The first proper loaf from the new starter

17 May 2026bakingsourdoughrecipe

When I started the new starter in March I wrote that a young culture makes a loaf that is fine rather than good, and that the flavour takes a couple of months to decide what it wants to be. I was guessing, based on the last one. It turns out I was roughly right, which almost never happens, so I am writing it down.

For the first month the bread was perfectly edible and slightly dull. A tight, even crumb, a crust that went soft by the next morning, and a flavour that was mostly flour. Around week six the starter began smelling different: less yoghurt, more green apple with something sharper underneath. Around week eight it stopped needing the radiator shelf and started doubling in five hours at ordinary kitchen temperature. This weekend's loaf is the first one I would happily hand to a neighbour without apologising first.

The dough

Nothing clever. This is the plainest sourdough I know how to make, which is the point: if the starter is doing its job, a plain dough shows it, and if it is not, there is nowhere to hide.

Timeline

• 08:00 Fed the starter 1:2:2 (20 g starter, 40 g flour, 40 g water).
• 13:00 Starter doubled and domed, just beginning to flatten. Mixed flour and 340 g of the water, left it for 45 minutes.
• 13:45 Added starter, salt and the last 20 g of water. Squeezed it through my fingers until it came together.
• 14:15 to 15:45 Four sets of stretch and folds, 30 minutes apart.
• 18:30 Bulk finished: dough up by about 60%, domed, a few large bubbles on the sides of the container. Kitchen at 21 °C.
• 18:45 Pre-shaped, rested 20 minutes, shaped into a round, into a tea-towel-lined bowl dusted with rice flour.
• 19:15 Into the fridge overnight.
• 08:30 Baked straight from the fridge in the cast-iron pot: 250 °C lid on for 20 minutes, then 230 °C lid off for 22.

What was different this time

Three things, and I am not sure which mattered most.

First, the starter was used at peak rather than when it was convenient. For weeks I had been using it a couple of hours after it had peaked, when it had already started to fall back. A starter past its peak is still alive, but it is hungrier and more acidic, and the dough rises more slowly and tastes thinner. Using it at the top made the bulk ferment faster by nearly an hour.

Second, I stopped bulking by the clock. The recipe I had been half-following said four hours. In a 21 °C kitchen with this starter it was nearer five, and the extra hour is the difference between a crumb with a few big holes and a dense lower third and a crumb that is open the whole way down.

Third, the overnight fridge. It makes the loaf more sour, which I like, but more usefully it makes a cold dough that holds its shape when it is tipped into a 250 °C pot, so the score opens properly instead of the whole thing spreading.

The crumb is open and slightly glossy, the crust crackled for a good ten minutes after it came out of the oven, and the flavour has finally made up its mind. It is mild, a little tangy, with the faint sweetness that a longer fermentation gives. The second slice was better than the first, which is how I know.

The starter still has no name. Several people have asked. I think it is still on probation.