If you love fresh sourdough bread with that deliciously crispy crust and light and airy crumb – this Beginner Sourdough Bread recipe is for you. I have broken down the process into simple step-by-step instructions, making it easy enough for a total beginner. Use this tried and true recipe for making beautiful loaves of fresh sourdough bread!
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what is sourdough?
Let’s start at the very beginning. What is sourdough bread? Great question! Sourdough bread is bread that has been leavened naturally, by naturally occurring yeast in the form of a sourdough starter as opposed to using commercial yeast or a chemical leavening agent such as baking powder or baking soda.
what is a sourdough starter?
A sourdough starter is a live fermented culture of fresh flour and water. Once combined, the culture will begin to ferment and cultivate the natural yeasts found in our environment. A small portion is added to your bread dough to make it rise, assuming you are using a healthy and active starter. Commercial yeast is not required.
This makes sense when you understand that natural “wild” yeast is all around us. It can be found in a bag of flour, in the air, on your hands etc. When we are able to capture that yeast and nurture it enough to grow and strengthen, we can add it to many different kinds of recipes. You can make your own sourdough starter at home or you could purchase a starter that has been dehydrated at it’s strongest state and rehydrate it at home.
how to care for a sourdough starter
In order to keep your starter alive you have to feed it.
To feed your sourdough starter, you simply combine equal parts starter, flour and water by weight. give it a good stir and let it sit (covered but not sealed tight- a coffee filter and a rubber band work great) until it expands and there are lots of visible bubbles. It’s good to use a glass jar or other clear container so you’re able to see the bubbles beneath the surface. If you’re feeding an already active starter, it will be ready to bake with after 4-6 hours.
Because the starter multiplies each time you feed it, you probably don’t want to feed all of it every time- or you would end up with a LOT of starter. And it would require a large amount of flour and water to sufficiently feed a large amount of starter. One hundred grams of each: sourdough starter, flour and water is a good amount to feed each time and discard the rest.
Now, “discard” does not mean actually throw it away. There are many sourdough discard recipes that you can make to use up your extra starter without wasting it.