You mix flour and water, wait, and somewhere in that wait the dough decides whether it wants to become bread or a brick. That's the part nobody tells you. Most recipes hand you a list of ingredients and a timer, then act surprised when your first loaf comes out dense enough to use as a doorstop.
I've made that doorstop. More than once. The good news is that making sourdough bread from scratch—starter and all—isn't complicated. It's just slow, and slow gives you room to read what's actually happening instead of following a schedule that doesn't match your kitchen.
Key Takeaways
- Your starter is the whole project. A weak starter means a flat loaf, no matter how good your technique is.
- You need exactly four ingredients: flour, water, salt, and a mature starter. No commercial yeast.
- Temperature controls your timeline far more than any recipe does. A cold kitchen doubles everything.
- Most beginner failures trace back to under-fermentation, not over-kneading or bad luck.
- Cold-retarding the dough overnight in the fridge is the single easiest way to improve flavor and handling.
- You don't need a Dutch oven, a banneton, or a proofing basket to start. A covered pot and a bowl will do.
Build your starter first, and give it real time
Here's the thing nobody says clearly enough: you cannot make sourdough bread from scratch in a day. The scratch part is the starter, and a starter needs somewhere between five and fourteen days before it's ready to raise anything.
I rushed this the first time. Day four, I saw bubbles, got excited, baked a loaf, and pulled a hockey puck out of the oven. Bubbles on day four are often just bacteria fighting it out, not the stable yeast colony you need.
How to make sourdough starter
Combine equal weights of flour and water in a jar. Fifty grams of each is plenty to start. Stir, cover loosely, leave it on the counter.
Then repeat once a day: throw away all but fifty grams, feed it another fifty and fifty. That discard step matters. Skip it and you're diluting the colony instead of concentrating it.
- Days 1–3: quiet. Maybe a few bubbles. Possible smell of wet cardboard or nail polish—that's normal and it passes.
- Days 4–7: activity picks up, then often stalls. This stall is the most common reason people quit. Don't.
- Days 8–14: it rises predictably, roughly doubles, and smells like yogurt or beer.
Ready means it doubles within four to six hours of feeding, reliably, two days running. Not "it has bubbles." Doubles.
Whole grain flour speeds this up noticeably in my experience—rye especially. If you're on day nine and nothing's happening, swap half your flour for whole wheat or rye for three feedings and watch what changes.
The ingredients are four things, and the water amount matters more than you think
A basic sourdough loaf is flour, water, salt, starter. That's it. The variables are proportions and time, and proportions are where beginners get lost because recipes quote grams and percentages without explaining what the percentage does.
Sourdough bread ingredients and what each one does
For one standard loaf, here's a ratio I've landed on after a lot of loaves that were too wet to shape:
- Bread flour: 500 g. Higher protein gives you structure. All-purpose works but the dough feels softer and slacker.
- Water: 325–375 g, which is 65–75% hydration. Start at 65%. Wet dough is harder, not better.
- Salt: 10 g. Skip it and the loaf tastes flat and the gluten stays weak.
- Mature starter: 100 g, active and recently fed.
That's roughly 20% starter by flour weight. More starter means faster fermentation and a more sour flavor; less means a slower, milder loaf. There's no correct number, only a tradeoff.
One thing I got wrong for months: I kept adding water because the dough "looked dry." It didn't. I was just impatient with mixing. Every extra splash made shaping harder the next morning.
| Hydration | Feel | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| 65% | Firm, easy to handle | First loaves, sandwich bread |
| 70% | Slightly tacky but manageable | Everyday boules |
| 75% | Sticky, needs wet hands | Open crumb, once you're confident |
| 80%+ | Slack, hard to shape | Experienced bakers only |
The actual timeline, hour by hour
Recipes that say "rest until doubled" are useless if you don't know what doubled looks like or how long it should take. So here's a real schedule. This is for a kitchen around 21°C.
- Hour 0: Mix flour and water only. Rest 45 minutes. This autolyse step hydrates the flour and makes everything easier to work with.
- Hour 1: Add starter and salt. Squeeze it through the dough with wet hands until it's uniform.
- Hours 1–4: Four sets of stretch-and-folds, 30 minutes apart. Grab one side, stretch up, fold over. Rotate. Four folds per set.
- Hours 4–6: Bulk fermentation. Dough should rise 50–75% and feel airy, jiggly, and slightly domed.
- Hour 6: Shape into a boule or batard, place in a floured bowl or basket.
- Hours 6–20: Cold retard in the fridge. Overnight is fine. This is where flavor develops.
- Next morning: Bake at 245°C in a covered pot, 20 minutes covered, 20–25 uncovered.
My kitchen sits around 18°C in winter, and every one of those windows stretches by roughly a third. In summer, the bulk phase can finish an hour early. Temperature is the real recipe. The numbers above are a starting point, not a law.
No, you don't need to knead
Sourdough doesn't require kneading because time and the stretch-and-fold sets build gluten for you. Kneading speeds up a process that's already happening. You're just giving it a nudge every half hour.
Which is genuinely convenient. I used to bake on weekday evenings after work, folding dough between household chores. The whole active time per loaf is maybe twenty minutes, spread across a day.
What goes wrong, and how to read it
Every failure tells you something specific. Learn the translation and you stop guessing.
The loaf is dense and didn't rise much
Under-fermentation, almost every time. Either your starter wasn't active enough or your bulk phase was too short. Next time, extend the bulk and watch for that jiggly dome instead of trusting the clock.
The dough is too sticky to shape
Usually over-hydration, not under-flouring. Wet your hands, use a bench scraper, and shape quickly. Adding flour at shaping time makes the crumb tight.
It barely rose in the oven
Two suspects: the dough was over-proofed in the fridge, or your oven wasn't hot enough. A covered pot traps steam, which lets the loaf expand before the crust sets. If your pot isn't covered, that's your missing spring.
Questions I get a lot
Can I make sourdough bread without a starter?
Strictly speaking, no—the starter is what makes it sourdough. But you can shortcut the process using commercial yeast as a leavening assist while still fermenting for flavor. That's a hybrid loaf, not a true one. It rises reliably and tastes decent, but you lose the tang that comes from a long wild fermentation.
Can I make a quick sourdough bread with starter?
Quick means skipping the cold retard, not skipping fermentation. Mix in the morning, bulk through the day, bake the same evening. You'll get bread. You'll get less flavor, and the crust won't develop the same depth. The overnight fridge rest is cheap. I'd keep it.
What do I do with all the discard?
You'll generate a lot of it while feeding the starter. Don't throw it out. It makes excellent pancakes, crackers, and waffles—the tang works especially well in anything with butter. I keep a jar in the fridge and add to it all week, then cook it off on a Sunday.
Start with one loaf, not a system
The temptation is to buy a banneton, a dough scraper, a Dutch oven, and a proofing box before you've baked anything. Don't. Your first three loaves will teach you more than that equipment will, and you'll know by then what you actually want to buy.
The loaf I'm proudest of wasn't the one with the best crumb. It was loaf number eleven—the first one where I stopped checking the clock and just felt the dough. It had risen when it was ready, not when the recipe said. That's the whole skill, and it only comes from baking a few bad ones first.
