I baked my first sourdough loaf...here's how it went!

I got an itch to learn to bake with sourdough. I’ve always wanted to learn but put it on the back burner because I never thought I’d have the time. We love bread, sandwiches, bagels and all the things in this house, so recently I made it a priority to try my first loaf.  I found my new favorite hobby. In the past week I’ve made 5 loaves of bread, sourdough cinnamon rolls, 2 batches of sourdough discard snickerdoodle cookies, and a batch of sourdough chocolate chip cookies.

A big shoutout to my sister, luke’s cousin, and another baseball wife who helped me learn sourdough!!

Getting all the tools 

I bought my starter kit on amazon that had everything I needed to start baking sourdough. It came with a dutch oven, bread sling, dough whisk, bench knife, bowl scraper,   banneton, a scoring lame, and a cleaning brush. One thing i love about the dutch oven is it’s a cast iron and I can use the lid as a cast iron skillet. (When you’re always on the road and don’t have much room, a kitchen tool that is double use is a big win.) 

The other things I bought were a kitchen scale and a sourdough starter jar. You definitely need both of these for sourdough baking! Also something random I saw some bakers using were shower caps as the lids for their dough so I went and bought some and I’m never looking back. Before I figured this out I used a wet kitchen towel which is what you see in the video, and it worked great! You also need a large mixing bowl. I used the largest bowl we had in the baseball housing apartment and it worked perfectly fine. We are making do with what we can travel with!

Here’s the links to all the items I bought to get started on my first sourdough loaf:

Link for sourdough kit

Link for Sourdough Starter Jar

Link for Kitchen Scale 

The exact scale I have is sold out, so here's a similar one!

So here’s how my first loaf went...

First, I had to get starter. My sisters told me it’s best to check if anyone has one that’s more mature before starting your own and another baseball wife that bakes sourdough was so nice and gave me some of hers. I’m so thankful for that because that’s what got me started. She came over one morning and taught me how to feed my starter and then I started my journey with sourdough. 

That same day I prepped my first loaf to bake the next morning. 

General Steps I took: 

1. I mixed the water, sourdough starter, bread flour, and salt all together. 

2. Then I let my dough sit out for an hour.

3. Started my stretch and folds. I did them every 30 minutes three times in total. 

4. Then I let the dough sit for about 5 hours. 

5. After that I shaped it and put it in the fridge overnight. 

6. In the morning I got the dough ready and scored it. 

7. I put it in the dutch oven and baked it! 

8. Lastly I let it cool for about an hour and then made the first cut to see if it worked.

After I took the dough out of the fridge in the morning, I was sure my first loaf was going to be a learning loaf because it felt so flat. I still baked it to see what would happen…

And oh my goodness, this loaf was amazing. It was so pretty and so yummy. It was fully gone by the end of the night from everyone in this house (and a couple friends who taste tested). I think I sent pictures to everyone and their mom to show them my loaf because I was so proud of myself, lol. I genuinely have so much fun baking sourdough now. I encourage you to try it out!! 

Before Luke started playing professional baseball and I was still doing hair, he left for the summer to go play baseball in Wisconsin. I vividly remember telling him on the phone “I can’t wait until I can just bake you homemade bread and be a stay at home mom.” Full circle moment because as hard as this life can be sometimes, we’re living what we dreamed of doing for our family, and I'm so thankful for that.

If you’re interested in exact measurements and the timing I used, I can make another blog on a recipe for how I make my sourdough bread. Or if you’re interested in my sourdough discard cinnamon rolls and cookie recipes, I’d be happy to blog those as well. 

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With Love, 

A Mama in Full Swing