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Life with Sourdough, 1 First American Way, Santa Ana, CA (2025)

03/15/2025

Don't over think sourdough. Don't make it so difficult. I keep my starter on the counter. I feed it with unbleached flour, sometimes bread flour, sometimes all purpose. I sometimes bake with unfed starter and it does a beautiful job. The little roaster pans I got at thrift stores for about $5 and sit them on an insulated baking sheet. The cast iron Dutch oven has a trivet in the bottom of it. The bottoms never burn. I bake EVERYTHING at 450 degrees with the lid on for 30 minutes and 15 minutes with the lid off. I NEVER temp my dough. Do you really think the person eating it inspects the crumb? As long as it tastes good that's all that really matters. There, I said it. Just have fun with it!
Credit : Laura Arnett Saylors

03/15/2025

I make a plain sourdough most weekday mornings. I have a great rhythm that I’ve gotten into that has me getting consistent results. I usually give it to friends or take it to our community pantry so someone can have a nice homemade bread. Sometimes I make 2 if I’m working from home or not going anywhere that day.

~5:00a - turn oven on to 500 with Dutch oven in. It takes about 45min to an hour to get to temp. Just before 6, take boule out of fridge and make any decorative scores as well as functional score.
~6:00a - lower oven to 450. Put boule in Dutch oven and put lid on. Bake 6-7 minutes.
~6:07a - take Dutch oven out, remove lid, and re-score the functional score to open up again. Spray loaf with a mist of water. Not too much. Put lid back on and bake for 15 minutes.
~6:22a - take Dutch oven out, remove lid. I have a small oven, so at this point I put a baking sheet on the rack below where I am baking to make a layer between the elements and the Dutch. This prevents the bottom from burning. If I have something to do and need a few minutes, I will add a small glass of water to the tray to keep steam rolling. Replace Dutch in oven and bake for 20-25 minutes until desired crust/browning occurs.
~6:50a - remove Dutch and place finished boule on cooling rack. Replace Dutch in oven with lid and turn oven off. NOTE: I won’t cut into the loaf until it has cooled completely.
~6:55a - feed starter. I do a 1:5:5 ratio because I am gone for most of the day and want the starter to go slow. I do 20g starter, 100g water. Stir to mix. Add 100g bread flour. Stir until resembles thick pancake batter. NOTE: I do this much bc sometimes I will make 2 loaves and want to have enough.
7:00a - I walk out of the door for work. I will be home later and will start the process of making the dough shortly after dinner.

7:30/8:00p - 325 grams of water with 100g starter. Mix until starter is broken up and mixed well. I then add 450g bread flour and 50g whole wheat flour. Mix until shaggy and no dry pockets or lots of loose flour. I do not overmix here but probably mix it more than I should. I cover the bowl with a damp tea towel. Rest 30 minutes.
8:00/8:30p - I sprinkle kosher salt on the dough, roughly 10-15g. I make sure I get some kinda all over the top of the dough in the bowl. It’s kind of the only part of this recipe I guesstimate. I then add 25g water to the dough and mix/knead until very well incorporated and dough begins to resist being kneaded. Form into boule and rest for 20 minutes covered with damp tea towel.
~9:00 - we will begin a series of folds. I mix between coils and lazy folds, just whatever I feel. I wet my hands so dough doesn’t stick. I do a few until the dough resists, then reform into loose boule and rest 20 minutes between folding sets. Repeat 4 times total.
~10:30 - remove dough from bowl and begin shaping on countertop with bench scraper. Form into tight boule. Rest 10 minutes to relax. During the 10 minutes, I flour my banneton/brotform or apply linen liner.
~10:45 - form dough into tight boule again and transfer to banneton/brotform. I then put a plastic bowl cover (looks like a shower cap) on and put in refrigerator to bulk overnight. I head to bed and start the process over again!

It looks daunting, but truthfully you are doing maybe 30-45 minutes of total work. This works for me and my schedule during the week, and doesn’t always adhere to these timestamps - this is just typically what the weekday schedule looks like. The good thing about sourdough is you can always take more time or come back to it if you need to step away or if something comes up.

I want to get better at making sourdough with inclusions like seeds and nuts, making sourdough variants like rye or pumpernickel, and getting into more decorative scoring techniques.

If you guys have any critiques or tips/tricks, I would love to hear them. Thank you all!
Credit : Robb Burch

03/15/2025

This is my starter after 2 hours in my Instant Pot on the "less" 2 hour Yogurt setting. I put a pot holder on the bottom of the pot, put the jar on top of that, then cover with a dish towel. Just thought I'd put this out there for those of you who have an Instant Pot and need starters quick. I've been doing this now for quite awhile. Works great.
Update: I've added pictures of how I laod the starter. Hope this helps.
Update #2: I sat the cover to the Instantpot on top of the towels and took a reading with an Instant thermometer. You'll see the temperature has risen to almost 77 degrees.
Credit : Terri Franciosa Ellyn

03/15/2025

I am obsessed with the under cabinet kitchenaid attachment holder thing my brother made me. I have one more paddle on the way that’ll fill this up. Love how it slides out.

03/15/2025

Cheat sheet i found maybe it will help everyone
Credit : Lauren Tofano

03/15/2025

Windowpane test.
What is it?
When the dough is stretched to a thin membrane without tearing.
Why do it?
It’s an indication that gluten is strong and well developed.
What for?
Well developed gluten and well developed dough will lead to a strong dough that can take maximum fermentation, that can trap carbon dioxide as the dough ferments. Lots of bubbles means better softer, lacy more opened crumb.
Please note there are different versions of open crumb and it’s not always large holes (that butter will fall through that some people are worried about).
In enriched dough such as sandwich dough or brioche, the windowpane test will produce a fluffy cotton candy texture in the baked products. When you can pull a small piece of the crumb and it shred all the way without breaking.
It’s not just for the look, all of these will produce a better mouth feel, making the eating process a lot more enjoyable.
Well developed gluten means better oven spring.
When do we test for windowpane?
I test my dough after mixing using slightly wet hands.
If the dough passed windowpane, do we still need to stretch and fold?
I always do stretch and fold and coil folds. The stretching of the dough has a different purpose. The actions organize the carbon dioxide and stack them and layer them in different directions building a strong wall for fermentation.
What if the dough tear?
Be gentle, ease the dough with wet hands, if the dough tears, the edges is clean then it’s ok. Some types of dough is better at windowpane than others. If the edges is ragged, more gluten development is needed.
How do we develop gluten?
Mixing and agitating the dough will encourage gluten development. Either by hands or machine. Autolysing also help with gluten development without the labour.
If hand mixing, use rubaud method.
If attempting higher hydration, hokd back some water in the initial mixing as gluten develops faster with lower hydration, then when gluten is fully developed, bassinage the rest of the water slowly. This applies to both hand or machine mix.
First two pictures are lean dough. The last two are enriched dough. The last dough is a brioche dough and has more butter than the seeded dough hence why it can stretch a lot thinner.
EDIT: these dough are 80%+ hydration. Palágyi Réka asked me to show different levels of windowpane test for different hydration. I fully mixed 30g dough in 4 different bowls with 50%, 60%, 70% and 80% hydration, waited 30mins, then perform windowpane test. This is also a very good test if you want to determine which hydration is best suited for your flour.
The flour I used is a Sustainable white bread flour from Wholegrain Milling Co., 12.5% protein. The conclusion from the windowpane test is the flour can comfortably take up to about 75% hydration. The gluten in 80% hydration was weaker, for this hydration I would have to combine other flours to make it stronger.
It is important to understand that higher hydration does not mean better bread. Work with something you are comfortable with, challenge yourself when you are ready, 1% at a time.
I also included two pictures of the windowpane when it tears, one is acceptable and one indicates more gluten development is needed.

03/15/2025

There is an elderly woman at my church that makes the most fabulous rolls, she calls them sourdough rolls. So I asked for the recipe. She gave me a copy of it and said she got it out of a magazine many many years ago. The sourdough start is instant potatoes and yeast ... I have never even heard of such. Picture attached of said recipe.
Now I'm wondering if I should do this sourdough also, 🤣

03/15/2025

I’ve tried using purple sweet potato powder in my loaves a few times previously and didn’t love the results. Beautiful color, no taste, but the texture was off. I saw a post recently and used that as inspiration to use a lot less and I’m thrilled with the results
I mixed:
558 g water
48 g starter
3.6 g purple sweet potato powder
775 g bread flour
15.5 g salt
This was for two smaller loaves - one was an oval loaf (final dough weight 710g) one was a round loaf (final dough weight 670g)
The color stayed better on the oval loaf after baking, but the color was beautiful on the inside. A pale pink/purple.
Credit : Jen Kaplan Goodell

03/15/2025

This loaf has me questioning everything.
Felt chaotic so i used week old sourdough discard straight from the fridge, ballparked measurements ~25% starter, ~80% hydration. No autolyse
Didnt note Timings or temps, didnt schedule or count the s&fs just did em when i remembered. stuck it in the fridge towards end of bf for a few hours as I had to leave the house. Got it out for another ? Hours before shaping then chucked it back in the fridge for overnight. Scoring was lazy and shallow
Somehow this gave me my best browning and blistering yet. Crumb is soft and lacy throughout. I feel pranked by this bread
Credit : Sarah Kow

03/15/2025

Starter maintenance.
The health of a starter is fundamental for making sourdough. Make it happy and feed it regularly and you will be rewarded with beautiful tasty breads. Here is a few things i learned on my baking journey. Feel free to ignore or consider it.
- use a scale!!!! I dont do anything in volume and will never use any recipe with volume. A cup in Australia is 250ml and in the USA is 240ml, Australia’s tablespoon is 20ml and in the US is 15ml. With discrepancies like that, volume is not reliable.
- i feed Jane Dough bread flour.
- put a lid on it.
- i use tap water but the water where i live is very good.
- Jane Dough is a white starter so i can use her make other baked goods without keeping more than one starter. Life is busy enough.
- keep it warm.
- use any flour or a mixture of combination. To save time i would use a large jar, out the combination of flours in, shake it and ise it to feed. Replenish when running low.
- different flour behaves differently so don’t expect yours to look the same as another starter that is fed with a different type of flour like rye…we behave differently when we are fed with a different diet as well. Starters are just like any other living things.
- Every time you feed, you need to at least match the flour and water to the weight of the starter in the jar to ensure it has enough food. This is why people discard before feeding. You can feed more but never less.

-Every time you feed, the whole thing becomes a starter, that's why you would need to discard the next day before feeding so you dont waste too much flour and ran out of jar to store it.
- i feed mine everyday with 1:5:5 with a very small amount to reduce wastage. If you feed twice a day, use 1:2: 2
- use higher ratio to feed to reduce the acidity or when you want to bulk it up to use in baking.
- use at peak (mine is tripled but others might be double)
- use past peak if you want extra tang in the breads.
- every starter is unique because it also contains the yeast in our environment and on our hands and bodies. Even if you get one from someone, eventually it will adapt and behaves differently. So don’t expect it to behave like other starters. Treat a starter like a person, see their abilities rather than focus on their inabilities.
- to reduce wastage i maintain mine at 5g:25g:25g everyday. When i planned to bake, i would increase the ratio to bulk it up to the needed quantity.
- I don’t have discard because i bake every second day and I usually need around 2kg starter.
- Here is a suggestion for maintaining a starter everyday with minimal discard if you bake once a week. You can adjust and play around with the numbers to suit you depends on how much starter you need to make breads and how many days. Excel is really good for this if you can use Excel.
Day 1: 5g starter, 25g flour, 25g water.
Day 2: discard, keep 5g, feed 25g flour, 25g water
Day 3: repeat as day 2
Day 4: as day 2
Day 5: as day 2
Day 6: discard, keep 10g, feed 50g flour, 50g water
When peaked, use 100g (this will make a loaf of 500g flour). Use 5g leftover to feed and keep.

The main objective is to feed it adequately for the time frame.
1:1:1 is good for 4hrs
1:2:2 8hrs
1:3:3 12hrs and so on
Use as a guide as it is impacted by temperature and the type of flour.
If you feed once a day and you only do 1:1:1, the starter will eat all the food roughly at 4hrs mark, then sit there and wait to be fed for 18hrs, it will become acidic and weaken with time. So the recommended daily feed is 1:5:5.
Every starter is unique so if it’s completely collapsed by the time it needs to be fed, you might need to increase the ratio to 1:6:6. Likewise, if it’s not yet peaked then decrease ratio to 1:4:4.
Get to know your starter and how it behaves, what it needs and feed accordingly.

Feel free to ask anything
Credit : Thanh Tuyen

03/15/2025

Think I have enough starter saved in case of emergency? lol
I let it dry on the containers after each feeding and it crumbles right off! Win win!

03/15/2025

Pillowy English muffins
Recipe

1,080 g. Bread flour
756 g. Milk
300 g. Discard one week old
80 g. Honey
22 g. Salt
No eggs

Mixed everything I large bowl followed with 4 sets of stretch and fold in every 30 minutes and cold re**rd over night.

In the morning cut the dough in to size of your preference and mine are 120 g. making ball I use a lot of flour to handle them, rest dough on the counter top to proofing another 2 hours.

Heat up the pan on medium low, put muffins in and covered the lid for 4 minutes each side or cook until golden brown, then transfer the English muffins in to the baking tray and bake in the oven another 4 minutes at 220c’. This way is to avoid uncooked inside English muffins.

😊Enjoy baking
Credit : Milsom Puttasri

03/15/2025

Update: For everyone interested this loaf turned out beautifully! I had to cut the "head" off to fit it into my storage container. This thread absolutely made my day! 😂
What would be a reason that my loaf grew a little hat during baking today? 😆
I'm using the same recipe that I've been using for months. It just started to get super warm here in AZ wondering if that's the issue.
My kitchen stays around 72-74 degrees so my rise time is typically 4-5 hours. This loaf doubled beautifully, was shaped and spent 3 hours in the fridge. I baked per usual, straight out of the fridge, scored and into a 450 degree oven, covered for 15 minutes, uncovered for 40 at 400...when I uncovered I noticed the horn emerging!
Credit : Kate Feo

03/15/2025

This mornings bake 😋
125 active starter
365 spring water
20 honey
500 KA bread flour
10 sea salt
Credit : Chassidy Adkison

03/14/2025

After five years of baking sourdough bread, viennosserie, baguettes, pizza etc, all with a daily fed sourdough starter, finally the time has come to give Panettone a try. Converted my 100% hydration starter to a 50% hydration Lievito Madre. The process was thrilling to say the least. Definitely the most enriched dough I've ever worked with.
Quite pleased with the result, taste and texture are excellent. The one mistake I made was the size of the molds, too big for the amount of dough.
Many recipes call for the inclusion of a small amount of commercial yeast, I only used natural levain.
Can't wait to make it again!
Credit : Miloš Gouka

03/14/2025

So I've been consistently baking my sourdough loaves and they turn out DELICIOUS - they also rise well in the DO.
However, just after taking my dough out of the fridge after cold proof they flatten out like a flatfish 🐠😄
I'm not sure about under- or overproofing, so it might have something to do with that?
Process as follows:
100gr starter
500gr wheat flour (550 type, we don't have bread flour here)
325gr water
12gr salt
I add salt after an hour, then do 2 S&F and 2 coil folds within two hours so every 30 minutes, then BF something between 4-7 hours (can't seem to figure out when the BF is done). My kitchen is quite cold, around 19°C so 66°F.
The dough dump is never quite clean, and the dough is still sticky at the start. I do manage to do good shaping though (not sticky at the end of that), and the shaped loaves hold their shape easily until final shaping (usually 30 minutes)! They look exactly like every other one I've seen on pictures.
In the banneton into the fridge for anything between 10-72 hours.
EVERY TIME I take the loaf out of the banneton, it flattens out like the picture. Why is that?! Help me out please! 😄

03/14/2025

If you haven’t ever made chocolate sourdough, you totally should. This is by far the best thing I’ve ever made in all my years baking. My husband hasn’t stoping swooning over it & is requesting I make at least one a day now. 😆
It tastes like the best “brownie” with the perfect sourdough texture! I get that everyone claims that when making a chocolate loaf.. but.. this is the perfect sourdough and brownie baby!
*** Edit to add recipe and notes:
Here’s a picture of the notes for exactly what I did so everyone can see more clearly than my random replied comment. Lol
To bloom the cocoa powder: that just means I added 100 g of hot brewed coffee to my cocoa powder and mixed it before adding in the rest of my ingredients. I did not let it cool off before adding the remaining ingredients.. the 350g of water cooled it to room temperature perfectly.
When I say a lot of chocolate chips: if I had to guess it was about 3/4 of a regular sized bag of semi sweet mini chocolate chips & probably a cup of milk chocolate chips at the end while shaping the dough. I really wanted to pack it with chocolate and it seem to pay off really well.
The regular dough recipe I use calls for 100 g of starter so I added an extra 50 g to this recipe because I’m constantly reading remarks on how the dough doesn’t rise or is dense. This seemed to help significantly.
I did not do a cold rise with this dough (I’m impatient). I allowed it to bulk on the counter for approximately 7 hours before baking!
Credit : Sierra Kinkaid

03/14/2025

I tried something new today. This is an apple, brown sugar, and cinnamon bread! I made the dough like normal, but then I replaced the first coil fold with a lamination where I added a bunch of cold butter chunks, cinnamon, a handful of brown sugar, and 2 apples cut into little chunks. In order to make sure the inside was cooked, I cold baked it at 425 for 70 minutes with the DO lid on, and another 8 minutes at 450 with the lid off. My house smells divine! I'll post crumb pics after it cools down.
Credit : Fred Kroner

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