Sourdough Bread Basics

Sourdough bread is just bread that is made with a natural yeast culture. It is slower to rise and make, the slow fermentation allows the natural yeasts to break down the gluten in the bread in to a more digestible form. If you haven’t already check out my go to recipe.

Instead of using commerical yeast, for making sourdough bread we use a “starter”, it is still yeast! But it is a natural yeast.

Check out The Starter page for a more in depth look at what a sourdough starter is, and how to maintain and use one!

It is extremely rewarding, better quality, delicious, and fun!

A common question, but yes if you use white flour!

Hydration refers to the percentage of water to flour in a recipe. The higher hydration a recipe, the “wetter” and stickier a dough will be, and a little harder to handle. For example in my go to recipe, the hydration level is 65% because 520g water/800g flour = .65 (x100).

Baker’s percentage is the ratio between the amount of flour in a recipe and the amount of a particular ingredient. For example if you have 800g of flour in your recipe, and 18g of salt then your recipe has 18/800 = 2.25% salt. It is an easy way to navigate baking recipes and makes it easy to double, triple, or halve any recipe.

Is sourdough starter still yeast? (yes it is) Check out The Starter page for a more in depth look!