When Covid-19 surged, so did sourdough on this blog. The search terms that bring people here, the top posts and the questions are all about sourdough, all the time. So I decided I better put my most helpful sourdough posts in one place for easy reference.
Make a lively, bubbly starter
Before you can make the bread, you need to start a starter. My biggest piece of advice: be patient. Go here for the instructions.
Is my starter dead?
As I said, be patient. Find answers to your sourdough starter questions here.
Drowning in discard
Before you feed your starter, you remove most of it from its jar. These recipes help you use up that unfed discard:
- Banana quick bread
- Biscuits
- Calzone
- Carrot cake
- Chocolate cake
- Chocolate chip cookies
- Crackers
- Focaccia
- Multigrain sandwich bread
- Pancakes
- Vegan pancakes
- Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies with a sourdough discard flax egg
- Peanut butter cookies with a sourdough discard flax egg
- Pita bread
- Pizza
- Pumpkin muffins
- Pumpkin and spice quick bread
- Pumpkin snack cake
- Ranger cookies with a sourdough discard flax egg
- Soft pretzels
- Sourdough discard flax egg (egg replacer for cookie recipes)
- Vegetable fritters
- Waffles
And go here for information on managing your discard.
The bread recipe
Don’t let all the steps scare you off. After you’ve made it a couple of times, you won’t find it nearly as intimidating. Go here for the recipe.
The measurements for the bread recipe if you don’t have a scale
If you’re just starting out and don’t have a scale, you can still make your bread. Go here for the measurements in cups, not grams.
How to bake sourdough bread without the expensive tools
I love my Dutch oven, banneton baskets, grain mill and so on. But you can make the bread without pricey, specialty equipment. Go here for more.
How to sourdough-ize recipes
You can adapt certain recipes to sourdough recipes by swapping out some flour and liquid for sourdough starter (or the discard). Go here for more information and instructions.
Take a class online
My sourdough bread classes have all moved online. I teach a sourdough starter class every couple of months. Find the schedule here.
Happy baking!
My award-winning cookbook includes more sourdough recipes, such as sourdough sticky buns, sourdough brownies, sourdough graham crackers and naturally leavened sourdough pizza.
