This new baker, start here page has a rollup of resources that’ll help you get baking sourdough bread quickly in your home kitchen. It begins with creating a sourdough starter from scratch (just flour and water!), your first sourdough bread, a few guides, and some of my favorite (and reader’s favorite) recipes.

Sourdough can be intimidating for new bakers, but it doesn’t have to be. With a few essential basics, you’ll be baking crusty and healthy loaves of bread in short order. And if you get stuck? I’m almost always lurking around here, answering questions and providing help—leave a comment, and I’ll get back to you.

Step 1. Create Your Sourdough Starter
The Perfect Loaf Baking Guides Starter
A sourdough starter is the most important aspect of baking sourdough bread at home, and without it, you’d have flour and water mixed. 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. But, of course, 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 →

Proofing sourdough bread dough guide illustration
Step 2. Review the Baking Process
While your sourdough starter is starting up, review my eight steps to making sourdough bread. In this beginner’s guide, you can see a high-level view of each step of the bread-making process with detailed explanations of each step.

Read the Beginner’s Guide to Sourdough Bread →

Step 3. Bake Your First Loaf of Bread

Here. We. Go!

Once your sourdough starter consistently shows the same signs of fermentation 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.

Most Detailed Recipe: Bake my 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: Bake my Easy No-knead Sourdough Bread →

Hand mixing spelt, rye, and whole wheat dough
Step 4. Review More Baking Guides
Once you have that loaf of bread crackling on the counter as it cools, review more of my baking guides to increase baking consistency and confidence. These guides have in-depth tips on maintaining a sourdough starter (with video walkthrough), creating baking schedules around your busy work week, working with baker’s percentages (baker’s math) to scale up and down recipes, and numerous guides to shaping bread dough.

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 →

Step 5. 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! Instead, 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 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 sourdough focaccia for dinner (and it’s an amazing canvas for any veggies in season!).

See my collection of sourdough starter discard recipes →

Step 6. Upgrade Your Baking Tools

One of the challenges of 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 in one place, and they’ll help you make the bread easier and more repeatable in your home kitchen.

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

A simple kitchen scale to accurately measure ingredients
An instant-read thermometer to quickly and accurately measure dough temperature
A foldable dough proofer to keep your dough warm and fermentation activity high
Explore all my favorite baking tools →

Step 7. My Top 10 Favorite Sourdough Recipes
A Simple Weekday Sourdough Bread
My Best Sourdough Bread Recipe
Spelt, Rye, and Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread (50% whole grain)
Fifty-fifty Whole Wheat Sourdough (50% whole grain)
Sourdough Pizza
Pain de Mie (super soft sandwich bread)
A Simple Focaccia
Whole Grain Spelt Pan Loaf
Super Soft Sourdough Rolls
Sourdough Cinnamon Rolls
Step 8. Join The 2500+ Member Community and Come Chat
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Want to take your baking to the next level or get help with an issue you’re running into? Join the community here at The Perfect Loaf and get:

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Instantly download my recipe archive and baking spreadsheets, plus other baking tools
Join our private community to share photos, talk baking tips, tricks, and get help (I’m chatting there daily!)
Access exclusive tool and flour discounts
First access to live baking events
And more!
Check out the baking community and membership →

Step 9. Experiment, Have Fun, and 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!

Do sourdough posts like this help you in your baking? Join The Baker’s Corner for only $60 a year, and get:

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Yes, very very good point here Michael!

Amy, thanks for getting my cookbook! For the levain, I mention this in the book, but it's common for it to come in slightly under. If you're worried about this, add 5g more of each (water, flour, starter) when making your levain to build it up a bit bigger.

For the dough strength – this often means the flour you're using might not be able to handle all the water in the recipe. Try holding back about 50g of water during the initial mix. Then, as you perform your stretch and folds, slowly work in that reserved water if you see the dough can handle it. The dough should start to feel stronger and more elastic as you progress through bulk fermentation.

Check out my guide to dough strength for more help.

Kimberly, while I don't specialize in gluten-free baking, I can share that brown rice flour tends to work well for gluten-free starters. The key is consistency and warmth – keep your starter in a warm spot (around 75-80°F) and feed it regularly. The fermentation process might take a bit longer to establish compared to wheat-based starters since there's less available food for the microorganisms. Happy baking!