Classic White Sourdough: The Recipe to Learn First

If you've been baking sourdough for any length of time, you'll have noticed that classic white sourdough — the kind sold for £6 a loaf in independent bakeries — is genuinely hard to do well at home. The recipe is simple. The execution is fussy. This guide takes the route we've used in 50+ home kitchens to teach beginners: moderate hydration, long cold ferment, no shortcuts. It produces a loaf with an open crumb, a deeply caramelised crust, and the kind of mild tang that makes you want to eat it straight from the cooling rack with butter.

The recipe at a glance

Ingredient	Weight	Baker's %
Strong white bread flour	500g	100%
Water (room temp, ~22°C)	350g	70%
Active sourdough starter	100g	20%
Fine sea salt	10g	2%

Total time: 18–24 hours, mostly hands-off.
Active time: about 45 minutes.
Yield: one 800g loaf.

Before you start: the three things that decide your loaf

Most failed first loaves can be traced to one of three things, none of which are the flour:

An underactive starter. Use it at peak rise — domed, bubbly, just starting to dimple in the centre. If your starter is sluggish, feed it twice and wait. Full readiness checklist here.
The wrong dough temperature. Cool dough ferments slowly. Warm dough ferments fast. Aim for a final dough temperature of 24–26°C (a probe thermometer is £6 and worth every penny).
Underbulking. The dough needs to grow by 50–75% before you shape, with visible bubbles on the surface and a jiggly texture. Most beginners shape too early.

Get those three right and the loaf takes care of itself.

Step 1 — Build the levain (8am)

The night before you bake, refresh your starter so it's ready by morning. At 8am, mix:

20g active starter
40g strong white flour
40g room-temperature water

Stir to a thick paste, cover loosely, and leave at warm room temperature. By 12–1pm it should have doubled and be just starting to dome. That's your levain.

If you're impatient and want to skip the levain step, use 100g of your peak starter directly. The loaf works either way; the levain just gives you more control.

Step 2 — Autolyse (12pm)

In a large bowl, whisk 350g water (around 22°C) with the 500g flour until no dry pockets remain. Cover and rest for 1 hour. This step — autolyse — lets the flour fully hydrate before fermentation begins, which gives you a slacker, more extensible dough that's easier to handle and develops a more open crumb.

Don't add starter or salt yet. Just flour and water.

Step 3 — Mix in the levain and salt (1pm)

Add 100g of your peak levain and 10g salt to the autolysed dough. Wet your hand and pinch the dough together — squeeze, fold, squeeze, fold — until everything is fully incorporated. It will feel slightly sticky and wet at this stage. That's correct.

Cover the bowl with a plate or damp tea towel.

Step 4 — Bulk ferment with stretch-and-folds (1–6pm)

Over the next 4–5 hours, perform four stretch-and-fold sets, 30 minutes apart for the first two, then 45 minutes apart for the last two:

1:30pm — Set 1 (4 stretch-and-folds)
2:00pm — Set 2 (4 stretch-and-folds)
2:45pm — Set 3 (3 stretch-and-folds)
3:30pm — Set 4 (3 stretch-and-folds)

To stretch-and-fold: wet your hand, reach under one side of the dough, lift it up high until it stretches, then fold it over the top of the dough. Rotate the bowl 90° and repeat three more times for the four sides. The dough will feel rough at set 1 and silky-smooth by set 4.

After the last fold, leave the dough alone until it has grown by 50–75%, looks domed and jiggly, and shows clear bubbles on the surface and the side of the bowl. In a 24°C kitchen, this takes another 1.5–2.5 hours after the last fold.

How to know bulk is done: wet your fingertip, poke the dough an inch deep, and watch how it springs back. If it springs back fast, give it another 30 minutes. If it springs back slowly leaving a slight dimple, it's ready. If the hole stays put, you've overproofed — shape immediately.

Step 5 — Pre-shape and bench rest (6:30pm)

Tip the dough onto a lightly floured counter. Using a bench scraper, gently scoop the dough into itself a few times to form a loose round. Don't deflate it. Leave it to rest, uncovered, for 25–30 minutes. The dough should relax and spread slightly.

Step 6 — Final shape (7pm)

Flip the dough so the smooth side is down. Fold the top third down towards you, then fold each side in like an envelope, then roll the bottom up away from you to form a tight log or tight round. Pinch the seam closed.

Dust a banneton (or a tea-towel-lined bowl) heavily with rice flour or 50/50 rice and white flour. Place the dough seam-side up in the banneton.

Step 7 — Cold retard (7pm to 7am next day)

Cover the banneton with a shower cap or plastic bag, then put the whole thing in the fridge overnight. The minimum cold retard is 8 hours; the maximum is around 36. The cold retard does three things at once:

Slows fermentation so the dough doesn't overproof while you sleep.
Develops flavour through long, slow lactic acid production.
Firms up the dough so it's easier to score.

Step 8 — Bake (7am)

An hour before you want to bake, put a Dutch oven (or any 4-litre lidded cast-iron pot) into your oven and crank it to 250°C / 480°F. Let it preheat for at least 45 minutes — the pot needs to be properly hot.

While the oven heats, take the dough out of the fridge. Don't let it warm up — bake straight from cold.

When the oven is ready:

Tip the dough onto a piece of parchment paper, seam-side down.
Score it with a sharp blade — one bold curve from edge to edge, about 1cm deep, held at a 30° angle to the dough surface.
Lift the parchment with the dough into the hot Dutch oven and put the lid on.
Bake for 20 minutes with the lid on at 250°C.
Remove the lid, drop the temperature to 220°C, and bake for another 20–25 minutes until the crust is deep amber-brown.

Tip the loaf out and let it cool on a rack for at least an hour before you cut into it. The crumb is still setting when it comes out of the oven; cut too early and you'll get a gummy crumb that wasn't actually undercooked.

What a good classic white sourdough looks like

Crust: deep amber-brown, almost mahogany in spots, with the scored ear lifted and crisp.
Crumb: medium-open with irregular holes — not the cavernous holes of a high-hydration ciabatta, but plenty of variation.
Texture: soft and tender, with a chewy crust that crackles when squeezed.
Flavour: mild lactic tang, sweet wheaty backbone, slight nutty caramelisation from the long bake.

Common problems and what they mean

Flat loaf, dense crumb: almost always underbulked dough or weak starter. Either you shaped before bulk was done, or your starter wasn't at peak.

Gummy crumb: usually undercooked. Internal temperature should hit 96–98°C; if you don't have a probe, give it five extra minutes uncovered.

No oven spring (loaf doesn't rise in the oven): overproofed. Either bulk went too long, or the cold retard was too long combined with too-warm bulk.

Crust splits in random places: didn't score deep enough, or scored too vertically. Hold the blade at 30° and cut through with confidence.

Pale crust: oven not hot enough, or didn't trap enough steam in the first 20 minutes. The Dutch oven lid is what creates the steam — make sure it's properly preheated.

Schedule recap

8pm night before: feed your starter so it's at peak by 8am.
8am: build levain.
12pm: autolyse.
1pm: mix in levain + salt.
1:30–3:30pm: stretch-and-folds.
3:30–6pm: bulk ferment.
6:30pm: pre-shape, rest 30 min.
7pm: final shape, into banneton, into fridge.
7am next day: bake.

FAQ

Can I bake the same day instead of overnight?

Yes — after final shape, leave the loaf at room temperature for 1.5–2.5 hours before baking. Cold retard gives more flavour and a better crust, but a same-day bake works.

What if I don't have a Dutch oven?

Bake on a hot baking stone (or upturned baking tray) with a tray of boiling water on the rack below. Less reliable, but workable. The Dutch oven is the single best £30 you can spend for sourdough.

Can I use plain flour instead of strong white?

You can but the loaf won't rise as well — strong white has 12%+ protein, which gives the gluten network you need. Plain flour gives you a tight, biscuity crumb. Stick with strong.

How much starter do I really need?

20% baker's percentage (100g for 500g flour) is the standard. You can go down to 10% for a longer ferment with more flavour, or up to 25% for a faster bake.

Why does the recipe use rice flour for the banneton?

Rice flour doesn't absorb moisture, so it stops the dough sticking. Wheat flour gets sticky and the dough welds itself to the banneton. Rice flour is the trick every bakery uses.

Storing your classic white sourdough

This is the part nobody tells you and most people get wrong. Plastic bags ruin sourdough — they trap steam and turn the crackling crust soft and rubbery within an hour. Bread bins with airtight seals do the same thing, just slower.

The right way:

Cut-side down on a wooden board, uncovered. The cut side seals itself; the crust stays crisp. Three days like this.
Linen bread bag. Breathable, soaks up moisture, keeps the crust the way you baked it. Five days.
Frozen. Slice the loaf, freeze flat in a bag. Toast slices straight from frozen. Lasts a month with no quality loss.

Don't refrigerate sourdough. The fridge stales bread three times faster than the counter. Full storage guide here.

Why this recipe in particular

We've taught dozens of beginners on the kits we ship, and this exact 70%-hydration, overnight-cold-retard, 20%-starter recipe has the highest first-loaf success rate of anything we've tried. It's not the loaf with the wildest open crumb or the most dramatic ear. It's the one that, week after week, comes out properly baked and proudly holdable on a chopping board.

Once you've made this loaf five times, push the hydration to 75%, drop the starter to 15%, lengthen the cold retard to 24 hours. Each tweak teaches you something. But this is the foundation. Build it solid and everything that comes after will be easier.