Making Simple Sourdough Bread at Home

Why Sourdough Belongs in a Sustainable Kitchen

A loaf made from nothing but flour, water, salt and time is a quiet act of rebellion against the way most bread reaches us. There's no plastic wrapper, no improver, no long list of ingredients you'd need a chemist to explain. The leavening comes from wild yeast and bacteria already living on the flour and in your kitchen, captured and encouraged in a jar on the worktop. Bake regularly and a single bag of British stoneground flour becomes dozens of loaves, which means fewer trips to the shop, less packaging in the bin, and a genuine understanding of where your food comes from.

The trade-off is time rather than money, and that suits a slower, more seasonal way of eating rather than fighting it. A cold kitchen in February simply means longer rising; a warm afternoon in September means watching the dough like a hawk. You learn to read the weather and the dough together, which is no bad thing for anyone trying to live a little more lightly.

Building a Starter from Scratch

Everything begins with the starter, which is really just flour and water left to ferment. Choose a strong wholemeal or rye flour if you can — the extra bran and nutrients feed the microbes and get things moving faster — though plain strong white works perfectly well too.

On day one, stir together 50g flour and 50g lukewarm water in a clean jar. The water should feel barely tepid, around 20–25°C; if your tap water is heavily chlorinated, let it stand for an hour first or use filtered water. Cover loosely — a cloth held with an elastic band is ideal, since the starter needs to breathe — and leave it somewhere warm but out of direct sun.

For the next five to ten days, tip away all but 50g of the mixture and feed it with another 50g of flour and 50g of water, once a day at first, then twice a day if it starts rising and falling quickly. Expect a burst of activity around day three, then a lull, then a gradual build. It's ready when it doubles in size within four to six hours of feeding, smells pleasantly of yoghurt and apples, and tastes sharply sour. A waft of nail varnish or acetone means it's hungry, not ruined — just feed it more regularly.

Keeping It Alive Without Fuss

Once your starter is reliably rising, move it to the fridge and feed it once a week. Bring it out the day before you plan to bake, feed it, and let it come back to full strength at room temperature. The classic test is a spoonful dropped into a glass of water: if it floats, it's lively enough to raise a loaf.

That weekly discard needn't go in the bin. It makes excellent pancakes, crumpets, flatbreads, crackers and even scones — a genuinely useful by-product rather than waste. If you neglect the jar for a month, don't panic. Pour off any dark liquid on top (that's hooch, a sign of hunger), scrape away the greyest layer, and feed it two or three times over a couple of days. Starters are far more resilient than they're given credit for.

The Basic Loaf: Flour, Water, Salt and Time

This recipe makes one medium loaf and is purposely forgiving. You'll need:

• 500g strong white bread flour, or 400g white plus 100g wholemeal or rye
• 350g water at room temperature
• 100g active starter, bubbly and domed
• 10g fine sea salt

Mix the flour with 325g of the water and leave it for 45 minutes — this autolyse rest makes the dough easier to handle and the crumb more open. Add the starter and work it in with a wet hand, squeezing rather than kneading. Dissolve the salt in the remaining 25g of water and work that through too. The dough will feel shaggy and sticky; that's normal.

Folds, Bulk and the Cold Retard

Over the next two hours, give the dough four sets of stretch and folds, spaced about half an hour apart. Wet your hand, lift one side of the dough, stretch it upwards and fold it over the middle, then rotate the bowl and repeat all the way round. You'll feel it tighten and become smooth.

Then leave it to bulk ferment somewhere around 20–22°C for four to six hours, until it has risen by about half again, looks domed, jiggles when you shake the bowl and shows a few bubbles at the edges. Shape it into a tight round or oval, place it seam-side up in a floured banneton or a bowl lined with a well-floured tea towel, and put it in the fridge for eight to twenty-four hours. This slow, cold prove is where much of the flavour develops, and it makes the dough far easier to score.

Baking and Reading Your Loaf

Preheat the oven to 240°C with a heavy lidded pot or Dutch oven inside for at least 30 minutes. Tip the dough out onto baking paper, slash the top with a sharp blade at a shallow angle, and lower it into the hot pot. Bake with the lid on for 20 minutes, then remove the lid, drop the heat to 220°C and bake for another 20–25 minutes until the crust is a deep chestnut brown. An internal temperature of 96–99°C means it's done.

Resist cutting it warm, however tempting — the crumb is still setting and you'll end up with a gummy slice. Cool it completely on a rack, at least an hour. If the loaf comes out dense, it's usually underproved or cut too early; if it's pale, it needed longer uncovered. Bake two loaves at once while the oven is hot, freeze the spare, and you'll get twice the bread for the same energy.