Have you been intrigued by the idea of sourdough bread? Maybe you’ve seen pictures of beautiful round loaves and wondered if you could bake bread that looked like that? I’ve been making sourdough bread for several years now and I’ve focused most of my recipes on eliminating unnecessary and complicated steps. As a result, our sourdough bread recipes are perfect for beginners. No fancy folding, scraping, laminating- just simple steps that are easy for beginners. Keep reading to check out our collection of the best sourdough recipes for beginners!
Sourdough Starter
You’ll need a sourdough starter to make sourdough breads. You can purchase a dehydrated starter from Etsy, get one from a neighbor or friend, or easily make your own. Click below to get step-by-step instructions, with photos, on how to make a sourdough starter
Best Beginner Sourdough Boule Recipes
We have two very popular sourdough recipes, one is meant to be made overnight and the other recipe is day or night rise. Both have simple instructions with photos and plenty of tips to help you create a beautiful loaf. I’ve also included our jalapeño cheddar recipe as one of the most frequent questions I get about our sourdough boule recipe is “what add-ins can I put in this recipe?”. We’ve made it easy by creating a recipe that details the add-in steps of adding cheddar jalapeno into sourdough. We have other add in recipes as well! My favorites are cinnamon sourdough bread and chocolate sourdough.
Simple Sourdough Discard Recipes
I love discard recipes. And quite honestly, these are the best sourdough recipes for beginners to make because the most complicated part about sourdough is figuring out your rise times. Discard recipes don’t need a bulk rise. Keep a discard jar in your fridge and you’ll be amazed at all the different recipes you can add sourdough discard in to.
Sandwich Breads
Our sourdough sandwich bread recipe has become very popular over the years! Many of my readers tell me they are tired of ingredients they can’t pronounce in their bread and wanting fresher options. Who doesn’t wonder why their store bought bread can go weeks without getting moldy? Let me show you how easy it is to make sandwich bread at home
Your starter will need to be a couple weeks old before it is ready to bake with, but here is what you want to look for: after you feed your starter, it doubles in size within 4-6 hours- every time you feed it. This tells you your starter is active and ready to be used.
If you bake with sourdough often and keep your starter at room temperate you will need to discard and feed every day. If you bake infrequently (at the most once a week) you’ll want to keep it in the refrigerator and pull it out 24 hours before you plan to use it to feed it.
There are really only two reasons your bread would turn out flat: your starter wasn’t active (see FAQs above to know when to use your starter) or your dough was over-proofed. Even an under-proofed dough has a little bit of rise in a warm oven. But over-proofed dough or a starter that is not active can’t create the rise necessary for a sourdough boule.
There are a few different reasons your dough might not have risen. The first, you missed the window and over proofed your dough, once the dough has hit the limit of its “rise” its starts to deflate and will not produce a bread with rise. Another reason could also be you haven’t given it enough time to rise, if your house is a little colder, the rise times will take a lot longer. Lastly, if your starter was not active (see FAQs above) you won’t get a good rise.
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