A sourdough diary
After four years and a great many mediocre loaves, this is the schedule that finally became repeatable in an ordinary kitchen — with the parts that actually matter marked as such, and the parts everyone frets about left where they belong.
Active work adds up to about forty minutes. Everything else is the dough doing its own thing while you get on with the day.
Evening before. Equal weights flour, water, starter. It should roughly triple by morning if the kitchen is warm.
Flour and water only, no starter yet. An hour of rest lets the flour hydrate — the dough becomes noticeably easier to handle.
Squeeze through until evenly distributed. It will look ragged. That is correct.
A set of folds every 45 minutes. By the last set the dough should hold its shape and feel alive rather than slack.
The part everyone rushes. Wait for a 50% rise and a domed, jiggly surface — not double, which is where most home loaves go wrong.
Shape without knocking the air out, then into the fridge overnight. Cold dough is far easier to score.
Preheated pot, 20 minutes covered, 20–25 uncovered. Take it darker than feels comfortable.
Cups measure volume, and flour compacts. A cheap digital scale removes an entire category of failure.
Every timing on this page is a guess about your kitchen. A cold room can double the bulk rise, and no schedule can know that.
An under-proofed loaf is dense but edible. An over-proofed one spreads into a sad disc and cannot be rescued.
Everything else — the brand of flour, the shape of the banneton, whether you use a lame or a razor taped to a stick — turned out to matter far less than getting the bulk rise right.