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Baking Sourdough Bread at Home
Build a live starter, read your dough by feel and temperature, and bake a crisp, open-crumbed loaf at home.
5 ways in. Do one or all of them, in any order. Sign in to save your progress.
01
7-Day Sprint
Seven days, one key concept each, with a small challenge at the end of every day.
02
Explain It Like I'm 5
The core idea for a five-year-old, then again for a beginner, an intermediate, and an expert.
03
The 80/20
The 20% of concepts that give you 80% of the results, each with an analogy that sticks.
04
Test Me. Fix Me. Repeat.
Ten questions, one at a time. Get one wrong and you get the correction and the why.
05
3-Level Ladder
Beginner, intermediate, advanced, with a practical exercise after each level.
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Created Sep 13, 2026. No mistakes have been reported by learners.
Written from these sources
- Feeding and Maintaining Your Sourdough Starter Recipe | King Arthur Baking, kingarthurbaking.com. day 2 feeding routine and maintenance schedule.
- How to feed sourdough starter | King Arthur Baking, kingarthurbaking.com. 1:1:1 ratio, container and cover guidance.
- Sourdough for beginners: Everything you need to know | King Arthur Baking, kingarthurbaking.com. 5 to 14 day timeline, reviving gifted starter.
- Sourdough Baking Create | King Arthur Baking, kingarthurbaking.com. definition of ripe and doubling in 6 to 8 hours.
- King Arthur's guide to baking sourdough bread, kingarthurbaking.com. discard handling and sourness myth control.
- shop.kingarthurbaking.com, shop.kingarthurbaking.com. glossary terms ripe, maintenance, loose cover, 68 to 70F.
- Sourdough Basics 1.22, shop.kingarthurbaking.com. day 2 example of 12-hour revival feedings.
- Raw Flour and Dough, cdc.gov. raw flour safety across days 1 and pareto.
- Salmonella Outbreak Linked to Flour - March 2023 | Salmonella Infection | CDC, cdc.gov. Salmonella symptom timeline and high-risk groups.
- Raw flour: Don’t lick the spoon | Poison Control, poison.org. E. coli and Salmonella onset times, risk groups.
- Sourdough Starter Best Practices | CSU Extension, extension.colostate.edu. hooch, white clumps, starter best practices, friendship bread.
- Sourdough Starters - SDSU Extension, extension.sdstate.edu. 7 to 10 days to establish, feeding and refrigeration rules.
- The Sourdough Microbiome | ASM.org, asm.org. roles of yeast and lactic acid bacteria, pH effect.
- Microbial Consortia Involved in Traditional Sicilian Sourdough: Characterization of Lactic Acid Bacteria and Yeast Populations, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. flour as main source of lactic acid bacteria, species names.
- Genomics and synthetic community experiments uncover the key metabolic roles of acetic acid bacteria in sourdough starter microbiomes, biorxiv.org. starter diversity of 3 to 10 species, backslopping.
- Diverse Microbial Composition of Sourdoughs From Different Origins, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. house microbiota influence across countries, terroir skepticism.
- Mechanistic Insight into Yeast Bloom in a Lactic Acid Bacteria Relaying-Community in the Start of Sourdough Microbiota Evolution, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. maltose, yeast entry, erratic young starters, LAB relay.
- Genomic analysis reveals Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis as stable element in traditional sourdoughs, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Kline and Sugihara 1971 naming, stable yeast-LAB associations.
- Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis - microbewiki, microbewiki.kenyon.edu. species found in many countries, pH 3.8 growth limit.
- Functional Characterization of Different Fructilactobacillus sanfranciscensis Strains Isolated from Chinese Traditional Sourdoughs, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. strain-level differences in proteolysis and volatiles.
- Comparative Genomics Reveals Genetic Diversity and Variation in Metabolic Traits in Fructilactobacillus sanfranciscensis Strains, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. sourdough types and dominant species in type I.
- Baker's Percent | Baking Processes | BAKERpedia, bakerpedia.com. hydration effects at 60 and 80 percent.
- Introduction to Baker's Percentages | The Perfect Loaf, theperfectloaf.com. day 3 hydration formula and weighing every ingredient.
- The Ultimate Guide to Bread Dough Bulk Fermentation | The Perfect Loaf, theperfectloaf.com. bulk fermentation definition, 2 to 5 hours, volume pitfall.
- The Importance of Dough Temperature in Baking | The Perfect Loaf, theperfectloaf.com. DDT and FDT, temperature effect on lactic versus acetic.
- Baker percentage, en.wikipedia.org. baker's percentage naming and notation.
- Sourdough | Cooperative Extension Service, uaf.edu. historical color and discolored starter warning.
- Making Sourdough Starter – You Asked It!, enewsletters.k-state.edu. Traditional sourdough uses no commercial yeast.
- The role of flour type and feeding schedule on the sourdough microbiome | Microbiology Spectrum, journals.asm.org. Kazachstania dominant regardless of flour or feeding.
- Farewell San Francisco Sourdough? - Small Things Considered, schaechter.asmblog.org. Commercial use and skepticism about sourdough terroir.
- How San Francisco became synonymous with sourdough | KRON4, kron4.com. Popular fog claim treated as the myth to correct.
- eCFR :: 21 CFR Part 136 -- Bakery Products, ecfr.gov. Bakery standards of identity and eCFR caveat.
- eCFR :: 21 CFR 136.180 -- Whole wheat bread, rolls, and buns., ecfr.gov. Whole wheat bread standard citation.
- Draft Guidance for Industry and FDA Staff: Whole Grain Label Statements | FDA, fda.gov. No standard of identity for whole grain products.
- FDA Definition of Bread and Rolls | Proccesses | BAKERpedia, bakerpedia.com. Half-pound weight rule for bread versus rolls.