The world’s easiest sourdough bread – Incredibly easy

Making sourdough bread involves a lot of different techniques and a long list of things to do. Looking at the dough, touching it, waiting for it, stretching and folding it, and a lot of other things. Sometimes you have other things to do, but you still want a fantastic sourdough bread with a holey crumb and a dark, crispy crust. Here is the solution. This is my recipe for the world’s easiest sourdough bread.

I love to bake. Cakes are fun, but bread… bread is everyday food. A day doesn’t go by, without me eating bread. My favorite is sourdough bread. The crunch, the tangy and well-developed taste. Yum.

If you are just here for the recipe, you can easily jump to it by pressing this button:

Go to recipe

I’ve loved baking since I was a child

I’ve been baking since I was nine years old and I found my mother’s blue baking book. This is a book that was probably in every home in the 1970s in Denmark. One day after school I grabbed the book and followed the recipes. I don’t remember what recipe it was, but I do remember my Mom being excited about coming home to something home-baked and possibly less excited about the near-exploded kitchen.

Since then I’ve baked a myriad of things. Layer cakes, bundts, cakes, muffins, and buns for my and my kid’s birthdays. Every kind of bread for everyday use. The last year I’ve become pretty obsessed with sourdough and I’ve taught myself to make the most delicious bread with just three ingredients (flour, water, and salt).

You need an active sourdough starter

To bake this bread, you will need to have an active sourdough starter. You are in luck though, because I have made my own guide on how to make your own sourdough starter right in your own kitchen.

Why ‘the world’s easiest sourdough bread’?

The biggest problem for me, when it comes to baking sourdough bread, is that I have to use an entire day to make one bread. It’s super nice and meditative, but I don’t always have that kind of time to spend.

That is the reason that I’ve developed a recipe for the world’s easiest sourdough bread. It requires about 20 to 25 minutes of active work. The rest of the time the dough will just be hanging out on the kitchen counter, in the fridge or in the oven.

The tools you need to make the world’s easiest sourdough bread

When you create things you need tools. I’ve assembled a list of tools you need when you create sourdough bread.

Ad links! Most of these links will give me a bit of commission if you buy them. If you are not interested in doing that, find the tools using your favorite search engine.

As a minimum you will need:

• A good bowl – This bowl is incredibly beautiful, but whatever you have in your kitchen that is big enough to hold the dough
• A bench scraper – This is used to move the sticky dough around and also to help shape it
• A dutch oven – You need a dutch oven (basically a pot that can go into the oven), because then you won’t have to have to make steam the oven because the bread will essentially be steaming itself
• A lame – You need a super sharp knife to score the dough. This one uses a razor blade that can be replaced
• A good oven – Preferably one that can get super hot. I have one that can go to 300°C/572°F that can also steam, which is quite basic in features, because I want to do everything manually

The formula of the world’s easiest sourdough bread

This is a pretty simple bread. 80% high-protein flour for good oven spring, 20% whole-grain wheat flour for delicious taste, and 75% hydration for lots of holes in the crumb.

Weight	Ingredient	Baker's Percentage
100g	sourdough (100% hydration)	10.0%
760g	bread flour	76.0%
190g	whole-grain wheat flour	19.0%
700g	water	70.0%
22g	salt	2.2%

If you want to change the formula, you can do it here in my bread calculator.

Great sourdough bread takes time

There is no doubt. Great bread takes the time that great bread takes, but it is absolutely possible to cut down on the amount of work.

My regular method for making sourdough bread consists of a lot of steps:

1. Create and mature a levain (3-4 hours)
2. Autolyse (½-1 hour)
3. Mixing the dough (20 minutes)
4. Bulk fermentation including stretch and folds (3 hours)
5. Diving and shaping the dough (30 minutes)
6. Retard (8-10 hours)
7. Baking (1½-2 hours)

All that will be replaced by these easy steps:

1. Mixing the dough (10 minutes)
2. Bulk fermentation on the kitchen counter (8-10 hours)
3. Dividing and shaping (25 minutes)
4. Quick retard while the oven is heating (1 hour)
5. Baking (1½-2 hours)

That means that you can just mix the dough at night and shape and bake it the next morning.

All you need is one advanced technique

The only advanced technique you need for this recipe is shaping the dough. In this video, I use my hands to fold the dough, but when you get to higher hydrations you should use your bench scraper.

You can get a good idea of how to do it here:

The conclusion of the world’s easiest sourdough bread

Compared to how you create classic sourdough bread, this is an extremely easy recipe. It really delivers in both crust, crumb and taste.

It is not going to be the only sourdough bread in my arsenal, but it is really great to have a great bread that can be done with a minimum of work and time

The active time investment is really so much lower than the regular sourdough bread, so it will be easy to find time to bake on a more regular basis now.

Please share on social media

This is my recipe for the world’s easiest sourdough bread. I hope you will try to make it. If you post it on Instagram please tag med as @foodgeek.dk so I can see it. That would make me very happy.