Easy Sourdough Bread Loaf

This easy sourdough bread loaf is made with just three ingredients. Is is great for beginners and a perfect place to start your sourdough bread baking journey 🙂 This loaf is made with just flour, water, salt,  sugar and tastes amazing. Making sourdough bread is easy if you have patience and time 🙂 Let’s get baking, totally worth your time!

What Is Sourdough Bread?

Sourdough bread is bread leavened with naturally occurring bacteria in flour and our surroundings instead of using commercial yeast. This dough is fermented by naturally occurring lactobacilli and yeast in the flour. It is also known as wild yeast

The bread leavened with this wild yeast has a sour taste and very good for you. This is more gut friendly and light n stomach.

So basically it is a bread made with just three ingredients- flour, water and salt. There are also sourdough breads with added oil or butter and they are called enriched breads. Here I am sharing a basic loaf with just three ingredients.

To begin with we first need sourdough starter. Starter is a pre ferment or natural leaven for our bread. It is also known as mother or sponge.

This starter acts as natural leaven and also yields the classic sour taste to this bread. There are various starter recipes available and I have shared my recipe outline as you read through. There are many ways and different ratios to make this starter. I shall soon share a detailed post on making sourdough starter from scratch.

If you have starter handy, then this bread is for you. It is non intimidating, easy and straight forward to make.

Baking Sourdough Bread At Home!

I have been baking bread at home for quite few years. I usually alternate between my classic vegan bread, sandwich loaf, multigrain bread and sometimes this garlic loaf. But this sourdough bread is something totally different in both making and in taste.

Growing my own sourdough starter has been such a rewarding experience and these days I only bake with sourdough starter 🙂

I grew my starter 4 months back and till now I have made this loaf many times, few boules, pizza crust, kulcha and crackers, pancakes with discard.

Today I made two small loaves instead of a big one. As you can see the slices are small here. I prefer to ake two small loaves instead of a big one.

This loaf turned out to be truly amazing. Wonderful crispy crust with light as feather crumbs and those characteristic uneven holes.

This Sourdough Bread Loaf Recipe Is

Vegan

Uses just three ingredients, flour, water and salt

Absolutely soft and feather light

Has a mild sour taste

Gut friendly healthy naturally leavened

Delicious with amazing flavor.

How To Make Sourdough Starter

This starter recipe is just an outline. Please refer to amazing starter recipes that are available in the web. I took this recipe as base but went with my instincts rather than following it to T.

I have made starter with both plain flour and whole wheat flour. The whole wheat starter was more reactive and grew very quickly. Different flours have different properties and behave differently.

Instead of 1 cup as mentioned in the recipe I referred, I started with 1/4 cup flour and little less than 1/4 cup water.

Day 1– Mix water and flour thoroughly in a non reactive container. I used glass. Just place the lid on top and let it for 24 hours. Do not close the container tightly.

Day 2– My starter had some activity the next day itself given to the humid weather. It is totally fine if your starter shows no activity on day 2. Remove half of the contents from the jar and replace wit 1/4 cup flour and about 1/4 cup water. Mix well thoroughly. Let sit for 24 hours.

Day 3 – From day three we will have to discard and feed twice a day, 12 hours once. Continue to discard half of the contents and feed flour + water. By day 3 or 4 you will see a lot of activity in your starter. If not keep feeding and by day 6 or 67 your starter will double in volume with loads of bubbles.

Once the starter has doubled in volumes with loads of bubbles, finally discard half of the contents and feed one more time. Let sit for 8 hours and then refrigerate.

At the time of baking, remove from refrigerator 6-7 hours prior and remove the quantity needed for the recipe. Feed the quantity of flour you have removed and let sit for 12 hours. Return to refrigerator.

Now moving on to sourdough bread loaf recipe.

Step by Step Method Of Sourdough Loaf

Keep your starter ready

Combine 1 cup ripe starter and 1 cup water in a bowl.  The starter will float and is a good sign that is ripe and ready to be baked.

Mix thoroughly.

Add 2 cups all purpose flour and 1 cup whole wheat flour. Add 1 1/4 teaspoon sugar and 1 1/2 teaspoons sugar.

Mix everything well and knead to a soft dough. You may need to add 1/4 to 1/2 cup more water depending on the quality of flours.

Knead the dough very well for 12-15 minutes or 7-8 minutes in a stand mixer. Tuck the edges and let the dough raise for 6-8 hours.

Once the dough is doubled you can either bake two small loaves or one big 9 * 5 inches standard loaf.

Deflate the dough and knead for a minute.

Shape into logs. Place in a lightly greased loaf pan and let sit for 60-90 minutes.

Preheat oven at 180 C or 350 F 20 minutes before baking.

Place the loaf pans in the hot oven and bake for 45-60 minutes or until the crust is golden and hallow when tapped.

Let cool before slicing.

How To Bake This Bread Faster

If you want to speed up the process you can add 3/4 teaspoon instant yeast along with starter and make the recipe. if using yeast let the dough proof for only 45-60 minutes at first.

Tips & Notes

• The taste and flavor of this bread is different from regular yeast breads. It has a prominent sour taste.
• The longer you let the dough to proof, more sour your bread will taste.
• Use ripe starter for best results
• You can make this bread with 100% whole wheat flour too
• For flavor and taste you can add 2 tablespoons butter or olive oil to the dough.

I hope you will try this recipe and enjoy as much as we did. Please give a star rating ★ in the recipe card below. Follow us on Pinterest , Instagram, Facebook   for more recipes and ideas.