Sourdough Tips & Recipes

Here are my favorite sourdough recipes, tips, and tutorials!

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Sourdough Tips and Videos:

I demonstrated this live on Instagram and Facebook, so here are the quick notes from that.

Feed Your Starter Cheat Sheet:

  1. I use a quart-size mason jar to hold my starter.
  2. When feeding, I add 2-3 tablespoons of starter to the jar, stir in 80 grams each of unbleached flour, filtered water (just a Brita filter to get the chlorine out), and stir it together.
  3. Save the leftover starter and make pancakes or something (see below!)
  4. Let the starter sit on the counter for 4-12 hours, until it doubles or triples in size. The starter is ready to add to a recipe now. Eventually, it will start to deflate, in which case it passed its ideal time to add to a recipe (just feed it again and wait until it poofs up again).
  • sourdough starter
    What it looks like right after I feed it.
  • What it looks like 8-12 hours later.

My Top Quick Sourdough Tips:

  1. If you make your own starter, wait at least six weeks before attempting bread without any added yeast. You want a really healthy strong starter.
  2. Be careful using metal or stainless steel bowls and spoons with sourdough starter. You’ll mostly be okay, but acid reacts with metal. So never store your starter long-term in a metallic container.
  3. After years of measuring the flour and water in cups (which is not accurate and didn’t yield consistent results), I finally got this food scale. I hate to be the person who says you NEED a food scale to make great sourdough bread, but seriously, sourdough is 1000% simpler now.

What to do with Sourdough Discard

I don’t like food waste, so I don’t throw out my extra sourdough starter after feeding it. This “discard” is actually really delicious and can be used in all kinds of recipes. So I pour it into a mason jar that stays in the fridge, adding more to it every time I feed my starter, and then eventually, I can use it in a recipe.

There are a TON of recipes online that use for sourdough discard. My personal favorite is these pancakes.

My Favorite Sourdough Recipes

Easiest Sourdough Bread Ever – Very simple, EASY, and forgiving recipe. If you are just starting with sourdough, make this first for an easy win!

Easy Sourdough Sandwich Bread – a simple, inexpensive sourdough bread recipe baked in loaf pans – no kneading required.

Sue Gregg’s Sourdough English Muffins

Non-Crumbly Whole Grain Sandwich Bread – I make the sourdough version of this (see post).

Kate’s Soft Sourdough Master Recipe

Pretty Simple Sourdough – that round artisan sourdough loaf you’ve dreamed of! They also have a bunch of tutorials for feeding and making your own starter. It requires more equipment and hands-on work, but it will give you the best sourdough loaf ever.

Sourdough Pancakes – I use discard instead of fresh starter and add about 1/2-1 cup of milk. Sometimes I add oats to make oatmeal pancakes!

non-crumbly whole wheat sandwich bread (sourdough version!)

I’m not the authority on sourdough baking. Hopefully, one day I will be an expert. For now, the best thing I can do is point you to other experts who have awesome posts, videos, and resources for making sourdough simple and successful!

My friend Wardee shares A LOT of information (and videos!) about healthy sourdough. Here are some of her tips: