the easiest sourdough recipe from start to finish on the entire internet

step by step how to make sourdough loaf

OK step-by-step to make a sourdough loaf. It’s really not that difficult. A lot of people on the Internet tell you about making sourdough is this extremely difficult thing however, there is the traditional method of making sourdough bread and then there is the cowboy method of making sourdough bread which is so much better easier and more fun for everybody involved.

So the very first step of making the cowboy version of sourdough bread is making sure that you have a starter that is good and ready to go. I will say that is the most complicated part but you really don’t have to do much it just depends on what time of day you’re planning on making the bread is going to determine when you have an active sourdough starter.

The cowboy method of keeping a sourdough starter the cowboy method of keeping a sourdough starter is basically keeping your sourdough starter in the fridge until you want to use it and then you take it out about six hours before you want to use it

How do you figure out when to use your sourdough starter when you’re making sourdough bread?

Six hours before you wanna make the dough of your sourdough bread, you take your sourdough starter out of the fridge and if you need to feed it then feed it and if you don’t need to feed it then don’t feed it. I have more information on keeping a cowboy so to starter in this blog post here.

So now your sourdough starter is ready to go. It’s nice and active and bubbly. It is time to make the dough.

You can mix this up depending on how big of a loaf you want and how big your Dutch oven is if you don’t have a Dutch oven that’s OK. You can make it a variety of other ways without a Dutch oven, but I will say a Dutch oven produces the most evenly baked bread and I prefer it

If you’re wanting to make a large loaf of bread in your large Dutch oven, then you need 4 cups of flour a cup and a half of water a teaspoon of salt and your sourdough starter

When I make this, I’m either making it in a really large bowl or KitchenAid so it doesn’t really matter as long as you have the ability to mix it up. You get your 4 cups of flour and you put it in the bowl and then before you do anything else, you microwave your cup and a half of water in a microwave safe dish for about one minute and then when the water is out of the microwave, then you put your teaspoon of salt in the water and he makes it up this way. The salt is more evenly distributed and then you put you slowly put the water in the dough or in the flower while it’s mixing. Before you do that you can put the sourdough starter in the flower while you’re mixing it and I usually just eyeball it, but I would say use about half a cup and the more sourdough you want or the less sourdough you want you just use more or less and if you are gluten intolerant like me then I try and use as much starter as I can and then you just use a little bit less water so that’s why I actually would recommend doing the sourdough starter first since it is adds a little bit of wetness to the flower and then eventually the dough.

You also can put in yeast if you would like, but you don’t have to. I used to put yeast in my loaves, but I didn’t really find a huge difference whatever I stopped using the yeast so I just stopped using it and kinda never looked back just because it didn’t seem like I totally needed it. 

So you don’t wanna overmix this, but you do wanna make sure that everything is properly mixed so that’s why I like using a KitchenAid however KitchenAid are expensive big and bulky and heavy so you can really just use a big mixing bowl but I will see if you don’t have a KitchenAid at some point sometimes you just kind of gotta get your hands dirty and use your hands to mix up the last of the dough that kinda doesn’t wanna mix if you don’t have a hand mixer which I wouldn’t even recommend using a hand mixer. Somewhere on the Internet there are these people who use the special dough mixing tools which I can link here but I’ve never used one so I can’t say that I have any experience with it but if you want to use it, it seems like this tool was made specifically for making bread so I can’t say that it probably isn’t helpful.

After you’ve got your dough mixed

Once you’ve got your dough mixed then you can leave it in the bowl and you have two options. Let it for #MIN for about 4 to 5 hours just in the oven and you can put it on proof for about an hour and then let I continue to rise or you could do your 4 to 5 hour fermentation and then put it in the fridge overnight depending on when you have made your dough you can kind of set it up where you let it ferment overnight and then you

after you’ve got your sourdough fermented in a room temp

OK, so once your sourdough has fermented as long as you want to and it’s at room temperature you then need to shape it and then do one more tiny little rise and so you can flower your surface and then I’m gonna link a video here on how to shape the bread because I can’t possibly explain it in a way that makes sense to anybody else other than me, but this is basically where you’re stretching and folding the dough because you didn’t already do this because I do the cowboy sourdough method so I promise you’re not missing out on anything. It is slightly different because you didn’t do the other session folds, which is OK there’s nothing wrong with that. You’re not ruining your bread by not doing those others stretch and folds.

Have your bread you’ve shaped it and now you need to put it in a Benetton basket and gently emphasis on the word gently and then you put your little linen or cotton cloth over it and you kinda just leave it there you set a timer for an hour and then you wait an hour while it kind of rises takes shape yet again.

After you’ve waited an hour for the bride of the banneton basket

So once the bread is ready from the bennett basket then you well actually like 20 to 20 minutes before the Benton basket bread is done you can preheat your oven to 450° and if you have a Dutch oven or whatever you’re using to make the bread like a cookie sheet or and literally whatever you’re using and I can link another block post that tells you kind of all the options you have if you don’t have a Dutch oven, you could certainly use cookie sheet. It does turn out a little differently, but no big deal.

So preheat your oven and also preheat whatever you’re using to cook the bread so if you’re using a cookie sheet, put the cookie sheet in the oven and if you’re using a Dutch oven, then put the Dutch oven in the oven so that you have a hot Dutch oven so that your dough isn’t going to stick to whatever you’re using to cook the bread

So once the oven is preheated and you’ve had your bread in that basket for one hour, you very, very, very gently kind of move your Benton basket bread and let it kind of very carefully roll out so you flip the Benton basket upside down very slowly and very carefully onto whatever it is, you are baking your bread so either your Dutch oven baking sheet or whatever else you’re using and then you put the lid on or you just put the cookie sheet in the oven and you cook it for 37 to 40 minutes

Here is where you were getting your Bakersfield because sometimes 37 minutes is enough, but if you’ve used a little bit more than 4 cups or even just a generous 4 cups, then you actually might need to cook it maybe for 42 minutes so this is where trial and error comes in to play by 37 minutes is about the average and then you check on it at the end of the timer and then if you wanna put it back in the oven for another five minutes outside of the Dutch oven then you can get a little bit more of crisp

Now you have cooked and baked a loaf of sourdough long fermented bread good job and give yourself a pat on the back