Simple Sourdough Bread Recipe for Beginners

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There’s a jar of sourdough starter on my counter that’s older than Lochlan. I named it, which feels silly to admit, but you spend enough mornings feeding something and it starts to feel like a small pet. It bubbles up every day around noon, and when it does, I know I have a few hours to turn it into bread. That’s the whole rhythm of it, and once it clicked for me, baking bread stopped feeling like a project and started feeling like part of the day.

I want to give you a simple sourdough bread recipe that actually works in a real life, the kind with a baby on your hip and days where you don’t have much to give. Most of the recipes I found when I started were beautiful and also a little intimidating, full of numbers and gadgets and words I didn’t know. This is the version I wish I’d had. Four ingredients, a little patience, and a loaf that comes out of the oven looking like you know what you’re doing.

What You Actually Need (Just Four Things)

Sourdough is flour, water, salt, and a live starter. That is it. No commercial yeast, no sugar, no oil. The starter is the whole trick, and it’s just flour and water that you’ve kept alive long enough for wild yeast to move in.

Here is what goes in one loaf:

500 grams of bread flour. 350 grams of water, a little warm. 100 grams of active, bubbly starter. 10 grams of salt.

I weigh everything on a small kitchen scale, and I’d tell you to do the same. Cups are where beginner sourdough goes wrong. A gram is a gram no matter whose kitchen you’re in, and it takes the guessing out of it. That one change did more for my bread than anything else.

If you don’t have a starter yet, you have two easy options. You can make one from just flour and water over about a week, feeding it daily until it’s bubbly and doubling. Or you can ask a friend who bakes, because anyone with a starter has extra and most of us are happy to hand some over. That’s how mine began, a spoonful in a jar from a woman at church, and it’s still going years later. A dried starter mailed to you works too.

You don’t need much equipment either. A big bowl, the scale, and a Dutch oven to bake in. Everything else is nice but not necessary. I baked my first dozen loaves with a bowl and a piece of parchment, no fancy basket, and they were good.

The Rhythm Is the Recipe

The thing nobody tells you is that sourdough is less about the steps and more about the timing. Once you find a rhythm that fits your day, the actual work is maybe fifteen minutes spread across it.

Mine looks like this. I feed the starter in the morning when I make coffee. By early afternoon it’s doubled and bubbly, so I mix the dough then. It sits on the counter all afternoon while I do folds here and there between whatever Lochlan and I are up to. In the evening I shape it and put it in the fridge overnight. The next morning I bake it before the day gets going, and the house smells like a bakery by the time Danny is up.

That overnight rest in the fridge is your friend. It means you are never trapped by the dough. You can bake it the next morning, or wait another day if life happens. Sourdough is patient. On my bad days, the days my body has nothing extra to give, the dough just waits in the cold until I’m ready. There is something kind about that.

The Actual Steps

Here is the whole thing, start to finish.

Feed your starter and wait until it doubles and looks bubbly and alive, usually four to six hours. Drop a little into a glass of water. If it floats, it’s ready.

In a big bowl, stir the 350 grams of warm water into the 100 grams of starter until it goes milky. Add the 500 grams of flour and the 10 grams of salt. Mix with your hand until there are no dry patches. It will be shaggy and sticky and look like nothing. That’s right.

Cover the bowl and let it rest 45 minutes. Then do your first set of folds. Wet your hand, grab one side of the dough, stretch it up, and fold it over the middle. Turn the bowl a quarter and do it again, four or five times around. That’s one set. Do a set every half hour or so for the first two or three hours, whenever you walk past. This is what gives the bread its structure, and it replaces all the kneading.

Let the dough rise on the counter until it’s puffy and grown by about half, another few hours depending on how warm your kitchen is. Then tip it out, shape it into a round by pulling the edges into the center and flipping it seam-side down, and let it tighten up on the counter for a few minutes. Put it in a floured bowl or basket, cover it, and into the fridge overnight.

In the morning, put your Dutch oven in the oven and heat it to 475. When it’s screaming hot, tip the cold dough onto a piece of parchment, score the top with one confident slash, and lower it in. Lid on, bake 20 minutes. Lid off, bake another 20 to 25 until it’s deep golden brown. Let it cool all the way before you cut it, which is the hardest part.

What I Wish Someone Had Told Me

Your first loaf might be flat, and that is normal. Mine was. It usually means the starter wasn’t quite strong enough or the dough proofed too long. Neither is a failure, it’s just information. Feed your starter twice before you bake next time and watch the dough instead of the clock.

A dense, gummy crumb almost always means it needed more time to rise, or you cut it too soon while it was still steaming inside. Wait for it to cool. Really wait.

And don’t throw out the starter you scoop off before feeding. That discard makes the best pancakes and crackers, and I keep a jar of it in the fridge for exactly that. Nothing here has to be wasted, which is part of why I love it.

Sourdough asks you to slow down, to work with time instead of against it. That is the same thing I’m always trying to do in the rest of my life here, so it fits. Start one loaf this week. Keep the starter alive. The rest comes with practice, and there’s no rush.