Sourdough Beginners Guide - Second Spring (2024)

Welcome to the slow, magical, and rewarding world of sourdough! We’re here to help you make naturally fermented bread from scratch, and of course learn how to incorporate sprouted grains.

If you’re new to sourdough, you’re in the right place. This post will walk you through how to build and maintain a sourdough starter, some background and baker’s lingo, and our favourite basic sprouted sourdough recipe.

Sourdough may be trendy now, but it’s actually so ancient that no one knows its origin. It’s known worldwide for its tangy flavour, digestive benefits and long shelf life.

At its most basic, sourdough has only three ingredients – flour, water and salt. By simply combining flour and water and giving it lots of time to ferment, it captures wild yeast and friendly bacteria. This is used to leaven bread without the need for commercial yeast, which is why it’s known as natural fermentation.

Sourdough starter is a community of living organisms that must be nurtured and can adapt to their environment. This means that your starter will be unique to you, many people even name it like a pet. Starters can be passed down through generations and live for thousands of years.

There is no “right” way to make sourdough. As you can imagine, over millennia people have developed many different methods, and starting out the choices can be overwhelming. With this guide, we are simply giving you one way of achieving naturally fermented bread, feel free to adapt it to a process that works for you.

Sourdough also takes patience and intuition. Explore, make mistakes and don’t get discouraged. If you ask any experienced sourdough baker, they’ll tell you that every loaf is an opportunity to learn.

In this Guide

Like sprouting, sourdough is an ancient method of grain preparation that many people lost touch with as they opted for quick commercial breads. But bakers have been using sourdough for most of human history, and many people are now reconnecting with slower, traditional ways of eating.

During fermentation, dense proteins and complex starches are pre-digested, resulting in bread that many people find gentler on their digestive system. It also improves texture, shelf life, and produces more complex flavours.

Do these benefits sound familiar? Sourdough has many of the same benefits as sprouting, so putting them together yields a delicious, highly digestible loaf.

Wild yeast and bacteria are all around us in the air, on surfaces and naturally on grains. When water and flour ferment, wild yeasts and bacterias consume sugars and convert them to lactic and acetic acids. These acids give sourdough its signature tangy flavour, control fermentation and produce carbon dioxide. Different varieties of bacteria and yeast can create distinct flavours, which is why starters made in different regions will be unique. If you move a starter, eventually the varieties in the new environment will take over.

We develop gluten in breads so that it is strong enough to capture the carbon dioxide bubbles, causing the bread to rise. Gluten is made up of two proteins: glutenin makes the dough stretchy (extensible) and gliadin allows the bread to hold its shape (think of a rubber band snapping back). Kneading or folding the dough aligns these two proteins into web. If the gluten isn’t strong enough, the air bubbles will collapse and you’d end up with a dense, gummy brick.

You don’t need to understand the science to make great sourdough, people made bread this way for thousands of years before science could explain it. Some bakers dive into the chemistry to change the flavour and texture of their bread, while others work off experience and intuition. Sourdough is both a science and an art.

Why does this matter? When you understand the ingredients in relation to each other, you can predict how a dough may turn out (soft, crusty, rustic, mild, very sour etc.). Baker’s math allows you to easily scale a recipe up or down, and it can also help you adjust or develop your own recipes.

Still with us? Don’t worry, there isn’t a quiz later. Baker’s math will start to make more sense once you’ve made a few loaves.

All sourdough begins with a pre-ferment – a portion of dough that’s made ahead of time. You may hear different names like levain, sponge, or mother, but we’ll call it a starter. All you need is flour, water, and a bit of patience. There are many kinds of starters, but for now we’ll focus on the most common: equal parts flour and water (also called 100% hydration starter).

Starting from scratch, your starter should be ready in about 7 days, depending on your environment. If your home is warm it may be faster, cold environments can take up to a few weeks. Once it’s ready to use, it can be maintained indefinitely with very little effort.

“Feeding” a sourdough starter simply means mixing in fresh flour and water. While you’re establishing a starter, you’ll be feeding it daily at a 1:1:1 ratio. That is, one part starter, one part flour and one part water (by weight). In order to keep a manageable amount of starter we “discard”, where you remove some starter that’s no longer needed. This doesn’t need to be literally discarded, we like to collect it in a separate container and store it in the fridge. It’s perfect for adding flavour to recipes that use other leavening (like baking soda) including pancakes, muffins, biscuits and more! Discard is also a great way to share your starter with a friend.

• Clear container, jar or bowl — Your starter will double (or more) in size, so leave lots of extra space, no one wants a starter volcano!
• Kitchen scale (or measuring cups) — a scale is recommended for accuracy
• Spoon, fork or small spatula to stir
• Elastic band — an easy way mark how much the starter has risen

Note: to grow a colony of good bacteria and not the kinds that cause mold, make sure your tools are sanitized with boiling water or in a dishwasher.

• Unbleached bread flour (we prefer organic)
• Whole wheat, sprouted wheat or sprouted rye flour — higher in nutrients to give your starter an initial boost
• Water — chlorine can interfere with fermentation so bottled/filtered water or leaving a jug of tap water out overnight is your safest bet

Feed the starter as usual, but increase feedings to every 12 hours (rather than 24). You should start to see lots of activity. Your starter should be bubbly and doubling or even tripling in volume. Although it may look ready to use, you want to keep feeding it until it’s rising and falling predictably.

During this time your starter may also plateau and have noticeably less activity, this is just the yeast and bacteria adjusting and it is completely normal. Keep feeding on schedule and activity will pick back up again.

When you bake, be sure to save approximately 200g of starter to keep for next time. You can save more, but small amounts can spoil more easily, especially if you don’t feed it often.

If you plan to bake several times a week, starter can be left at room temperature and fed every 12-24 hours. When not in use, starter can be stored with and airtight lid in the fridge. A dark liquid may form on top, this is known as hooch and is completely normal, simply stir it back into the mixture. Your starter may also develop a stronger sour aroma, this is also normal. To refresh, feed the starter and leave at room temperature until ready to use.

If left in the fridge for more than a week or two, the yeast and bacteria will have nothing to eat and begin to gradually die off. Unless it shows signs of mold, it is likely still viable, but it will take multiple feedings (every 12 hours) to revive it. The longer it’s neglected, the longer it will take to bring it back.