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Sourdough that fits a weekday.

Recipes, schedules and plain fixes for bakers with about twenty minutes a day and one jar on the counter.

Start a starter in 7 days Find a recipe
210+ recipes and guides
7 days to a live starter
40 min hands-on per loaf

24°C 75°F

A fed starter doubles in about 4h 20m

A rule of thumb for a healthy starter fed 1:5:5. Yours will have its own opinions.

As featured in

  • Popsugar
  • Mashed
  • Tasting Table

Where are you stuck?

Most people land here holding one of three problems. Pick yours.

You have no starter yet

Flour, water and a jar. Seven days of two-minute feeds and you own a starter for life — nothing to buy, nothing to inherit.

Start a starter from scratch

Yours refuses to rise

Nine times out of ten it is the room temperature or the feeding ratio, not a dead starter. Both are fixable inside a day.

Work out what went wrong

You want bread by Saturday

A schedule that fits around a job: forty minutes of hands-on work, and the fridge doing the overnight shift.

Pick a recipe to bake

Fresh from the kitchen

What we have been testing, eating and writing down this month.

Older posts

Plan the loaf around your day

Say when you want to eat. Everything up to shaping happens the day before, and the fridge stretches to cover whatever is left — about forty minutes of hands-on work in all.

The fridge holds the loaf for 12h. Bake at 08:00.

day before

Feed the starter

50g starter, 100g flour, 100g water. Ready when domed, not sunk.

day before

Mix and rest

Flour and water alone for 45 minutes, then starter and salt.

day before

Bulk ferment

Four sets of folds, half an hour apart. Stop at a 50% rise.

day before

Shape

Pre-shape, 20 minutes on the bench, shape into the banneton.

day before

Cold proof 12h

Into the fridge overnight. The flavour happens here, while you sleep.

Score and bake

230°C / 450°F. Lid on for 25 minutes, lid off for 20.

Timings assume a kitchen around 24°C / 75°F. Warmer runs faster, cooler runs slower — watch the dough, not the clock.

Read the full method

Six things that go wrong, and why

The problems nearly every baker meets in the first month, each answered in a sentence or two.

All the troubleshooting
The loaf came out flat

Over-proofed bulk, nearly every time — not a weak starter. End the bulk when the dough has risen about half, is domed and jiggles as one piece. Doubling in the bowl is already too far.

The crumb is gummy

It was cut too soon, or baked a few minutes short. Sourdough keeps cooking as it cools: give it two full hours on a rack before the knife goes anywhere near it.

My starter smells like nail polish

That acetone note means it is hungry. Feed it twice a day at 1:5:5 for three days and the smell turns back to yoghurt and apples.

There is grey liquid on top

Hooch — alcohol from a starter that has eaten everything. Pour it off, feed as usual, and move to a warmer shelf or a smaller feed ratio.

The dough is an unworkable sticky mess

Hydration and heat together. Drop to 70% water, use wet hands rather than flour, and give it one more fold than the recipe asks for.

It never doubles in the jar

Check the room with a thermometer before you change anything else. Below 20°C a healthy starter can take 12 hours to peak, and it will still bake well.

Stop guessing. Bake the same good loaf every week.

Path to Sourdough Mastery is our signature video course, grown out of years of in-person workshops: the simplest route from a first starter to thinking like a bread baker.

Path to Sourdough Mastery

  • Video lessons you can follow at your own counter
  • Built on years of teaching in-person workshops
  • From first starter to finished loaf, in order
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