STEP-BY-STEP SOURDOUGH FOR BEGINNERS: How to Make Sourdough Starter & Sourdough Bread

After hundreds of requests, I’m so happy to have finally filmed by step-by-step guide on my favorite sourdough bread recipe, as well as how to make sourdough starter from scratch! Sourdough bread is a much healthier alternative to traditional bread that is gut friendly and easier to digest with it’s lower glycemic index. Happy baking!!

*I also apologize for all my mispronunciations! Lol

Sourdough starter blogpost: https://abrightmoment.com/how-to-make-sourdough-starter/
Sourdough bread blogpost: https://abrightmoment.com/how-to-make-sourdough-bread/

today I’m going to show y’all how to make sourdough starter and sourdough bread for beginners step by step sourdough is one of those things where it seems really complicated but it’s actually one of the easiest things and once you master like sourdough starter not even sourdough bread just sourdough starter like you are unstoppable you can make biscuits pancakes ficashia ficashia is one of the easiest breads honestly even easier than like a bread loaf which I’m going to show you how easy a bread loaf is you’re going to be like your mind’s going to be blown and you can make like baklava ficasha s’mores ficashia um lemon blueberry ficasha cinnamon roll ficashia all those recipes are on my blog by the way um I don’t know what English muffins like literally the possibilities are endless so let’s just go ahead and get into it first things first we need to make some sourdough starter sourdough starter for those that don’t know is this live culture of bacteria it’s good bacteria that is created by fermenting flour and water those are the only two ingredients you need and it’s basically a natural leaven natural it basically helps your bread rise naturally without using like commercial yeast which is still not bad and it’s great when you’re in a pinch but you’re going to start off with a glass jar i highly recommend a glass jar this one is I think 800 ml big um you can use one smaller i also This is like a recycle jar so you can thrift jars you can recycle them from like when you buy like pickles at the grocery store just wash it out make sure it doesn’t smell like pickles we’re going to put our glass jar on our scale and we’re going to hit the tar button to cancel it out so that it zeros out you’re always going to want to use equal parts water equal parts flour and equal parts sourdough starter now we currently don’t have sourdough starter so we’re going to start off with 50 g of water and we’re going to hit the tar button to zero it out so I went overboard and did 53 g so we’re going to do 53 g of flour and now that we have equal parts flour and equal parts water we’re just going to mix this together going to add the lid and we’re going to let this sit for 24 hours the process of creating your own sourdough starter from scratch is going to take about 7 days total for it to become properly fermented live bubbly active and ready to naturally rise your all your breads literally whatever bread you desire so every day we’re going to feed it once a day so let’s pretend it’s day two take 50 g of our made from scratch sourdough starter and discard the remaining sourdough in the jar kind of like to swirl around warm water until the jar is clean the thing is you never want to wash it out with soap as that will interrupt the fermentation process and it’s not really good for the bacteria and it might taste like soap so just don’t do it also a tip is to get this sourdough starter out of your sink immediately because this stuff will harden like concrete just as with day one we’re going to add equal g of water so we did 52 same ratio for flour so we’re going to do 52 basically you always want that flour fully absorbed when you’re mixing i’m just going to add it back into your rinse jar you’re going to repeat that process for 7 days total and you got to feed it every day every 24 hours because it is now a living breathing organism maybe not breathing but living it’s a living organism so you’re gonna feed it the same exact ratio of sourdough starter flour and water so if you decide to keep 50 g or even 100 g of sourdough starter you’re going to do 100 g of sourdough starter 100 g of flour 100 g of water kapish tomato tomato i don’t really know catchphrases that well but if you want to save yourself some time you could also just always ask your friends for a bit of their sourdough starter i’ve given my friends so much sourdough starter and I love it because basically you can give them your discard and they can feed it same day and it’s perfect or you can go ahead and feed it for them and they just start the process the next day also I feel like the longer it firmness the better it tastes but this guy is bubbly and ready i’ll actually show you yesterday when it was like overflowing bubbly and ready so let’s make some sourdough bread so we just need four ingredients it’s our sourdough starter that’s active and bubbly our flour some lukewarm water and some fine baking salt my sourdough starter I usually feed about like 8:00 a.m and then I’ll start making bread about like 100 p.m i’ll even push it to 2:00 p.m sometimes um you can be really relaxed with yourself like don’t stress out about those certain times but gives you kind of an idea of my time schedule we’re going to start off with 330 g of lukewarm water then we’re going to add 100 g of your active sourdough starter and then 10 g of salt lastly we’re going to add 450 g of flour i’m just using allpurpose flour but you could use bread flour totally up to you guys your hands are your best kitchen tools so you’re just going to mix this you could also use like one of those circular kneading tools but I just mix it with my hands until all the flour has been absorbed it also takes like less than 30 seconds so why am I going to waste a kitchen tool there’s like flour everywhere you’ve done your hard part evade your sourdough dough we’re going to cover it with either Okay i like to cover it two different ways don’t hate me for the first way saran wrap i know plastic but it just like traps in the moisture and that’s what we want we want it to get like we want it to get nice and warm in there cuz you want cuz okay summertime is the best time to make sourdough bread in my opinion because it rises so much quicker and it’s so much more bubbly in the summer time cuz it’s nice and warm and you know how you want your dough to rise in a warm environment same here same situation here the segway which I feel like you all appreciate is I’ll wet this under like really hot water and then I’ll ring it out so it’s nice and it’s just damp and then I cover it right now we’re using a dry we’re going to set it aside for 30 minutes after 30 minutes we’re going to complete our first lift and fold process so imagine the bowl is divided into four different corners so we’re going to lift up each corner from the center and the bottom and then we’re going to fold it into the center so lift it up fold rotate now an hour and a half has gone by because every 30 minutes for a total of three to four times you’re lifting and folding those four corners into the center so we’ve trapped in all of this beautiful air all this air to create those beautiful air bubbles that’s what I meant and then we have the final folding process so this we’re going to stretch out our dough like as much as possible kind of shaking it underneath because we don’t want to break the dough we don’t want to tear the dough we don’t want to flatten it or knead it we want to keep all those air bubbles in it and then you’re just going to gently roll it up and then kind of push it towards you to roll tightly and we’re going to put it in our flowered bread basket and leave it on the counter for another hour and then we’re going to put it away in the fridge also I’ve left it basically out on the counter until I’ve gone to bed which will be like 11 or 10 o’clock sometimes and I feel like the longer it says I’ve room temperature the more it gross so I think that’s totally fine i’ve never had a problem with it but I wouldn’t put it in your fridge any earlier than like 8:00 p.m and then you could bake it at like 8:00 a.m 9:00 a.m even up to like 2:00 p.m the next day now that our breads have rested in the fridge overnight it’s time to bake now I only have one Dutch oven so we’re baking one bread at a time since I made two yesterday so we can bake them together um okay so this one is a cinnamon swirl ch No cinnamon sugar chocolate chip swirl sourdough loaf i’m so excited for it if you have a sweet tooth this this is going to be your girl um basically how I made it was I made my regular sourdough loaf that I just showed y’all and then halfway through the lift and folds I added in chocolate chips so that they’d be evenly distributed and then right before the final fold I sprinkled it with like some cinnamon sugar and then I just put it in the bread basket to rest overnight and or do like its long fermentation overnight um so now it’s time to bake so to bake our sourdough loaves we want to set our oven to its highest temperature mine goes to 500 i wouldn’t recommend going more than 500 if your girls more than 500 you could also do 475 450 and I like to preheat it for at least 30 minutes so it’s going to get really hot and then I also like to put the base of my Dutch oven in the oven while it’s preheating so that it gets super hot um and now we need parchment a hint crinkle your parchment paper and score your bread on your parchment paper prior to adding adding it to the Dutch oven to make your life easier your bread directly on your parchment ooh this one got a little sticky overnight if that happens don’t worry you can wash this and you can just dust it with a little bit of flour when you go to score your bread you want to do like quick and deep slits oh and I say that but these chocolate chips are stopping me we’re going to do a little cross sometimes you can if you want those edges to come up you can kind of just scoop them up a little bit and this will help them rise better when baking there we go now that our bread is in the oven we’re going to bake it about 20 minutes at like 475 to 500 this is going to with the cover because this is going to help create steam within the Dutch oven and that is going to help your bread rise and like get nice and big so when you take the cover off you’re going to notice your bread is like basically the size it’s going to be um I used to when I first started making sourdough I’d look the cover and it would be flat and it’ be like it’d be the most heartbreaking thing to see but after 20 minutes of baking with the cutter we’re going to remove the cover to bake another like 15 to 20 minutes at 450° F i would tell you the calculations in Celsius but my brain just isn’t going to do that this morning unfortunately maybe I’ll put them right here so y’all can know um and yeah and then basically when you take the cover off to bake that’s when it’s going to get super golden and brown and crisp on top and I would just keep an eye on it after about 15 minutes um because every oven is different especially like gas electric so it could get brown a lot quicker or a lot slower you might have to go a little more look at the swirl the smell of fresh bread smells amazing but this is like the smell of like bobka a chocolate chip cookie and like a cinnamon swirl pretzel all had a baby with sourdough bread that’s what this smells like you can see this theme okay now the hardest part about baking bread is the waiting after you’ve done all the hard work to make it that’s so hot oh my gosh okay you want to wait at least 40 minutes to an hour before slicing into it because it’s still baking guys like that’s why it’s piping hot it needs to cool down it needs to stop baking um and it’s I promise you it is worth the wait some flaky salt m it’s so chewy the outside is crisp i also cut my finger i’m excited to chocolate chip love okay ending the video on my phone but if you guys have any sourdough questions please let me know in the comments i’m here to help i’ll also have full details written out on my blog but until then I’m going to eat some sourdough up