Beginner Sourdough Bread (Your First Loaf)

This beginner sourdough bread is the loaf we hand to anyone baking their first one: four ingredients, plain bread flour, and no Dutch oven required. White flour makes a dough that’s forgiving to handle and quick to read, so you can learn what fermentation actually looks and feels like without fighting a sticky whole grain dough at the same time. Bake it once and the rest of sourdough gets much easier.

Beginner Sourdough Bread (Your First Loaf)

Beginner sourdough bread made with plain bread flour — one forgiving dough, a crisp golden crust and an even, open crumb. No Dutch oven needed.

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 45 minutes mins

Cook Time 35 minutes mins

Rising & chilling 20 hours hrs

Total Time 21 hours hrs 20 minutes mins

Servings: 1 loaf

Course: Bread, Breakfast

Cuisine: Scandinavian

Ingredients Equipment Method Notes

Ingredients

  

Starter

• 140 g active sourdough starter about ⅔ cup — bubbly, ripe, and passing the float test

Dough

• 400 g Water about 1⅔ cups, lukewarm
• 600 g bread flour about 4¾ cups — or sifted landhvete
• 15 g fine sea salt about 2½ tsp
• rice flour, for dusting a few tablespoons — resists sticking far better than wheat flour

Equipment

• Digital kitchen scale | Sourdough is a ratio, not a list of cups. This is the one tool we'd tell a beginner to buy first
• Banneton / proofing basket (9–10 in / 23–25 cm round) | Holds the loaf's shape through the overnight chill and gives that spiral flour pattern. A lidded tub works if you don't have one yet.
• Linen cloth (couche) | Makes handling sticky, high-hydration dough far easier.
• Bench scraper | Moves and turns sticky dough without tearing it. Cheap, and it removes most of the fear from handling dough.
• Bread lame or scoring knife | A clean, deep score is what opens up into an ear. A very sharp paring knife will do at first.
• Instant-read thermometer | The one honest doneness check: 96–99°C / 205–210°F in the center.
• Metal roasting tray | Your steam source, on the bottom rack. Metal only — never glass, it can shatter when the water hits it.

Method

 

Day 1

1. Feed your starter the morning you bake (or the night before) so it's lively when you mix — domed, bubbly, and floating in water.
2. Mix the dough. Whisk the starter into the lukewarm water to loosen it, then add the flour and mix by hand until no dry flour remains. Hold the salt back for now. Cover and rest 1 hour.
3. Add the salt. Sprinkle it over the dough and work it in thoroughly, squeezing and folding until you can't feel any grit.
4. Stretch and fold — every 30 minutes, at least 4 times. Wet one hand, grab one side of the dough, stretch it up and fold it over the center; turn the bowl a quarter turn and repeat around (four pulls = one set). Cover, rest 30 minutes, repeat. The dough will go from shaggy and slack to smooth and springy.
5. Bulk ferment until risen. Cover and leave at room temperature until the dough has grown by about 30–50% — domed, jiggly, with bubbles on top and along the sides. Roughly 4–6 hours total from mixing, depending on how warm your kitchen is. Watch the dough, not the clock.
6. Pre-shape. Tip the dough onto a lightly floured counter. With a bench scraper, fold the edges into the middle and flip it over, then drag it gently in a circle to pull it into a loose, round ball. Leave it uncovered to rest 20–30 minutes.
7. Shape the loaf. Flip the ball over, fold the sides into the center, roll it up from the bottom, then drag and rotate it on the counter until the surface feels tight. Dust your banneton generously with rice flour and set the loaf in seam side up. Rice flour doesn't absorb into the dough the way wheat flour does, so the loaf lifts out cleanly after the overnight chill.
8. Chill overnight. Cover the basket and refrigerate 12–16 hours. Cold dough is firmer, easier to score, and bakes with better flavor — this step is doing you a favor.

Day 2

1. Preheat, hot. About 45–60 minutes before baking, heat the oven as hot as it goes — around 250°C / 480°F — with two trays inside: your perforated baking tray (or a regular baking sheet) on the middle rack, and an empty metal roasting tray on the rack below. The baking tray needs to be properly hot before the loaf lands on it; the roasting tray is what makes your steam. Both metal, never glass.
2. Score. Turn the cold loaf out onto a sheet of parchment, seam side down. Make one confident cut down the center, about 1 cm / ½ in deep, holding the blade at a slight angle. One clean cut beats several timid ones.
3. Bake with steam. Slide the loaf, still on its parchment, onto the hot baking tray on the middle rack — parchment and all, in one quick movement. Immediately pour about 1 cup of just-boiled water into the roasting tray below (stand back — it steams up fast) and shut the door quickly to trap it. Bake at 250°C / 480°F for 20 minutes.
4. Finish in dry heat. Take the tray out — the water will have boiled off, and you want dry heat now to crisp the crust. Drop the oven to 200°C / 390°F and bake another 15 minutes, until deeply golden. The loaf should sound hollow when tapped and read 96–99°C / 205–210°F in the center.
5. Cool completely. Move the loaf to a wire rack and leave it at least 1–2 hours before slicing. The crumb is still setting; cutting early gives you a gummy interior. This is the hardest step.

Notes

Chef’s tip — let the fridge do the work. The overnight chill in the refrigerator is a beginner’s best friend. It slows fermentation to a crawl, so your timing stops being critical, and it firms the dough up so much that scoring goes from nerve-wracking to easy. If your day falls apart, the fridge will hold the loaf up to 16 hours without complaint.

When is the bulk rise done? Go by volume, not time. 30–50% bigger, domed, and jiggly when you shake the bowl. Under-fermented dough is the single most common reason a first loaf comes out dense — a cool kitchen can easily need 7–8 hours where a warm one needs 4.

What to bake on. A perforated baking tray is ideal — the holes let heat reach the base, so the bottom crust sets properly. A plain baking sheet works too. Either way, preheat it in the oven along with everything else: a cold tray steals heat from the base of the loaf just as it needs it most, and you lose oven spring. Don’t bake on a wire cooling rack; the dough sags through it.

No banneton? Line a mixing bowl with a tea towel and dust it well with rice flour. A lidded plastic tub works too. If you have a linen cloth for the basket, use it — the cloth plus rice flour together give the cleanest release and a crisp spiral pattern.

Ready for more flavor? Once this loaf feels routine, swap 150–200 g of the bread flour for whole wheat and add a splash more water.

Why this beginner sourdough bread works

Three things make this a good first loaf.

It’s all white flour. Stoneground and whole grain flours drink more water and ferment faster, which is great for flavor and unhelpful when you’re still learning the signals. Bread flour gives you a smooth, strong dough that behaves predictably.

The hydration is moderate. At about 67%, this dough is soft but not slack. You can pick it up, shape it, and set it down again without it puddling — and it still opens into a proper crumb.

No special pot. We bake on a preheated perforated baking tray, with a tray of boiling water on the rack below. That steam does the same job as a Dutch oven for the first 20 minutes, and you don’t have to lift a screaming-hot cast iron pot in and out of the oven on your first attempt.

The mistake almost every first loaf makes

Pulling the dough out of bulk fermentation too early.

A recipe can tell you “4–6 hours,” but your kitchen decides. At 20°C the dough might need seven hours; at 26°C it can be ready in four. Bake it too soon and you get a tight, heavy crumb and blame the recipe.

So use your eyes. The dough should be visibly bigger — about a third to a half again its original size — domed rather than flat, with bubbles breaking the surface and along the sides of the bowl. Give the bowl a shake: it should wobble like set jelly. That’s the moment.

Chef’s tip: the fridge is your safety net

The overnight chill isn’t just about flavor, though it does deepen it. It’s the step that makes sourdough fit into a real week.

Cold dough ferments slowly, so a shaped loaf will sit happily in the refrigerator anywhere from 12 to 16 hours — bake it before work or after dinner, whichever suits. And cold dough is firm: when you tip it out and score it, the cut stays where you put it instead of dragging and closing up. Almost every clean ear you’ve seen on a home loaf came out of a fridge.

Make it your own

Once this bake feels familiar, take it in either direction. Swap 150–200 g of the bread flour for whole wheat (add a tablespoon or two of extra water) for something closer to our everyday loaf. Or keep the flour as is and use the same dough to shape baguettes instead.

Sourdough for Beginners · Step 3 of 9

More Nordic bakes you’ll love

• Sourdough Starter for Beginners — where to start if you don’t have a starter yet
• Whole Grain Sourdough Bread — the everyday loaf to graduate to
• Sourdough Baguettes — the same dough, shaped by hand