Easy sourdough bread recipe | The most simple recipe

Many, many people love sourdough bread. Eating it is one thing, though. Getting started with baking sourdough bread can be daunting. Not only that, it can be extremely expensive regarding tools, so I decided to make this recipe that only requires tools you already have in your kitchen. This is my easy sourdough bread recipe.

We, sourdough bakers, are obsessed. With our starters, with our flours, with our tools and gadgets. We’ll invest large sums of money into all of that stuff.

This recipe is designed for people that want to try out baking sourdough bread but without investing a big part of their hard-earned cash into those things.

This means that you will only need tools that you already have in your kitchen, a bag of bread flour from your supermarket, some water from your tap, and some table salt.

You will need an active starter, so go read here if you want to make your own.

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What tools are needed in this easy sourdough bread recipe?

1. Some mixing bowls.
   A medium one for the dough, probably the bulk fermentation, and two small ones for the fridge retard. You could probably get by with one mixing bowl if you halve the recipe if you’re low on bowls.
2. A measuring cup.
   For this recipe, you can use either a 1 dl measuring cup (if you prefer metric) or a ½ cup measuring cup.
3. A teaspoon.
   I use a measuring teaspoon, but you can get by with a regular old teaspoon.
4. Tea towels.
   Three. One, to cover your bowl while the dough is being developed, and two, to put in the smaller bowls while retarding.
5. A heat-proof dish.
   A rectangular one. It should fit a rolled-up towel.
6. A towel.
   When you roll it up, it should fit in the heat-proof bowl. Funny, huh?
7. A sharp knife.
8. An oven with a baking sheet.

Volumetric salt conversion

If you weigh your salt, it doesn’t matter what kind of salt you use (and no, it doesn’t matter what salt you use), but if you are using volumetric measurements, there is a difference.

The problem is that the larger the grain of salt is, the more room for air there is in between the individual grains.

To get the same amount of salt in your finished bread, the larger the grain, the more teaspoons (or tablespoons or whatever) you will need to get the same amount of salt by weight.

I made this conversion chart for this recipe. It’s divided into two tables, one if you use a 1 dl measuring cup, and one if you use a ½ cup measuring cup.

This table is for when you make the recipe with a 1 dl measuring cup:

14 grams salt (1 dl measuring cup)	Teaspoon
Table salt	2 teaspoons
Kosher salt	2¼ teaspoons
Sea salt	3 teaspoons
Maldon salt	4¼ teaspoons

This table is for when you make the recipe with a ½ cup measuring cup:

17g salt (½ cup measuring cup)	Teaspoon
Table salt	2½ teaspoons
Kosher salt	2¾ teaspoons
Sea salt	3¾ teaspoons
Maldon salt	5¼ teaspoons

Volumetric measurements in baking

Normally I am a huge proponent of using weight instead of volumetric measurements when baking. Just because it’s more precise.

A cup of hard-packed flour weighs much more than a cup of sifted flour, which means you can go quite wrong with the proportions when measuring using volume.

But here are my assumptions:

1 dl of bread flour weighs 61 grams.

I checked it by weighing out 20 cups of bread flour and calculated the average.

1 dl of water weighs 100 grams.

This is only true at 4°C/39.2°F, but the change is minimal at higher temperatures. At 21°C/70°F, 1 dl of water weighs 99.802 grams. Not really enough to bother.

1 dl of stirred-down sourdough starter (100% hydration) weighs 100 grams.

If you use ap-flour or whole grain, it may a bit more or a bit less. It’s fine.

It’s very important to stir it down, or else you may get a lot less starter than you intend.

The dough in this easy sourdough bread recipe

Vitals

Total weight	1346 grams
Pre-fermented flour	6.4%
Hydration	70.3%
Yield	2 small boules

The dough

The dough in this simple artisan sourdough bread recipe is measured by volume, which approximates the dough.

100% of the flour is supermarket bread flour, which would be a relatively easy flour for most people.

If you can’t get that, get the best all-purpose flour and spike it with vital wheat gluten, so you have 13% protein.

Use my vital wheat gluten calculator to determine how to mix your new high-protein flour.

Weight	Ingredient	Baker's Percentage
732g	bread flour	100.0%
500g	water	68.3%
100g	starter (100% hydration)	13.7%
14g	salt	1.9%

If you want to play around with the formula or scale it, you can play with my bread calculator. Just remember that the flour should be divisible by 61, water and starter should be divisible by 100, and salt should be divisible by 7.

The conclusion of this easy sourdough bread recipe

This is a beautiful sourdough bread, albeit not super complex tasting.

The crust is super crispy, and the crumb is nice and chewy. It’s not overly tangy, but enough to make your mouth water.

If perfectly fermented, this recipe can bring artisan sourdough bread to anybody who wants to give it a go.

It doesn’t require anything that you don’t already have in a normally stocked kitchen.

Come on. Give it a go!

Please share this easy sourdough bread recipe on social media

This is my recipe for a simple artisan sourdough bread. If you like the recipe, please consider sharing it with like-minded bread lovers on social media.

If you make it and post it on Instagram, please tag me as @foodgeek.dk so I can see it. That would make me very happy.