Welcome to your new addiction!

Oh sourdough… How I love you & how I have despised you. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve researched sourdough, just to close my search bar and give up. There are far too many “perfect”ways to make sourdough. After reading many different multiple page explanations, with so many different opinions, I didn’t know what to do! Once you pick the process that works for you and you become comfortable with the fundamentals, then you can venture off to the endless recipes sourdough has to offer. I’m here to share my steps that make sourdough straight to the point and eventually should become second hand nature for you too!

Sourdough is low key like having a child, you have to give it attention daily haha. No, realistically you can ignore it for a few days and it will be fine. I like to keep it completely real, no one has the time, all the time, to be perfect and do everything needed, every single day. Your sourdough starter will forgive you, for starving it.
Starving it? What are you talking about? Sourdough starter is the mother of all your fantastic creations to come. The basics: if you purchase an active starter from us, you're 10 steps ahead by not having to revive a dry starter. I will make a blog about reviving a dry starter at a later time.
If you’re not local and would love our sourdough starter, dry is the only way for us to mail it to you. I will say, ours is worth it. Im not tooting my own horn or anything but word on the street is our farm cart has the best sourdough around. Comment at the bottom for inquiries!

Step 1: Acquire a starter.

The older, the hoochier, the better! (Hooch makes it sour). If it’s active, I let mine live on the counter, in a warm spot in my kitchen. Your starter lives in a wide mouth mason jar ideally, so you can pour and stir with ease. Sourdough is messy, there is no clean sourdough jar. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. You always want to keep it covered with something like a unbleached organic cheese cloth LINKED https://amzn.to/3FVdFmr . Never completely seal, it will suffocate and die.

Step 2: Feeding your starter to keep it alive.

Every time you bake with your starter, you are removing an amount. Never use the whole jar. ANY TIME you bake with your starter you have to feed the starter again. If you aren’t baking with your starter that day and it’s hungry, you still need to feed it (looking depleted, bubble less, flat and super vinegar like when its really hungry), you must discard all but 100ml, it’s that first line on a large mason jar. You cannot feed your starter without discarding most of it. Keep in mind there are tons of “discard” recipes online. You don’t have to waste it just because you missed the active bubble stage.
My go to feeding regimen is as follows. Make sure you have approximately 2 Tbsp. - 100ml of your original sourdough starter and using a kitchen scale, LINKED https://amzn.to/49ztRHM tare out a 1 cup scoop, add 100 g. of all purpose unbleached organic flour LINKED https://amzn.to/3FSU1Hx and equally 100 g. warm water. I have found mixing it with a butter knife is the least messy. Stir it up real good and put your cheese cloth back on, along with a mason jar ring and watch it rise. You can do this in the morning and usually within a few hours it will have doubled or tripled in size, it will stay like this for a decent window of a few hours. An active sourdough is this, bubbly, expanded and risen. This is the ideal time to make any active starter recipe. Specifically today, a sourdough loaf.

Step 3: Lets make a loaf!

Using your kitchen scale, LINKED https://amzn.to/49ztRHM set either a large bowl or the bowl to a Kitchen Aid Artisan Mixer LINKED https://amzn.to/3QBJVQk on your scale and press the TARE button to bring the weight to 0. Make sure your scale is set to grams. Pour your active bubbly sourdough into the bowl until you reach approximately 100 grams. It can be a little over, it won’t hurt it. Once again TARE the amount to 0. Add 375 grams of warm water from safe tap water or warm water on the stove. Mix well with a whisk to combine the ingredients. Once again TARE back to 0. Add 500 grams of Organic Unbleached BREAD FLOUR LINKED https://amzn.to/40wLTpG (not all purpose) it won’t kill it, but using bread flour for this step, is better. Go ahead and add 10 grams of salt, I use sea salt.
Mix well, using either a wooden spatula or your mixer set on 1 or 2 speed. You cannot overman sourdough bread, like banana bread would make it tough. Limit the mixing to 5 minutes max. Once it’s well incorporated, spoon it into a large bowl, if you used the Kitchen Aid. Cover with a damp kitchen towel and set to the side for approximately 20 minutes.
After approximately 20 minutes, you will begin to stretch and fold. (It doesn’t have to be perfect timing, work on sourdough around your life, don’t let it run you or stress you). Wet your hands to prevent as much sticking, you will scoop on side of the dough and fold it over itself into somewhat of a square. Repeat on all four sides. You are building gluten. Cover the bowl back up with the damp towel. 30 minutes later you will repeat this step again, until you have stretched and folded your dough 4 times. It will get stronger with each fold.
After 4 stretch and folds, leave your bowl somewhere warm and let it do its thing.

This is what your dough should look life after rising about half the processing time, mid day.

Step 4: Shaping your dough.

If you started the process in the morning, you should be ready to shape and bake by the evening or visa versa. Lift the towel and your dough should have risen quite a bit, it can be bubbly as well. The sourdough was fermenting and expanding throughout the day. Pour the dough out onto a clean countertop. Using your scraper LINKED https://amzn.to/40xGtuE scrape and fold the dough on all four sides into itself again and then flip it over and scrape the dough using your other hand to guide it pushing and pulling into itself. Watch my reel on instagram to watch this process as it is hard to explain. You are creating surface tension. The first scraping you’ll do a few times, then let it sit for 5 minutes. This second time around don’t fold it into itself, you’re just scraping the dough and shaping to create a tight ball. Dust the top with all purpose flour and using your scraper, scoop it up and set it flour side down in a proofing basket LINKED https://amzn.to/40vQJDL . Once again cover your basket with a damp towel and set in refrigerator for approximately 30 minutes to 1 hour.

Step 5: Prep to bake.

While your dough is cold proofing, set the oven to 500 degrees and add your dutch oven inside. I love my Le Creuset Enameled Cast Iron Bread Oven LINKED https://amzn.to/3FVRmNC . Prepare a piece of parchment paper, dump the bowl out onto the paper, flour side will now be up. Make your cuts in the dough, you can find tons of designs online. My go to is a heart, it’s simple, cute and large enough cuts to allow the heat to escape so your loaf doesn’t blow out.

Step 6: Bake.

Remove the dutch oven, turn the heat down to 450. Set the bread, using the parchment paper, inside the dutch oven and replace the lid. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes time. After 20 minutes, remove the lid and set the timer for a perfect 16 minutes.
Remove from the oven and set on a wire cooling rack. Resist the urge to cut it open right away as it is still cooking outside of the oven. Give it 20-30 minutes before you cut a slice.
Top with a little butter and a pinch of salt.