As a dedicated home cook I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve struggled mightily with finding and baking an easy everyday sourdough bread at home. I’ve also failed with creating my own sourdough starter and not just on a few occasions but repeatedly. The struggle has been real and going on 5+ years, so when I finally tested into a recipe and process to bake easy and great tasting sourdough bread at home I did backflips and fist bumps for days on end, well maybe for just a few hours! Keep in mind we are avid bakers!
Making a weekly sourdough bread at home has some great benefits including costs, better quality products, high nutrional value, and the intrinsic satisfaction of making your own food.
Some of the key variables that finally made me a weekly bread baker include the following:
- A reliable recipe – see below
- Two steel bread loaf pans, these are my favorite
- Parchment paper and ice cubes – more insight in the recipe
- Cold bulk fermentation, or a 1-3day cold ferment in fridge
- Proofing baskets, these are my favorite
Easy Everyday Sourdough Recipe
Ingredients
Method
- Combine water and starter in a bowl and mix with Danish whisk if you have one, if not a wooden spoon will work. Add bread flour and salt and mix to form a shaggy dough.
- Perform 4 sets of stretch and folds every 30 minutes for 2 hours. This will build gluten in dough.
- Shape dough and put in banneton basket, cover, and refrigerate over night (or for two days if you have time to build more flavor)
- Preheat oven to 450℉. Place dough on parchment paper, score loaf about ¼ deep and put in one of the steel bread pans, add one ice cup. Cover with other steel bread pan. Bake 40 minutes. Remove lid and bake for another 10 minutes.
