The Best Golden Sourdough Bread Recipe | Easy for Beginners (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to a good sourdough starter? ›

There is no single best ratio, but I've found a ratio of 1:5:5 fed twice daily at 12-hour intervals to produce a sourdough starter that's strong and healthy. This ratio corresponds to 20% ripe starter carryover, 100% water, and 100% flour (a mix of whole grain rye and white flour) at each feeding.

To achieve that crispy golden crust you want all that steam that comes out of the bread when it hits the hot oven to shoot up at the top of the dutch oven, hit the surface, and come right back down. It also helps your bread cook more evenly since you are essentially baking it in an oven, within an oven.

Whole wheat flour is an excellent choice for creating a sourdough starter due to its nutrient-rich composition and potential for fostering a robust microbial community.

The best way to know when sourdough bread is done without a thermometer is to knock on the bottom of the loaf with your fingers. If the bread sounds hollow, then you know the sourdough is cooked through. The bread should also look golden brown and feel light when you pick it up.

It would be best if you discarded some portion of your starter each time you feed it unless you want to continue to let it grow. Eventually, you need to discard the used “food” (flour and water) that's been used to sustain your starter during the last fermentation period.

Essentially making a sourdough starter is not an overly difficult process, but it does require a commitment of time and patience, as well as some dedicated equipment. Sometimes there are factors which mean making sourdough starter could be difficult. Perhaps you're working long hours or go out of town regularly.

Fermentation Process

You might notice that if your dough is under fermented, no amount of extended cooking time will make your sourdough brown up. What is this? The sugars necessary for the crust to darken just aren't there. This is actually a very common sourdough bread problem.

A light brush with an egg wash will give you a nice color to your bread every time. Crack one egg into a bowl and add about ½ teaspoon of water. Wisk the egg well. After your dough is formed and ready for the oven, brush a light coating of the egg wash onto the dough and put it in the oven.

There are two main acids produced in a sourdough culture: lactic acid and acetic acid. Acetic acid, or vinegar, is the acid that gives sourdough much of its tang. Giving acetic acid-producing organisms optimal conditions to thrive and multiply will produce a more tangy finished product.

Distilled water might seem like a good option, but it's actually not great for your little yeasty friends. They need some minerals and stuff that are usually filtered out in the distillation process. So go for filtered or bottled water instead, and your starter will be living its best life in no time.

Can you buy sourdough bread mix for bread machine? ›

A premium white bread mix with dried rye sourdough culture. For automatic breadmakers or hand baking.

What Flour Should I Be Feeding My Sourdough Starter With? You can feed your sourdough starter with any flour you like, as long as it provides the starches the wild yeast in your sourdough starter need to convert to Co2 to rise your dough. The flour you choose should always be unbleached flour.

If your sourdough crust won't brown up in the oven, chances are it is under fermented. Under fermented sourdough will also struggle to brown up in the toaster because of the high moisture content still in the bread. This would normally reduce during cooking, but it won't happen this way if the dough is under fermented.

In every sourdough bread recipe, you'll find at least one set of stretch and folds during bulk fermentation. They are called sets because you typically perform four stretches and four folds during this process, one in each direction of the dough – so, North, South, East, and West.

The longer you go in between feedings, the more acetic acid your starter will develop. This acid creates a more sour flavor.

because it reacts with the acid from the sourdough starter to create carbon dioxide gas, which provides leavening. You don't want to add baking soda to the starter you are maintaining, because baking soda will raise the pH. The yeast will not grow unless the pH is around 3.5.

A "100% hydration sourdough starter" means it's 1 part water and 1 part flour. In other words, for every gram of flour there's a corresponding gram of water, hence 100% of the flour is hydrated. This is the easiest starter to maintain since most recipes are written with a 1:1 ratio in mind.

While the age of your starter won't make your bread any better — turns out, only good sourdough practices can do that — it's a link in the long legacy of sourdough, one of the oldest forms of baking that exists. Whether your starter is a week or a decade old, you can become part of that lineage as well.