What is the enemy of learning a new skill? Perfectionism! If we want to grow, we will always make mistakes in the process. The best way to overcome this perfectionism is to practice repetition. This post will talk about how to establish a baking day in your household routines and grow in your sourdough baking skills through repetition. Plus, you’ll get my fail-safe sourdough loaf recipe.
This is a place for practicing the work of home slowly, imperfectly, and with attention. Each post documents one practical skill I’m learning or refining, shared plainly so you can practice alongside if you’d like.
Why I’m Baking One Sourdough Loaf a Week
When you first decide to learn a new skill – whether that’s painting, baking, or crocheting- there is always a moment of starry-eyed optimism. You order your supplies, you find the directions, and you are ready to start learning and doing.
Then a month goes by – or two – and you’ve never really started. The supplies are gathering dust. And, you keep saying you need to start doing that thing. But you never do.
We all tend to dream big dreams and struggle with the follow-through. It’s true with almost every part of life. – And it’s true with baking sourdough.
See, the problem is that we desire perfection right away. We want to be experts. We want to never fail. And doing that keeps us stuck. It’s easier to continue to buy a loaf of bread from the store, rather than get flour on our counter for a loaf that may be as dense as a brick.
But you’ll never learn how to bake a sourdough loaf at the checkout line.
With any skill, you have to fail before you can get better. You have to try in order to be able to learn. You have to get your hands dirty to grow.
Perfect loaves aren’t the goal. The practice that comes with repetition is.
The Skill: Repetition over perfection
This post is going to focus on the skill of baking one sourdough loaf of bread a week, even when it’s ugly.
Baking is something that requires time and effort. Sourdough takes a while to rise and is learned through trial and error.
The more that you bake, the easier it is to know what dough should feel like and what it should do. That is only done through cultivating the art of the skill through repetition.
You aren’t looking for perfection – if you wanted machine-like efficiency, you would go to the store.
But you recognize the goal is the formation that comes with practicing the household arts.
So, you pull out the flour each week and bake a sourdough loaf of bread, enjoying the process.
Baking Once a Week (Even as a Busy Mom)
I’ve always been a good starter – but a rare follow-through-er. Much of life, though, is cultivated only through repetition. And that’s a difficult realization.
When it comes to baking, we may have a one-off wild fancy and bake a cake, bread, or muffins. But, this will only become a skill that blesses our family and is passed on to our children if we incorporate it into our weekly routine.
This has taken many forms in the various stages of my life. When I first started baking sourdough, I was working as a teacher. So the routine looked like this:
- Before work, pull out and feed the starter.
- After dinner, start loaf and do some stretch and folds before bed.
- Let the loaf sit out overnight.
- Transfer to the final proofing basket in the morning.
- Stick in the fridge to proof all day.
- Bake when I get home.
Now, the routine is similar, but I start my sourdough loaf midday so I can bake it the following morning. (So if I start my loaf at noon, I place it in the proofing basket around 8 pm, and in the oven the following morning around 8 am.)
In the past, people had ‘baking days’ – one designated day per week when they would get all their baking for the week done. I think this is an excellent practice.
Baking once a week is a great habit because:
- You can plan around it in your week.
- You only have to clean the kitchen once a week. (Flour can get messy.)
- You know exactly what you need to eat that week and can bake all those items in one day.
- You can batch prep.
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How to Have a Baking Day
Pick the day:
The ideal baking day is one where you are planning on being home to complete your stretch and folds and keep an eye on your dough. Remember, sourdough often stretches into 2 days. So, I generally prep and proof the dough on Thursday afternoon and bake Friday morning. I like this because I’m home on these days, and I can prep our pizza dough for Friday movie night at the same time.
What you need:
- You’ll need an active sourdough starter (check out our post here for how to keep a starter).
- A place to store your starter – I love this one here!
- A Kitchen Scale
- Glass or Ceramic Containers (not stainless steel) – I use these Pyrex Bowls. They’re great and have lasted for years!
- Plastic Bags or Proofing Covers
- Proofing Basket
- Flour – All-purpose or Bread Flour works fine
- Salt
- Razor blade for scoring
- Dough Scraper for stretching and folding
- Dough mat for easy clean up
- Dutch Oven for baking – I use a regular Dutch oven, but they also have ones made specifically for bread baking here.
- Silicone Bread Slings for Sourdough – I LOVE these. No more parchment paper!
Choose your bakes:
I recommend baking one simple sourdough loaf each week. This is the recipe that I use:
My Fail-safe Sourdough Loaf Recipe
Ingredients:
- 475 grams all-purpose flour, 3 1/2 cups
- 100 grams starter, active and bubbly (1/2 cup)
- 325 grams water, 1 1/3 cups
- 10 grams salt, 2 teaspoons
Recipe:
- Mix all ingredients. Then cover and let sit for 30 minutes.
- Do a series of three stretch and folds with 30 minutes in between the stretch and folds. Do one complete stretch and fold. Do the following: Scrap the dough off the side of the bowl with a dough scraper while simultaneously lifting it up and folding it over the dough ball. Then, rotate and do it again until you’ve worked the whole bowl. I normally do a flip of the entire dough ball after this.
- Then, let it sit for 6 to 8 hours. Be careful not to let it overproof here.
- Transfer to the Banneton basket and move to the fridge to sit for 12 or so hours. (This is the most flexible proofing time.
- In the morning, heat your Dutch oven for about an hour at 425 F.
- Turn out dough onto parchment paper or these nifty dough slings right before it’s time to go in the oven. Score your bread with a knife or razor and dust with flour if desired.
- Place in dutch oven and cover with a lid. Bake for 20-25 minutes with the lid on. Then, remove the lid and bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown and internal temperature reaches 190 F. Remove and let cool completely.
Some Reminders for Baking Your Sourdough Loaf
I’ve been baking for a while now, and even I experience good weeks and bad weeks with bread. The first batch I ever baked – I forgot the salt! Needless to say, it went straight into the compost.
In our old house, we had a steam oven that we had put in the kitchen when we remodeled it. It made the best loaves – and we didn’t even need a dutch oven! But our new house didn’t have one, and the first loaf I baked flattened out like a pancake in the oven. I was discouraged and stopped baking for a bit. But then the next time I picked it up, the next sourdough loaf I baked turned out beautifully!
We make mistakes, but the way we grow in the household arts is through the daily returning, the daily practice.
In the beginning, you’ll have weeks where something seems a little off, maybe it’s dense, maybe it’s chewy, maybe the crust is a little too hard. But the beauty in a weekly bake is that through the process, you learn what is causing all these things.
Doing something gives you data. It gives you an eye for what ‘good dough’ looks like. It can help you realize when something really is too dry. When something is getting close to being overproofed. When a design achieves the perfect scoring on top.
All of these things take practice!
So don’t be afraid to make mistakes. (Even the most dense loaf turns into a wonderful French toast casserole.)
One Small Step For Today: Pick a Recipe to Bake this Week
Once you’ve nurtured a starter, the next thing you need to do is just pick one recipe to bake this week. You could choose to bake a loaf using the recipe above, or you could choose one of these discard recipes.
Pick a recipe, and determine what day will be your baking day. Then, get ready to have some delicious bakes in your oven!
What did you decide to bake? Comment below and let me know!
Be sure to subscribe to never miss a post. Next time, we’ll talk about proofing – timing your loaves for the best bakes in the midst of busy life. Until then, keep pursuing the household arts and living a more beautiful life.
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