked open.

5. Leave it there for as long as it needs to ferment and start to bubble. If it’s been 24 hours and there still aren’t any bubbles, then feed it again (weigh it and adjust the measurements) and make sure it’s warm.

Pre-feeding:

Post-feeing:

See all those little bubbles in there? This is good.

Now that your starter is ready, you can make your dough. It’s pretty easy from here.

Making the Dough

Pour 350 grams of warm water into a mixing bowl. This is the bowl the dough will rise in so make sure it’s deep enough.
Add 50 grams of your sourdough starter. The starter should float. If it sinks then it’s not ready.
Add 500 grams of bread flour
Add 10 grams of salt
Mix together with hands until flour is absorbed. Do not knead. It won’t look pretty, don’t worry.
Place a very damp towel over bowl and let rest in a warm* oven for one hour.
Tip: Turn the oven light on, it will warm it up. Or warm the oven a bit and then turn it off and crack the door. You don’t want it too hot.
After one hour, scrap sides of bowl with hands and form into more of a ball shape. Do not knead it, or squish it too much, you want the bubbles in there. It still won’t look pretty, but keep going.
Spray plastic wrap with olive oil and cover bowl.
Place somewhere warm to rise for 1 hour.
After one hour, stretch and fold the sides - pull up from edge and fold over to middle, rotate dough and do it on each side.
Re-cover with plastic wrap and put it back in the warm stop to rise for another 8-12 hours. If you’re putting it back in the oven, then make sure the oven light is off, it’ll get too warm for that length of time.

Baking the Bread

Preheat oven to 450
Sprinkle bread flour on the counter
Stretch and fold on all four sides, turn upside down, form into a ball. Do not work the dough too much, do not knead.
Place on parchment paper and into Dutch oven
Using a serrated knife, make a score on top of dough ball
Bake with lid on for 30 minutes then remove the lid and bake for another 30 minutes
Remove from Dutch oven for cooling, cool for at least an hour