Sourdough Bread
A traditional sourdough bread recipe is a timeless way to enjoy homemade bread with rich flavor and a perfectly chewy texture. Made with just flour, water, salt, and a natural sourdough starter, this rustic loaf has been baked for centuries and remains a favorite for its wholesome simplicity.
With its crisp golden crust and soft, airy interior, classic sourdough bread is as versatile as it is delicious. Perfect for sandwiches, toast, or simply enjoyed warm with butter, it’s a recipe that brings the craft of artisan baking right into your kitchen. Once you’ve tried making your own authentic sourdough bread, you’ll never look at store-bought loaves the same way again.
Ingredients
This recipe is 70% hydration which is widely considered the ideal sweet spot for a balance of easy handling and an open, airy crumb. The water content is 41% so the loaf is actually quite light.
| Bread flour (unbleached white organic) | 450 g |
| Water | 300 g |
| Salt | 10 g |
| Starter | 100 g |
The starter is made from 50/50 water/flour, I feed the starter the day before and let it rise overnight so I know it will be very active before I make the bread.
Making the starter is a whole other page but a big secret is that you should use 33/33/33 white/whole wheat/rye flour, if you want your starter to grow fast., If you just use white flour it will take forever.
Method
To make the bread it is not difficult but requires a lot of steps and is best learnt by watching videos.
There are literary thousands of videos on Youtube about making sourdough bread and the starter, there are many different ways of doing it and you just have to watch a lot of them until you find something that makes sense to you and you think you can follow their method and instructions.
But I do recommend the tip about using 3 different flours for the starter, it worked quickly for me after wasting a lot of time using just plain flour.
I can tell you that I bake in a dutch oven, 30 minutes at 450 F with the lid on then 10 minutes at 400 F with the lid off.
