I wanted to put all of my basic sourdough tips and resources in a single place to make the information easier to share.
I first really tackled bread during grad school in Hawaii, when I generally did not have access to a full kitchen or much equipment. So I started with this book, because it’s designed for making bread by hand. I recommend this book to everyone who asks me how I got into making bread, because it has a great variety of recipes, the instructions are really clear, and it even covers what kind of equipment you should consider getting and why. I also used it to learn how to make laminated dough, which led to an EPIC batch of chocolate croissants that I baked in my glorified toaster oven and shared with my department.
I didn’t dive into the sourdough side until I moved home to Atlanta to finish writing my dissertation. There are plenty of resources online that explain how to culture your own sourdough starter, but I used the directions in the Baking by Hand book linked above. You only need flour, water, and a little time to culture your own sourdough starter:
I think this was about 3 days into the process of culturing my starter, Jonas!
Once your starter is thriving it is VERY EASY to keep alive. I’ve left mine hanging out in the back of my fridge for more than 6 weeks between feedings with no issues. I’ve also used the King Arthur Flour directions to dry out my starter, and I was then able to put the flakes in a ziplock bag and bring them to Australia in my checked luggage. Also, for anyone local to me I’d be happy to give you some of my starter, which allows you to skip the initial culturing week and just go straight into normal feeding and usage.
Jonas happily burbling away in Brisbane in October 2019!
In terms of online resources my favorite is the King Arthur Flour website. I use many of their recipes and helpful blog posts, including:
Recipes using sourdough discard
Which includes my favorite recipe from their website: Sourdough pizza crust!
All of their sourdough resources can be found here
The one thing you do need to keep in mind is that the Baking by Hand book instructs you to keep your starter at 125% hydration (because you feed the starter about 25% more water (by weight) than flour at each feeding), but King Arthur Flour tends to assume you are using a 100% hydration starter (fed with equal amounts of water and flour by weight). This is pretty easy to counteract by replacing some of the starter with flour (12.5%), but you can also simply switch your starter feeding habits in preparation for a particular recipe. As I like keeping my starter on the more fluid side, I just go into the KAF recipes knowing I will have to do some math.
My attempt at a pumpkin shaped loaf for the department bakeoff in October 2019. I don’t think anyone noticed the pumpkin shape, but only because they ate it so quickly! This is a “north shore sourdough” loaf based on the recipe in the Baking by Hand book. As noted in the book, however, your sourdough starter will quickly take on the characteristics of whatever environment it’s living in, and so this is really a St Lucia Sourdough loaf. The flour rings come from proofing the bread in a round banneton basket, I got my bannetons in Australia from this website. They are the same ones that KAF sells in the US. I then used a bread lame to cut slashes for the pumpkin-esque ridges.