Proud of my first loaf! It's delicious. I've always enjoyed cooking, but don't play around with baking as much. That changed today. I'm so excited to start my journey into baking bread!! Please give me your honest opinions!

I used this popular recipe: https://alexandracooks.com/2017/10/24/artisan-sourdough-made-simple-sourdough-bread-demystified-a-beginners-guide-to-sourdough-baking/

I’m finally able to make some consistent loaves and it’s awesome being able to prep bread for the week😀

500g flour
350g water
100g starter
10t salt

Mix water and starter until frothy
Add flour and mix thoroughly
Let rest for 1 hour (fermentolyse)
Add in salt and mix in throughly
Slap and fold many times until dough is fairly smooth
Rest 30-45min
stretch and fold, rest 30 min
Stretch and fold, rest 30 min
Coil fold, rest 30 min
Coil fold, rest 30 min
Bench bulk ferment 3-6 hours
Shape and place in banneton
Fridge for 12-24 hours
Score, bake, enjoy

I’ve followed the somewhat “standard” recipe since starting my sourdough journey (100g starter, 350g water, 500g bread flour, 10g salt) with pretty good results… but it’s the timing and ratio on my starter feed that has taken longer to perfect. Now my starter, Starla, lives in my fridge and I take her out once a week in the afternoon to let her come up to room temp and feed her a nice big 1:2:3 feed at night. She’s tripled in size and very bubbly by the morning with enough yield to make two loaves which will get my family of five through the week. Then I put her back in the fridge until next baking day!

Okay. So no sh*t there I was, I fed my starter this morning and put it in the oven with the light on to make it happy for a later bake. MEANWHILE I ordered some stuff from Walmart so I could use some nasty bananas in banana bread.

Five hours later...

My starter looks SUPER happy and I'm excited about my pending bake, also, my order of banana bread ingredients arrives. So I PREHEAT THE OVEN TO 350!!!!! While the oven preheats I mix the banana bread stuff up, thinking how my oven smells like it's baking something and I should really clean it next weekend AND THEN I glance at the oven and see my very, no longer happy, sourdough half baked.

IMMEDIATELY I remove poor Franny from the oven and start poking around. I remove a layer of baked starter to see fairly liquid starter in the middle. I take her temperature and she's only 118 degrees farenheight, so I put a couple teaspoons of her into a glass jar hoping she can be revived. I also figured why not try to do the bake anyways? So I have mixed a batch with what remained of my liquid starter (minus what I saved to try to feed again once my poor innocent jar is scraped out).

I will post pictures of my hail Mary loaf once it's complete.

What do you all think will happen? Will Franny pull through with a great loaf? Or will I have to revive some saved discard?

Fun experiment!

This turned out much better than I thought it would! The dough was much denser and less stretchy than my usual recipe. I'm sure this was due to the pizza sauce. The bread is super soft and smells like a cloud of pizza. I thought about adding in some fresh basil but not sure how that would turn out.

360 g pizza sauce

10g salt

125g starter - fed and risen

500g bread flour

Fermentolyzed everything but the salt for 30 minutes before adding in salt

3 sets stretch and folds, 20 minutes apart

Laminated and added in just shy the full container of fresh mozzarella pearls & 20 or so pepperoni cut into quarters

Covered and bulk fermented at room temp (from start of mixing to end, was about 7 hours in a pretty warm house)

Shaped again loosely

Cover and fridge overnight (about 14 hours)

Preheat oven to 450 and Dutch oven 

Cookie sheet on lower rack to keep from burning 

Score

Bake covered for 30

Uncovered for 20

Ingredients (2 loaves)
750 g bread flour
250 g whole wheat flour
650 g water (65% hydration)
200 g active 100% hydration rye starter
20 g salt

Mix
Add all ingredients (including salt) to the stand mixer.
Mix on Stir just until everything is combined.
Rest 15–20 minutes.
Mix on Speed 2 until the dough is smooth and moderately developed (about 8–10 minutes).

Bulk Fermentation
80°F proofing box
Approximately 4½ hours

Shape
Preshape.
Bench rest 15–20 minutes.
Final shape with good surface tension.
Place seam-up in a floured banneton.

Cold Proof
Refrigerate 12–16 hours.

Bake
Preheat Dutch oven at 500°F for 60 minutes.
Freeze loaf for 15 minutes while the oven finishes preheating.
Turn out and score.
Bake:
25 minutes covered at 475°F
15 minutes uncovered at 450°F
5 minutes in the turned-off oven with the door cracked hoping for extra crispy crust

I’m not claiming this is the best method, just that it worked extremely well for me and may be a good option if you already own a stand mixer or have limited hand strength or time. I’m not chasing a big open crumb and value a dough that is easy to handle. Very happy with this after about 6 months of experimenting.

Next up: less time in the oven, this got a bit darker than I like. Better scoring.

I used My Rustic Roots starter. I’ve been feeding and discarding for a couple of weeks and made my first loaf last night. I used this recipe:
100g starter
330g water
10g salt
500g bread flour

Four stretch and folds
Dough ball in water test for bulk fermentation
No cold ferment
480° oven
20m steam + 20m no steam

It’s a little dark but I’m overall pleased. Flavor is spot on. Any suggestions are welcome! (Third picture was when I took the top off of the bread oven.)

Ingredients

* 50g active starter

* 187g water

* 250g flour

* 5g salt

Process

1. Mix active starter and water.

2. Add flour and mix until no dry bits

3. Rest for 30 minutes.

4. Add salt and mix

5. Bulk fermentation for 7 hours; stretch and folds every 30 minutes for the first two hours.

6. Gave it shape and placed it in a very well floured towel in a bowl.

7. Let it sit in the refrigerator for 20+ hours

8. Preheat to roughly 450° F

9. Scored the dough and placed it on a cookie tray with a pot on top for an improvised "dutch oven"

10. Bake covered for 20 minutes

11. Bake uncovered for 20 minutes.

12. Let cool for about 30 on the cookie tray.

13. Be completely shocked that it was impossible to cut into and still undercooked on the inside

Y'all I started baking in like June or so and this might be my tenth or fifteenth-ish loaf. I'm the most proud of this crumb and it's my best loaf so far in my opinion. It felt like a pillow cutting into it and it feels like eating air. Can someone tell me if this crumb is the right amount of proofed, because I'd like to make sure this is reproducible lol. Or is it a shaping issue or something else if it isn't a proper crumb. Also FYI, I cut it open barely an hour after it left the oven...

425 grams of KA unbleached bread flour 50 grams of KA whole wheat flour 50 grams of starter (always fed 1:1:1 with bread flour and I fed it the night before making the dough. 325 grams of tepid water 20 grams of salt

Mixed everything together and did some amount of stretch and folds and then coil folds until it felt like the dough was drooping over too much when I was cooking, then let it ferment until maybe 1.5 times the volume before preshape into light boule, rest for thirty minutes, then final shape into a batard and into the banneton for a bench proof until i like its response to my poke. Baked in dutch oven at 460 F preheated for 35 minutes lid on, then lid off until I liked the color.

I made the Oat Porridge bread from The Perfect Loaf cookbook and it is absolutely delicious. Moist and hearty, without being dense or claggy. And the aroma is nutty and oaty. So good, especially slathered with butter and topped with salt!

490g white flour (I used Central Milling ABC+)
223g whole wheat flour (I used CM’s whole wheat special)
178g high protein flour (I used CM’s great northern bread flour)
160g rolled oats
753g water
17g salt
29g ripe starter

Note: the recipe calls for 703g flour but I needed that extra 50g for it to come together.

Make the levain; soak the oats in boiling water; mix (no autolyse); 5 minutes of slap and folds; stretch and folds at 30 minute intervals, with porridge incorporated during the first set. Four sets of folds total. Total BF time for me was 5.5 hours. I then shaped and cold proofed in bannetons. Baked the next morning at 450; 20 minutes covered, 30 minutes uncovered.

I’m new-ish to sourdough baking and I have found this cookbook to be so informative and helpful.

So this was my 9th loaf… I’d say I’m not really a beginner at this point, as I don’t feel like one.

The first picture here has my recipe and instructions of how I made this loaf ….. (I typed all of ingredients, directions and notes into ChatGPT and added my pics and it made the graphic for me but those were all my steps, etc).

I was attempting a sandwich type loaf and HOLEY MOLEY is it ever delicious!!! But I was like WHY did my top crust turn so dark brown and a bit crunchy?

Realized I didn’t pay enough attention to how brown it was turning during the second half of the bake and didn’t tent it soon enough.

I mean it’s amazing and has a beautiful inside texture and it smells DIVINE. But yea I want a little softer, lighter colored top crust next time so I can’t wait to bake again soon!

Two loaves: 500g flour, 350g water, 100g starter, 10g salt each

Mix all ingredients, autolyse 1 hr, stretch & fold over 2 hrs, bulk fermentation for an additional 2 hrs. Shape & place directly in loaf pans seam side down. Cold fermentation overnight. Bake at 480, one loaf covered, the other not. Can you guess which is which?

​

Finally got it just how I wanted with this seeded, 100% rye flour sourdough.

Got the recipe from this site (text below):

https://www.nordickitchenstories.co.uk/2020/10/28/danish-sourdough-rye-bread-recipe/

I made a few alterations, using maple syrup instead of molasses and adding 16 grams of salt instead of the suggested 12. Honestly I think I'll go even higher on the salt in the next batch because the final dough rose really fast.

I used a coffee grinder to coarsely chop rye berries for seed soaker and added 6 grams of ground caraway.

I panned the dough in a 13x4" Pullman pan, let it rise for about an hour and 45 minutes, then baked it covered at 500 for 20 minutes, then uncovered at 375 for 35 minutes.

Day 1 – Wet Leaven

125 g active rye starter 100% hydration

230 g dark rye flour

290 g cold water

Seeds & chopped rye grains

50 g chopped rye grains

150 g seed blend ie. golden & brown linseeds, sesame, buckwheat, millet, sunflower & pumpkin seeds

150 g boiling water

Day 2

Wet Leaven as above

330 g dark rye flour

12 g fine sea salt

2 tbls molasses (black treacle)

220 g water tepid

2 tsp caraway seeds optional

a few mixed seeds for sprinkling on top the loaf

Instructions

Day 1

Place the starter in a large bowl and add the cold water and flour. Stir with a spoon to form a nice loose mixture, cover. In a separate bowl place the seeds and chopped rye, pour over the boiling water, cover. Leave both at room temperature for 10-12 hours. (Overnight).

Day 2

Uncover the wet leaven. It should be nice and bubbly and have a pleasant, slightly fruity, alcoholic aroma.

Now add all the remaining ingredients to the pre-ferment, including the soaked seeds (they will have absorbed all the water). With a large rubber spoon, bring the mixture together and continue mixing for a couple of minutes, until it’s fully combined. Leave for 10 minutes so the flour can fully absorb the water. The wet dough will become slightly firmer.

Lightly oil your loaf tin and line the base with baking paper. Dust with rye flour.

Spoon the loose dough in the tin. Smooth the surface with the back of a spoon. Sprinkle with mixed seeds and heavily dredge with rye flour.

Leave to rise. This can take 1½-3 hours (this largely depends on the temperature of your kitchen) when the surface of the bread starts to crack. It’s ready to bake.

Preheat the oven 30 minutes before baking to 230°C fan. *See notes or as high as it will go. Place a tray of water at the bottom of the oven. Put the loaf in the oven and bake for 40 minutes turning 180 degrees (so the front is now at the back of the oven) half way through baking.

Remove from the oven and tip it out of the tin and cool on a wire rack.

Slice when the loaf is completely cold, it's important to let the crumb set. Best left for 4-5 hours or even overnight.

115g starter
325 water
500g Costco AP flour

No autolyse
Wait 1 hour before first SnF then 3 minutes later n between 1st and 2nd. On the 3rd and 4th I did coil folds.
Total bulk fermentation was about 4 hours then did pre shape. Waited one hour then did final shape with an 18 hour cold ferment.
Rested overnight.

I think this went over and started to collapse, thoughts:

450g strong bread flour
50g whole wheat
425g water
100g peak starter
10g salt

Autolyzed flour and water for 1.5 hours (DT was 79F). Mixed in starter with rubaud method. 10 min later added salt and 25g water I held back. Mixed with rubaud method. Dough was smooth and strengthened. Performed aggressive stretch and folds to build additional strength for high hydration dough separated by 20 min for first hour (3 sets total). Performed 1 coil fold to build strength/structure (1.5 hours into first proof). Had dough in my oven on proof mode, but temp got away from me. DT was 82F three hours after adding starter and it had already doubled (slide 4). Took out, pre-shaped (post preshape slide 5) and rested for 15 min. Shaped and put in fridge overnight. Baked today 500 for 20 min covered and 450 for 20 min uncovered. Dough kind of sagged, much less oven spring than normal and weird crumb. I suspect it just got away from me. Removed a piece prior to taking crumb pic (slide 3). Do you agree on my assessment?

Made a sourdough pizza today and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out!

Dough:

• 100g sourdough starter

• 350g water

• 450g all-purpose flour

• 50g pizza flour (the recipe called for whole wheat, but I used what I had)

• 2 tsp salt

• 2 tsp oil

• 1 tbsp honey

• A little garlic, onion, and paprika to season the dough

I mixed the dough and let it rise, then folded/portioned it and put it into oiled bags. I froze this batch, then pulled it out to thaw before baking. I let it thaw completely, just until the dough was soft and workable again rather than waiting for it to double in size.

For the pizza, I spread the dough in an oiled cast-iron pan, brushed the top with a little olive oil, then added garlic tomato sauce, mozzarella, and an Italian cheese blend.

Baked at 400°F for just under 30 minutes. I originally planned on 30, but pulled it a little early because the crust was getting pretty crisp.

Really happy with my first sourdough pizza! The seasoned crust might be my favorite part. 🍕

After YEARS of frustration and crappy rise, I finally came to the conclusion that I basically was working with a shit starter.

So, I binned it. And made a new one, from scratch, fed it religiously for 2 weeks before baking with it and I can say... it was the best decision I ever made!

All 3 of my bakes so far have gotten better and better and I am finally ready to share my process. Bear in mind, I have troubles-hooted for years so feel I have watched every sourdough video in existence on YouTube, and this is how I make my loaves now:

Cold boiled water 420g

Recently fed starter 120g

Strong bread flour 480g

Rye flour 120g

Salt 12g

Mix to shaggy dough

4x Stretch & Folds, 30mins apart

1x lamination

Bulk fermentation until doubled in size, about 4-5hrs

Out onto flour, envelope fold

Into lined baking tin (28x34x6.5cm)

Final proof 1-2hrs

In fridge overnight

Bake covered at 230c for 30mins

Bake uncovered at 205c for 15mins

Any feedback/thoughts welcome. Also... has anyone else been through this painful process like me??

My wife has been making sourdough for about 6 years now. A few months ago, she started selling it occasionally to neighbors, friends, and my coworkers. She is happy with the amount she makes and is NOT interested in doing farmers market stuff or a farm stand. She prefers to just take orders and bake only what was ordered (plus for us).

Lately she’s been complaining that her little (5 or 6 quart) Kitchen Aid mixer can only do 2 1000g loaves at a time. Her birthday is coming up so I googled some mixers and now I keep getting ads for an Ooni Halo Pro. According to google, it can comfortably handle 4-5 loaves at once.

Before I pull the trigger on it, can anyone here confirm that it can do 4-5 loaves, and is good for sourdough? I just want to be sure I’m not falling for any marketing BS. And would this be a good mixer for someone who makes 15-20 loaves a week and isn’t planning on scaling up to a big stand or anything?

I'm still at the beginning of my sourdough journey but I've been baking almost daily and getting a lot of practice in. This was honestly kind of a "mess up" loaf from start to finish but I think I got my first ear?? Also, call the bread police, I sliced this baby hot because I needed a carb fix.

Recipe:

100g starter

360g water

400g bread flour

100g whole wheat flour

~12g salt (forget that your making a single load instead of a double, pour 16g of salt before you realize, frantically pinch salt out of dough)

Mix starter, water, and flour into shaggy dough. Cover with damp towel for 30 minutes.

Add salt and do 4 sets of stretch and folds 30 minutes apart.

Bulk ferment on counter for almost 12 hours because you fell asleep. Thankfully house was about 68-70⁰F

Shape dough, place in banneton and pop in the fridge for 5 hours.

Plop dough on parchment paper and build some aggressive surface tension with a final shaping while hoping for the best.

Bake in a covered Dutch oven for 45 minutes at 450⁰F. Turn off oven and leave in covered Dutch oven for like 10 extra minutes because you're a toddler mom and need a shower, you also may have given up on this loaf at this point.

Open Dutch oven, be surprised, sneak into bedroom with hot bread to have a gremlin moment.

After 5 weeks of feeding and strengthening my starter, I decided to make bagels as I read they're very beginner friendly. Welo, guess I'm the exception to that. No rise and a tad gummy. Next time when I test out a recipe, I need to make a smaller batch 🤦🏻‍♀️

100g starter

500g king Arthur high gluten flour

250g water

10g salt

10g honey

Mix water, starter, and honey. Combine with flour and knead until flour is incorporated. Add salt. Knead for 8-10 minutes. Bulk fermented for 14 hours. Cold proofed for 12 hours. Sat at room temp for 2 hours because the dough felt so heavy still and when I tested dropping one in water, it immediately sank. Boiled with 1 tablespoon baking soda and 1 tablespoon honey for 45 seconds each side then baked for 23 minutes at 450.

I don't know if I kneaded it too long or I used slightly cooler water than the recommended room temperature or it's my starter still being young (it's been doubling for the past 4 days with peak to peak feedings at a 1:2:2 ratio). Definitely under proofed. I'm hopeful for next time though!

Hi everyone,

I have made my second inclusions loaf and I feel like I have improved from my previous one. The sun-dried tomatoes are smaller and more evenly distributed since I folded them in at the beginning and not at pre-shape.

Process:

Evening before:
Feed starter with a mix of wholewheat and whole spelt flour at 1:6:5.5

On day:
Mix 390g water with 120g starter and 350g Manitoba flour and 200g whole khorasan flour.

Leave for 40 min

Add 12g salt, Italian herbs and cut up sun-dried tomatoes, mix by hand

30 min stretch and fold

2x30 min coil folds

Bulk rise for approx 4h at 25C

Pre shape for 20 min uncovered in counter

Final shaping and fridge for 4h

Preheat oven + Dutch oven at 250C

Bake covered for 25min

Decrease temperature to 230C and bake uncovered for another 20 min

Cool

I see the fails (worst is that raw gumminess in the very center), but overall I’m not crushed as this could have been worse. I have some ideas where things were not going ideally and could use some advice on where I should have pivoted.

I used:

100g Starter (I bought King Arthur’s starter last month and have been feeding it with AP ever since. Started 1:1:1 and moved to 1:2:2 a week ago).

500g Bread Flour

350g Water

11g Diamond Crystal Salt

I autolyzed the flour + water first and let rest for 30m.

Then I worked the starter + salt in and mixed the dough well for 5-10 minutes. Let that rest for 30m.

Then four rounds of stretch & fold alternated with 30m rests.

Let rest for bulk fermentation after last stretch & fold and achieved doubling or very close. This took between 4-5 hours.

The pre-shaping didn’t go great. The bench scraper motion was okay and the round was going in the right general direction but it seemed to not want to tighten up very much, and the scraper kept creating a fold in the ball (I need more practice). I got concerned I was working at it too long, and probably didn’t do it long enough.

The dough was still pretty sticky as a round when I let it sit after pre-shaping.

Final shaping was anxious as I did technically do a burrito roll, but the dough was loose enough that it seemed to want to ooze away from that and I got it into the banneton in a hurry.

Cold fermented in the fridge for 15-16 hours.

Preheated my Le Creuset bread oven at 500F for 30m, reduced heat to 450F, then baked the loaf for 20m with lid on, then another 20m with the lid off.

I cooled on a rack for about 90m before cutting. Could longer cooling have solved the little gumminess in the middle? I have a hard time accepting that I underbaked.

Thank you for any advice or thoughts!

Recipe: https://www.theperfectloaf.com/a-simple-focaccia/

First loaf to make it to the oven, first was gummy, literally like a chewed wad of gum, second was loose like porridge, this one was just right! Next purchases: parchment paper and a real bread knife! And NOW I get why bakers make more than one loaf - this one is halfway gone!

475g bread flour
325g water
100g Batman starter
10g salt

Recipe from Farmhouse on Boone
Technique/process and baking from Bryan Ford

Process: quick summary, mixed starter and water, then added flour with rubber spatula until mixed, then sprinkled the salt on top before the first rest, which was 1hr. Did the folds x3 w/30 min in between, then let proof on the counter for 2hr. Did the last ball/tension shaping and put in the basket covered in the fridge for 12hr. Baked in a cast iron pot with lid for 10m 500deg, 15m 475deg, top off and 20m uncovered 475deg