How to make sourdough bread at home: our honest guide

July 27, 2026 · Rustic Sweets & Treats, Aberdeen, WA

Yes, a bakery is about to teach you to bake your own bread. We're not worried — half of you will fall in love with the craft (welcome, friends), and the other half will decide a day of dough-tending is our job. Either way you win. No secrets held back here: this is the same hydration and the same process we use at our own stand, written the way we'd teach a friend at our kitchen counter.

Step 1: Grow a starter from scratch (7–14 days)

You need a clean jar, a kitchen scale, flour, and water. That's it. One rule on the flour: always unbleached — the bleaching process is hard on the wild yeast and bacteria you're trying to grow. A little whole wheat flour in the first few days helps (it carries more wild yeast than white flour), but unbleached all-purpose works too.

• Day 1: Stir 50g flour and 50g water in the jar until no dry spots remain. Lid on loose (gases need to escape). Park it somewhere warm — 70–75°F is the happy zone.
• Day 2: You might see a few bubbles, might not. Either way: discard all but about 50g, then feed with 50g fresh flour and 50g water. This discard-and-feed is the daily routine from here on.
• Days 3–4 — the false start: Many starters bubble up dramatically here, and beginners think they've won. Then it goes flat and smells strange. That early surge is other bacteria passing through, not yeast — completely normal. Do not quit. Keep feeding daily.
• Days 5–10: The quiet stretch. Feed every day at roughly the same time. Gradually the smell shifts from odd to pleasantly tangy — think yogurt — and small rises become steadier and more predictable.
• Ready when: it reliably doubles within 4–8 hours of feeding, several days in a row, full of bubbles top to bottom. For some kitchens that's day 7; for cool coastal kitchens like ours, closer to day 14. Patience beats restarting.

The water matters as much as the flour. We only use filtered or spring water — never straight city tap water, whose chlorine and chloramine are there specifically to kill microorganisms, which is the opposite of what you want in this jar. Unfiltered well water is a gamble too, depending on its minerals and what else is in it — run it through a filter first. A cheap pitcher filter or a jug of spring water is all it takes.

One more local tip: Pacific Northwest kitchens run cool, and a cold starter is a slow starter — an oven with just the light on makes a great warm home. (More on what's actually happening in the jar in our starter explainer.)

Shortcut: start from a dried culture (it's how we started)

Full transparency: our own starter didn't begin from scratch. A couple of years ago we activated a Cultures for Health San Francisco–style dried starter culture — about $9 — and every loaf we've ever sold descends from that packet. Rehydrating a dried culture still takes daily feeding, but it usually reaches bake-ready strength in about a week, and you're growing an established culture rather than gambling on what's floating around your kitchen. One tip from experience (and many reviewers): feed it by weight — equal grams of flour and water — rather than the volume measurements on the packet, and give it warmth and patience. We're not affiliated with them in any way; it's just the packet that started all of this, and we'd feel silly keeping that a secret.

Step 2: Our loaf, start to finish (70% hydration, ~900g)

These are our real numbers — the same 70% hydration we bake at the stand. It's a forgiving hydration for beginners: wet enough for an open, moist crumb, dry enough that the dough won't fight you.

The recipe — our actual base recipe, one good-sized loaf (~920g of dough):

• 475g unbleached bread flour — our preference for its strength and chew, though a high-quality unbleached all-purpose will do just fine
• 319g filtered or spring water (works out to ~70% hydration once you count the water in the starter — same water rule as the starter: no straight city tap)
• 119g active starter, fed and at its peak
• 10g fine salt

1. Feed the starter the night before, so it peaks the morning you mix.
2. Mix flour and water first and let the shaggy mass rest 30–60 minutes (bakers call this the autolyse). The flour hydrates and gluten starts forming on its own — the single easiest upgrade to your bread.
3. Add starter and salt with a splash of reserved water, and squeeze and pinch it all through the dough until fully combined.
4. Stretch and fold: four rounds, about 30 minutes apart. Wet your hand, grab an edge, stretch it up, fold it over the top; quarter-turn the bowl and repeat a few times per round. This replaces kneading. (It's the hand version of what our spiral mixer does at the bakery: develop the gluten gently without overworking the dough.) By the last round the dough should feel smooth and alive.
5. Bulk ferment: leave it covered at room temperature until it's grown by about half, jiggles when you shake the bowl, and shows bubbles at the edges. Go by looks, not the clock — 4–8 hours depending on your kitchen's warmth.
6. Shape: turn the dough onto a lightly floured counter, gently pat into a rough rectangle, fold the sides in like a letter, then roll it toward you into a tight ball and drag it to build surface tension. Place seam-up in a floured, towel-lined bowl or banneton.
7. Cold proof overnight in the fridge, 8–14 hours. Flavor happens here — and cold dough scores much cleaner tomorrow.
8. Bake: preheat a Dutch oven at 475°F for 45 minutes. Flip the cold dough onto parchment, score it about ½-inch deep with a razor or sharp knife, and lower it in — 20 minutes lid on, then 20–25 lid off, until deeply browned. Braver is better on color; an instant-read thermometer should hit 205–210°F in the center. (The Dutch oven traps steam the way our stone deck oven injects it — it's the home version of the same trick, and it's what gives the crust its spring and blisters.)
9. Cool at least an hour before slicing — the crumb is still setting. Hardest step in the whole recipe. (It's also why we bake the day before market: a fully cooled loaf keeps its crisp crust.)

Where first loaves usually go wrong

• Starter wasn't ready. If it doesn't double after feeding, it isn't strong enough to raise bread yet. Keep feeding.
• Underproofed (dense, gummy crumb) or overproofed (flat pancake loaf). Judging fermentation by feel takes a few bakes — everyone's first loaf is a lesson.
• Cold kitchen. Coastal Washington kitchens run cool; fermentation may need the long end of every time range. An oven with just the light on makes a fine proofing box.

The honest part

Your third loaf will be better than your first, and your tenth might be genuinely great. The craft is a joy and we recommend it wholeheartedly. And on the weeks you'd rather skip the 24-hour project — and it really is 24 hours — that's what our market stand is for.