Sourdough from Scratch: Starter, Bread and 40 Recipes

Most sourdough guides either drown you in theory or hand you a recipe that only works in someone else's kitchen. This field guide does neither. It shows you what to do each day, what you should see, and what to change when your dough does not look right.

You start with an empty jar. A day-by-day timeline takes you from flour paste to a bubbling starter in 7 to 14 days, including the Day 4 slump that makes most beginners quit too early. Then you learn to keep it alive with five minutes a day, or once a week in the fridge.

Next comes the master country loaf, with a full weekday schedule and a weekend schedule you can follow to the hour. You learn stretch and folds, the five cues that bulk fermentation is done, shaping, cold retard, scoring, and baking with or without a Dutch oven. Baker's percentages are explained with worked examples, in US cups with grams alongside. A crumb diagnosis table tells you exactly what went wrong and how to fix it. Hot kitchen, cold kitchen or high altitude? There is a chapter for that.

Then put your starter to work with 40 complete recipes: country loaf variations, soft sandwich bread, baguette-style loaves, bagels, English muffins, pizza dough, focaccia, rolls, cinnamon rolls, brioche, crackers, pancakes, waffles, biscuits and crumpets. Every recipe lists yield, time, ingredients and numbered steps, with food-safety notes where they matter.

Finish with a 30-day plan that takes you from your first feeding to your fifth confident loaf.

What you get:

• A 14-day starter timeline with what to expect each day and a troubleshooting table
• The master country loaf with weekday and weekend schedules, hour by hour
• Baker's percentages made simple, with worked examples in cups and grams
• A crumb diagnosis table for dense, flat, gummy or over-proofed loaves
• Adjustments for hot kitchens, cold kitchens and high altitude
• Baking methods with a Dutch oven and without one
• 40 complete recipes, from bagels and pizza to discard crackers and waffles
• A week-by-week 30-day plan and a one-page quick-reference card

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