New Baker, Start Here

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Step 1. Create Your Sourdough Starter

A sourdough starter is the most important aspect of baking sourdough bread at home, without it, you’d just have flour and water mixed together. It takes a little care to keep it alive, but it’ll reward you with countless loaves of bread, pizza, and more.

It takes about 5-7 days to get a starter going from scratch, using only flour and water. If you have a friend who is a sourdough baker, you can always ask if they’ll give you a bit of theirs to get going, if not:

Check out my guide to creating a sourdough starter from scratch.

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Step 2. Bake Your First Loaf of Bread

Once your sourdough starter is rising and falling consistently each day it should be strong enough to bake a loaf of bread. I have two recipes here that are great introductions to baking sourdough at home. The first is along post with lots of detail on each aspect of baking, scroll through that post if you want a little more in-depth information:

Detailed recipe: Beginner’s Sourdough Bread Recipe

If you want a more condensed recipe that gets straight to baking, have a look at my simple weekday sourdough bread:

Easiest recipe: A Simple Weekday Sourdough Bread Recipe

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Step 3. Review Baking Guides

Once you have that loaf of bread crackling on the counter as it cools, review some of my baking guides to increase baking consistency and confidence. These guides have in-depth tips on maintaining a sourdough starter, creating baking schedules around your busy work week, and even shaping videos.

My Guides Page is a great place to bookmark and return to from time-to-time to review the basics and expand your baking toolset:

Explore my baking Guides Page

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Step 4. Use Your Sourdough Starter for Other Things

Because a sourdough starter requires fresh flour and water each day (or less if you’re keeping it in the fridge) we tend to have sourdough starter discard — don’t throw it away! I like to save up the discard in a container in the fridge during the week, then use this to make sourdough pancakes, sourdough waffles, and sourdough banana bread.

I’m also a huge fan of focaccia. This is probably one of the most-baked items in my kitchen and my recipe couldn’t be easier. Use all of your sourdough starter discard one morning and you’ll have fresh focaccia for dinner (and it’s an amazing canvas for any veggies in season!): check out my sourdough focaccia recipe.

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Step 5. Upgrade Your Baking Tools

One of the challenges to baking at home is consistency. It can be hard to bake consistently great loaves when the environment — our hectic home kitchens! — is always changing. I’ve collected my tried-and-true tools all in one place, and they’ll certainly help you make bread easier, and more repeatable in your home kitchen.

My top 3 recommended tools (read: if you’re going to buy anything, get these) are:

1. A simple kitchen scale
2. An instant-read thermometer
3. A foldable dough proofer

After these three, explore all my baking tools.

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Step 6. Check Out My Favorite Recipes

1. A Simple Weekday Sourdough Bread
2. My Best Sourdough Bread Recipe
3. Spelt, Rye, and Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread (50% whole grain)
4. Fifty-fifty Whole Wheat Sourdough (50% whole grain)
5. Sourdough Pizza
6. Pain de Mie (super soft sandwich bread)
7. A Simple Focaccia
8. Whole Grain Spelt Pan Loaf
9. Seeded Sourdough
10. Sourdough Cinnamon Rolls

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Step 7. Experiment, Have fun, Happy Baking

One last note: don’t be afraid to experiment and have fun — after all, what’s the worst that can happen? No matter what comes out of your oven in almost every case, it’s perfectly edible and delicious. Some of my most significant baking improvements came from accidents that turned into opportunities for me to learn and grow as a baker. Happy baking!

Be sure to tag @maurizio on Instagram and use the hashtag #theperfectloaf so I can take a look at all you’re baking in the kitchen

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