π Food & home Β· Guide
The One-Jar Sourdough Guide
Starter, dough and bake, in the time an ordinary week allows
The One-Jar Sourdough Guide
Starter, dough and bake, in the time an ordinary week allows
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A4 Β· this is a layout preview in the βClipboardβ design. When you generate, the studio writes every chapter in full, paints the cover and chapter art, and composes a downloadable A4 PDF with your name, bio and store link on it.
Sourdough has a reputation for demanding more attention than most people have to give. It does not. This guide takes you through one jar, one dough and one bake, with the waiting arranged around a working week rather than against it.
What's inside
- 1Feeding A Starter That RisesThe seven-day routine that turns flour and water into a starter with reliable lift, including how much to discard and why. After this chapter you can keep a jar alive and tell when it is ready to bake with.
- 2Reading Your Kitchen TemperatureWhy the same recipe behaves differently in January and July, and how to find the warm and cool spots in your own kitchen. You will learn to adjust timings by feel rather than following a clock that was set in someone else's house.
- 3Mixing And The First RestWeighing flour, water, starter and salt, then leaving the mix alone while the flour drinks. After this chapter you can mix a dough that comes together without kneading and know what it should feel like after an hour.
- 4Stretch, Fold And BulkFour sets of folds spread across the bulk rise, and the visual signs that the dough has fermented enough. You will be able to judge the end of bulk by dome, bubbles and jiggle rather than by a fixed number of hours.
- 5Shaping Without StickingPre-shape, bench rest and final shape, with the flour and hand positions that stop wet dough gluing itself to everything. After this you can produce a taut round or oval that holds its shape overnight.
- 6The Cold Overnight ProofHow the fridge turns an all-day bake into a two-evening job, and what changes in flavour and handling. You will learn to bake straight from cold and how long a shaped loaf can safely wait.
- 7Baking Under A LidPreheating, scoring and the covered-then-uncovered bake that gives crust and rise without a steam oven. After this chapter you can bake a loaf in a casserole dish and read the crust for doneness.
A sample from chapter one
Day one: flour, water, and nothing else
Put fifty grams of wholemeal flour and fifty grams of tepid water in a clean jar, stir until no dry flour remains, and rest the lid on top rather than screwing it down. That is the whole of day one. The mixture will look like thick batter and smell of raw flour, which is exactly right. Nothing needs to happen yet, and usually nothing does.
For the next week you feed it once a day at roughly the same hour. Tip most of the jar away, keep about a tablespoon, and add fresh flour and water in equal weights. Throwing away most of it feels wasteful and it is the step beginners skip, but a small starter fed generously rises faster and more predictably than a large one fed thinly.
- Use a jar you can see through, and mark the level with an elastic band after every feed.
- Tap water is fine in most of Britain; if yours smells strongly of chlorine, leave it standing overnight first.
- Wholemeal or rye for the first four days, then switch to strong white flour if you prefer a milder loaf.
- The starter is ready to bake with when it doubles within six hours of a feed, twice in a row.
Key takeaways
- A starter is a routine rather than a recipe, and keeping the routine matters more than the flour you choose.
- Discarding down to a spoonful before each feed is what makes the rise reliable.
- If nothing has happened by day three, the jar is almost always too cold rather than dead.
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