Most first loaves fail for a boring reason: too many new things at once. A rye blend, a 78% hydration, a starter that might be ready, a shaping technique learned from a sped-up video. When it comes out flat, there's no way to know which one did it.
This recipe removes the variables. One flour, and the most forgiving one there is. Enough water to make a real open crumb possible, not so much that the dough turns to soup on the counter. A long cold retard, which is the single kindest thing you can do to a beginner's schedule and their scoring.
What's left is the part that actually matters and the part nobody can do for you: reading the fermentation. Once you can tell when this dough is ready, every other recipe on this site is a variation you already know how to bake.
Come back to it, too. When your bakes start going sideways — and they will, because your kitchen changes temperature and your starter changes character — this is the control. Bake it, see what it does, and you'll know whether the problem is you, the flour, or your starter.
| Ingredient | Weight | Baker's % |
|---|---|---|
| White bread flour (11–14% protein) | 450 g | 90% |
| Water, 85–90°F / 29–32°C | 300 g | 60% |
| Active starter, 100% hydration | 100 g | 20% |
| Fine sea salt | 10 g | 2% |
| Total dough | 860 g | — |
Percentages are against the 500 g of total flour — the 450 g you weigh out plus the 50 g hiding inside your starter. Counting the starter's water too, this dough is 350 g water to 500 g flour: 70% hydration. If that sentence was confusing, it's the single most useful thing to understand in baking, and it's worth ten minutes.
A digital scale. This is the one. Cups cannot measure flour to the accuracy this needs — the same cup can hold 120 g or 155 g depending on how you scooped it, which is a 12% hydration swing and the difference between a good loaf and a puddle. If you own nothing else on this list, own a scale.
A Dutch oven, 4–6 quart, with a lid. It traps the dough's own steam, which is what gives you oven spring and a blistered crust in a home oven. A banneton or a bowl lined with a floured tea towel. Something sharp — a razor blade on a stick, or a very sharp paring knife. A bench scraper, which costs almost nothing and will change your relationship with wet dough.
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Feed the starterMorning · 4–6 hours before you mix
Feed 1:1:1 by weight — 30 g starter, 30 g flour, 30 g water — and leave it at room temperature. You want it at peak: roughly doubled, domed on top, smelling yeasty and faintly sweet rather than sharp and acetic. A starter used past peak has already spent its rise, and your bulk will crawl.
The float test is a coin flip, not a diagnostic. Watch the jar instead. Mark the level with a rubber band and use it when it's domed and about to flatten.
Don't have a starter yet? You need one before anything else here works. Make one from scratch — flour, water, and about two weeks.If it isn't rising Don't mix. Sort the starter out first — starter not rising covers why, and hooch on top if there's grey liquid. -
Mix flour and water2:00 pm · 5 minutes, then 1 hour rest
Whisk 450 g flour and 300 g warm water in a bowl until there is no dry flour left anywhere. It will look shaggy and unpromising. That's correct.
Cover and leave it one hour. This is the autolyse, and it is doing real work: the flour is hydrating fully and the gluten is starting to organize itself without you kneading anything. An hour here saves you ten minutes of effort later and gives a noticeably more extensible dough.
Why an hour, and when to skip it Autolyse is genuinely optional and behaves differently with whole grain — the full case, both ways. -
Add the starter and salt3:00 pm · 3 minutes
Add 100 g of peaked starter and 10 g of salt directly on top. Wet one hand, and squeeze the dough repeatedly between your fingers, folding it over on itself, until the starter is completely distributed and you can't see streaks. About three minutes.
It will feel slack and sticky and slightly wrong. It is supposed to. Don't add flour.
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Bulk ferment, with folds3:00–7:00 pm · 4 sets in the first 2 hours
Cover and leave at room temperature — ideally around 74°F / 23°C. At 30, 60, 90, and 120 minutes, do one set of stretch and folds: wet your hand, reach under one side of the dough, stretch it up until it resists, and fold it over the top. Rotate the bowl a quarter turn. Four times around, then cover it again.
After the fourth set, leave it completely alone. You'll watch it get smoother, puffier, and start to hold a dome instead of slumping flat.
New to folding? How hard to pull, when to stop, and why more sets aren't better — stretch and fold.Different kitchen temperature? Fermentation roughly doubles in speed for every 17°F / 9°C. Build a timeline for your actual room with the bake schedule builder rather than trusting my clock. -
Judge the bulk — the one that mattersAround 7:00 pm · volume, not the clock
This is the skill. Everything else in this recipe is mechanical; this is the part you're actually here to learn.
Stop the bulk when three things are true: the dough has risen roughly 50% (not doubled — 50%), the edges where it meets the bowl are domed rather than sunken, and when you shake the bowl gently the whole mass jiggles as one soft body. You may also see a few bubbles on the surface and along the sides.
If it's 7:00 pm and it hasn't done that, wait. If it hit that at 6:15, move on. The clock in this recipe is a suggestion; your dough is the instruction.
This is the skill Volume, dome, jiggle, and the aliquot-jar trick that turns "50%" from a guess into a measurement — reading the bulk.The two ways this goes wrong Stopping early gives you a tight, gummy crumb — see underproofed. Going too long gives you a slack dough that spreads and won't hold a score — see overproofed. Read both before your first bake, not after. -
Pre-shape7:00 pm · 5 minutes, then 20 minutes rest
Turn the dough onto a clean, unfloured counter — you need the friction. Using a bench scraper, fold the edges into the middle to make a loose round, then flip it seam-side down and drag it toward you a few times to tighten the surface.
Leave it uncovered for 20 minutes. It will relax and spread slightly. Fine.
What pre-shaping is for The full explanation, and why skipping the rest makes the next step fight you, is in shaping. -
Final shape7:20 pm · 5 minutes
Flour the top lightly, flip it over, and fold it into a parcel: bottom third up, both sides in, then roll it away from you into a tight ball. Flip seam-side down and drag it toward you again in short pulls until the surface is taut and smooth like a balloon.
Place it seam side up into a well-floured banneton or a tea-towel-lined bowl. Rice flour, if you have it, is dramatically better at not sticking than wheat flour.
Struggling to get it tight? Shaping is the one genuinely physical skill in bread. The shaping guide covers boule and bâtard, the three checks for enough tension, and the five mistakes that cause a flat loaf.If it won't hold its shape A dough that spreads out flat the moment you let go is telling you something about the bulk, not about your hands — flat loaf. -
Cold retard overnight7:30 pm · 12–16 hours
Cover and put it straight into the fridge. Don't rest it on the counter first.
This does three things at once: it develops a rounder, more complex sour flavor, it makes a cold and firm dough that scores cleanly instead of dragging, and it means you bake tomorrow when you feel like it rather than at midnight tonight. It is the most forgiving step in the whole recipe — anywhere from 12 to 16 hours works, and even 20 is survivable.
What the fridge is actually doing Cold slows yeast far more than bacteria, which is why you get flavour without extra rise — the cold retard. -
BakeNext morning · 45 min preheat, 45 min bake
Put the Dutch oven, lid on, into the oven and heat to 500°F / 260°C. Give it a full 45 minutes at temperature — the pot matters more than the oven, and an underheated pot is a common cause of a pale, spring-less loaf.
Take the dough straight from the fridge. Turn it out onto parchment, seam side down. Score it: one confident slash, about half an inch deep, held at roughly a 45° angle to the surface rather than straight down. One good cut beats a decorative pattern you hesitated over.
Why the pot works It isn't adding steam — it traps the loaf's own. Preheat matters more than people expect: steam and the bake.Lower it in on the parchment, lid on. 20 minutes at 500°F covered. Then remove the lid, drop the oven to 450°F / 232°C, and bake another 20–25 minutes uncovered until the crust is genuinely dark — deeper than feels comfortable the first time. Internal temperature should read 205–210°F / 96–99°C.
Nervous about the cut? Angle, depth, and where the ear actually comes from — scoring.Barely rose in the oven? Nine times out of ten that's fermentation or pot temperature, not your score — no oven spring. -
Cool completely. Yes, completely.At least 2 hours
Onto a wire rack, and leave it alone for a minimum of two hours. The loaf is still cooking as it cools, and the starch is still setting. Cut it hot and you'll compress the crumb into something gummy and blame the recipe.
It will crackle as it cools. That's the best sound in baking and you've earned it.
Gummy anyway? If you waited and it's still dense and sticky inside, the cause is upstream — gummy crumb.
Cut it in half and look at the cross-section before you eat any of it. An even, moderately open crumb with rounded holes means you nailed the bulk. Dense and tight at the bottom with a big tunnel under the crust means you stopped short. Wide, thin-walled, collapsing holes mean you went long.
| What you got | Most likely cause | Go here |
|---|---|---|
| Flat, spread-out loaf | Over-fermented bulk, or weak final shaping | Flat loaf |
| Dense, tight crumb | Under-fermented, or a sluggish starter | Dense crumb |
| Sticky, gummy inside | Cut too soon, or underbaked | Gummy crumb |
| No rise in the oven | Fermentation, or an underheated pot | No oven spring |
| Barely tastes sour | Short, warm ferment — this recipe is mild by design | Not sour enough |
| Harsh, vinegary | Long retard, or a neglected starter | Too sour |
Notes from the counter
I want to be honest about why this recipe is boring on purpose.
There's a whole genre of first-sourdough recipe that tries to make you feel like a baker immediately — 80% hydration, a rye blend, an ear you could cut yourself on. They're written to photograph well. And they produce a specific kind of beginner: someone who has baked eleven loaves and still can't tell you whether the eleventh was underproofed, because they changed three things every time and never held anything still long enough to learn from it.
Holding things still is the whole trick. One flour means the only thing that changed between this bake and your last one is you. That's uncomfortable and it's also the only way the feedback loop closes.
The 50%-rise instruction is the part people push back on hardest, because most recipes say "doubled." Doubled is fine advice for a dough with commercial yeast and a short life. For a sourdough that's going into a long cold retard, doubling the bulk means the fermentation keeps running in the fridge and you meet it at the other end already past its best. Stop at 50% and let the cold finish the job.
And once you can bake this one in your sleep — genuinely, twice in a row, predictable crumb — stop baking it. Go add 20% whole wheat and watch every timing you just learned shift underneath you. That's the next lesson, and it's a much better one when you have a baseline to compare it against.