I know, I know, I’m late to the sourdough game, but I’ve been thoroughly enjoying easy bread with commercial yeast, so I wanted to give sourdough a shot.

Followed the recipe from Joshua Wiessman’s “Unapologetic Cookbook” (side note: great cookbook), twice, but I couldn’t get the dough to turn out right. It always seemed overly hydrated and liquid.

I’ve been reading through this community, watching videos, and cooking easy bread long enough though that I finally threw up my hands and decided to have a go at it myself.

I started with about 10g of starter, added about 450g of bread flour, 1/4 cup of sugar (to increase rise), and a spoonful of salt. Then let that mix in the stand mixer till pretty homogeneous. Next I added 1.5 cups of 100°F water, and mixed in.

At this point it was still very liquidy, so I mixed in quite a bit more bread flour until it “looked right” with an appropriate amount of shaggyness.

I then let that rest for a while, and came back with the dough hook about every 30 minutes. At one point it still looked a bit too wet, so I added even more bread flour. I just worked this in with the hook.

After all my working I was worried about overdoing it, so I switched to stretch and folds, of which I did about 3 over the next several hours.

Finally I left it alone for about an hour, and when I returned, it was nice and risen.

I turned it out into my working space, added flour, cut and shaped, and placed into the floured bannetons. I let them rest in the bannetons for about an hour before I refrigerated them overnight.

I let them rest while the oven was heating this morning, and followed my normal baking routine, but I adjusted the temp up by about 50°, based on the Weissman recipe, which I feel was a mistake, so next time I’ll just stick to 450°F.

The result was good. Though I can still taste sugar, so I’m going to cut it way down in the next batch. I’m also thinking I may not split into two loafs, and to bake at a lower temp next time.

All in all, I’d say this is my first successful attempt, and I’m excited for the next iteration. Any tips or sage wisdom from fellow bread people would be greatly appreciated!