The laziest way to make sourdough bread

The most basic, easiest sourdough loaf recipe + no need for the extra knead

Welcome to Sourdough for Lazy People.

I created this newsletter section because of 3 types of folks in my life lately:

1. Has sourdough starter BUT:

   1. doesn’t have time to deal with all the bread babysitting OR

   2. feels like it’s too overwhelming because have you seen the fancy sourdough books and online recipes?! wtf are hydration levels? wut is autolyze? bulk fermentation? why so many steps?! I thought this was making bread, not rocket science? OR

   3. tried it before and it didn’t go well because sourdough is stupidly tedious OR

   4. ALL OF THE ABOVE.

2. Received my starter or someone else’s starter and doesn’t know where to begin with their bread making.

3. Loves bread. Sourdough curious. Sees or hears about #1 and #2 and feels too intimidated to try making sourdough.

A NOTE BEFORE YOU BEGIN

I have no professional baking experience but I have made many loaves of sourdough bread over the past 5+ years and this is by far the easiest one. Adapted from, in my opinion, the most simple and easy to follow sourdough bread book, Artisan Sourdough Made Simple by Emilie Raffa. I love her recipe AND below is my twist on it, which has less steps and more flexibility.

Because me lazy.

STUFF YOU NEED

Grab items in your kitchen already. Do not buy fancy bread tools (yet).¹

• a large bowl

• measuring cups and spoons OR a kitchen scale (preferred but optional, recipe includes measurements in cups/spoons)

• stirring mechanisms (like a large kitchen spoon, also your hands, which will get a little messy)

• a kitchen towel

• a bread pan

• a baking rack

INGREDIENTS

• 70 g (1/3 cup) active, bubbly, risen sourdough starter

• 300 g (1 1/4 cup) warm water

• 500 g (4 1/4 cups) flour: all purpose or bread flour

• 15 g sugar (1 heaping tablespoon): doesn’t matter what kind you have, any sweetener like white, brown, coconut, maple, honey

• 15 g oil (1 tablespoon) like avocado oil, I’ve used olive oil too

• 9 g (1 1/2 teaspoon) salt

HOW TO DO IT

starter fed at 8am, a lil rise at noon, ready to use at 7pm

Feed your starter sometime in the morning equal parts water and flour, stir til it’s all mixed up, no clumps. Add a rubber band or mark the outside of the jar so you can notice where it started, and see the eventual rise. On this mason jar, there was about 1/4 cup starter to begin. I added 90 g water/90 g flour (I added a bit more in this because I knew I was sharing some of my starter with someone the next day).

Depending on the temp of your house, the starter will rise sometime during the day, typically within 6-8 hours. It will be a little bubbly and grow in size (about double). This is when to use it! Don’t worry about it being exactly double in size, just use starter that has grown from its starting point (close to double). Also, if your life got in the way and the starter barely started to sink and it’s still bubbly, take a risk today and use it (or do this process again tomorrow if you don’t want to experiment. Also I’m pretty sure all the sourdough experts want to punch me for saying this. Oh well, not sorry!)²

Mix starter, warm water, sugar, oil in a bowl. Ideally you’d start this process when you’re home from work, or around the kitchen for dinner, late afternoon or early evening. Add flour, salt. mix with a spoon. Dough will be shaggy and you will be nervous that you didn’t get all the little bits and chunks of flour. It’s ok, get as much of it as you can.

Your dough is going to take a power nap here. Wait about an hour so your dough can relax.

Now that your dough had some chill time, knead it. Use your hands to knead the dough until it starts to show some give and looks smoother. This typically takes me 2 minutes, maybe 5. Honestly, I don’t have a number of folds or kneading here, try folding it 20 times (is this an annoying part of my recipe? It’s like grandma’s recipes where she tells you to just eyeball it). Anyway, this should not be a back-breaking process. Remember, this is a recipe from yours truly, the sourdough sloth.³

Now your dough is ready for bedtime, and so are you. Place a kitchen towel over it on your counter (you can wet the towel to keep the dough moist overnight).

In the morning, pre-heat your oven to 375 degrees F. Put a little oil in your bread pan (or don’t if you have a non-stick pan like me).

Lightly flour a surface and scrape your dough out of the bowl. Gently shape it in an oval so it’ll fit in your bread pan. The word “shape” sounds complicated, don’t think that. Plop the dough into the pan, it’ll take its shape in the pan.⁴

this recipe hardly needs shaping

plopped dough

Bake bread for 40-45 minutes on the center rack.

Take out your bread and let it sit in the pan for 10 minutes. Then take out the cooked loaf and let it cool on a baking rack. VERY IMPORTANT: do not cut open your loaf until it is completely cooled. It messes with the cooking process and your loaf will seem undercooked if you cut into it before it’s cool.

Let me give you one last tip. Slather quality butter and sprinkle a little salt on that slice and go to town.

Would you like some of my sourdough starter? Do you need sourdough troubleshooting? Message me!

so lazy, she eats bread while horizontal

1. I still bake with the basic stuff in the list, with the addition of a couple items but you don’t need to know about that now. If you make this loaf and enjoy it, we can learn more about a couple more “fancy” bread tools later.

2. I have used starter that began to sink after it reached peak rise. The bread still came out great but use caution. If it has gone down quite significantly, try again another day.

ALSO CAN I TELL YOU A SECRET? I used starter that started sinking for the loaf I made for this post. My husband and I went out to dinner and by the time I got back, the starter had just begun to sink but I took a risk and the loaf still turned out great. Not as fluffy as other loaves with very active starter… but still tasty! This is proof you can still live your life and make sourdough.

3. Lots of recipes tell you to knead a few times during the long rise time. I personally don’t think it’s necessary to babysit your bread more, or lose sleep over it. I’ve read and spoken to people who have woken up overnight to f*ck with their dough. Nope, f*ck that. Your bread will be fine and will wait for you in the morning.

4. Here’s another part of the recipe that has an extra step and I omitted it. The original recipe says to let the dough rise in the pan for 1-2 hours. I don’t have time for that. I’ve made this bread so many times and have never done the extra rise in the pan and every single loaf has been consumed on an average of 2 days with a family of 4 people.