A Beginner's Guide To Sourdough

Your first sourdough loaf will almost certainly be wrong in some way. The crumb might be too dense, the crust pale, or the shape oddly flat. That is fine. The goal of a first bake is not a perfect loaf; it is a loaf that teaches you something. This guide gives you a working formula, a realistic schedule, and enough context to understand what you are watching for at each step.

What a Sourdough Starter Actually Is

A sourdough starter is a mixture of flour and water that ferments on its own, capturing wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria from the flour and the environment. Those organisms eat the sugars in the flour and produce carbon dioxide (which raises the dough) and acids (which give sourdough its characteristic tang and contribute to shelf life).

You need a starter that is active and at its peak before you mix dough. An active starter, when fed with fresh flour and water, should roughly double in volume within four to eight hours at room temperature (around 75F / 24C). If it does not reliably double, your bread will not rise properly.

Building a starter from scratch takes about seven to fourteen days of daily feedings. If you are starting from zero, a dedicated starter guide will walk you through that process more thoroughly than this article can. Once you have an active starter, come back here.

The Formula

This is a simple country loaf at 75% hydration. It is forgiving enough for a first bake but open-crumbed enough to be satisfying once you dial it in.

Baker’s percentages:

Ingredient	Weight	Percentage
Bread flour	450g	90%
Whole wheat flour	50g	10%
Water (total)	375g	75%
Active starter	100g	20%
Fine sea salt	10g	2%
Total	985g	197%

Note that the starter contributes both flour and water to the total. If your starter is at 100% hydration (equal parts flour and water by weight), each 100g of starter is roughly 50g flour and 50g water. Adjust your percentages in the baker’s percentages calculator if you want to account for that precisely.

The whole wheat adds flavor and some fermentation speed. If you only have bread flour, use 500g of bread flour and drop nothing else.

A Weekend Schedule

Sourdough rewards planning more than it rewards technique in the early stages. Here is a schedule for a loaf you mix Saturday morning and bake Sunday.

Friday evening (8 to 9 PM): Feed your starter. Use a 1:5:5 ratio (1 part starter to 5 parts flour to 5 parts water by weight). Leave it at room temperature overnight.

Saturday morning (7 to 8 AM): Your starter should be at or near its peak, domed or slightly starting to fall. Combine flour and most of the water (hold back about 50g). Mix until no dry flour remains. Cover and rest 30 to 45 minutes (this is the autolyse).

Saturday morning (8 to 9 AM): Add the starter and the salt dissolved in the remaining water. Squeeze and fold the dough until everything is fully incorporated. The dough will feel shaggy at first and come together as you work.

Saturday (9 AM to 3 PM): Bulk fermentation. The dough should rise by 50 to 75% and feel lighter and airy. During the first two hours, do four to six sets of stretch-and-fold, one set every 30 minutes. After that, leave it undisturbed. See the stretch and coil folds guide for technique.

Saturday (3 PM): Pre-shape, rest 20 minutes, final shape. Use the shaping method that matches your target form. A round loaf (boule) is the easiest starting point. See the shaping guide for step-by-step instructions.

Saturday (3:30 PM): Place the shaped loaf in a floured banneton, seam side up. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

Sunday morning (8 to 9 AM): Preheat your oven to 500F (260C) with a Dutch oven inside, for at least 45 minutes. Score the cold loaf directly from the refrigerator. Lower to a baking sheet or Dutch oven liner, bake covered for 20 minutes, uncover, reduce to 450F (230C), and bake another 20 to 25 minutes until deep brown.

What to Watch For at Each Step

Knowing what a step is supposed to look like is more useful than memorizing times.

During the autolyse, the dough should be shaggy and rough. That is correct. When you add the starter and salt, you are aiming for full incorporation, not smoothness. After each stretch-and-fold set, the dough should noticeably tighten. By the end of bulk, the surface should look smooth and slightly domed, and the dough should jiggle as a mass rather than slumping.

When you turn the dough onto the bench for pre-shaping, it should hold its shape briefly before slowly spreading. If it spreads immediately and looks like a puddle, bulk went too long. If it tears instead of stretching, it may be too cold or too tight.

After scoring, the cuts should open cleanly. In the oven, watch for spring in the first 15 minutes; the loaf should visibly puff before you uncover it.

Common Mistakes

Using a starter that is not at peak. If you mix dough when the starter is still rising or has already fallen past its peak and started to deflate significantly, fermentation will be sluggish or uneven. Feed your starter the night before and mix the dough when it hits its dome.

Skipping bulk fermentation signs. A timer tells you nothing about whether your dough is ready. Temperature affects fermentation speed dramatically. A dough fermenting at 68F (20C) will take two to three hours longer than the same dough at 78F (26C). Watch for the 50 to 75% rise and the lightened, airy texture, not the clock.

Proofing the shaped loaf in a warm banneton. Room-temperature proofing works but is risky for beginners because the window between ready and over-proofed is narrow. The refrigerator slows fermentation, extends the window to hours, and makes scoring a cold, firm dough much easier. When in doubt, cold-proof overnight.

Cutting into the loaf too early. The crumb sets as the loaf cools. Cutting while still warm results in a gummy interior even if the bake was otherwise correct. Wait at least one hour, two if you can stand it.

After Your First Bake

Look at the crumb. If it is uniformly dense with no air holes, bulk fermentation was probably too short or the starter was underactive. If the crumb is open near the top and dense at the bottom, the dough may have been over-proofed or shaped too loosely. If the crust is pale, the oven was not hot enough or baking time was too short.

Each flaw points at something specific. That is the value of a learning loaf. For your second bake, change one variable at a time so you know what made the difference.

When you want to understand how hydration level changes the formula, the hydration guide has a full breakdown of what happens from 60% to 90%. When you are ready to improve your scoring, the scoring guide covers angles, blade depth, and the patterns that open reliably in a home oven.