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Easy Dutch Oven Sourdough

The most delicious sourdough bread in just a few simple steps!
5 from 3 votes
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Course: Breads
Cuisine: American
Keyword: baking recipes, baking with sourdough, bread
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 40 minutes
Total Time: 10 hours

Equipment

  • dutch oven

Ingredients

  • 125 g sourdough starter (½ cup) see notes for more info
  • 12 g salt (2 tsp)
  • 350 g water (1½ cups)
  • 500 g flour (4 cups)

Instructions

  • In a bowl, combine water, starter and salt. Mix. Then add the flour and mix together just barely until there are no dry spots in the dough. (Don’t knead it)
  • Cover dough with a lid, and let dough sit at room temperature for 8-12 hours or overnight.
  • Preheat a Dutch oven inside your oven at 450 degrees for 30-60 minutes. (I recommend putting a pizza stone or baking sheet under the Dutch oven so the bottom of the bread doesn’t get too crusty & overcooked)
  • Right after you preheat the oven, dump dough out onto a clean, and lightly floured surface. Tuck, stretch, or roll the dough into a smooth ball. Pushing and pulling the dough in a circular motion helps it get into shape. (As shown in video).
  • Transfer dough ball to a piece of parchment paper, and cover with the upside-down bowl used to make the dough.
  • Let it rest one hour.
  • Remove bowl covering and lightly dust dough with flour. Using a sharp blade or knife, score the dough so the steam has somewhere to escape. Scoring also helps give the dough a direction to rise.
  • Transfer parchment of dough into a hot Dutch oven. Cover with lid and put in oven.
  • Reduce heat to 400℉ and bake, covered for 40 minutes. Remove lid and let the crust golden for 3-5 more minutes.
  • Remove bread from oven and put it on a cooling rack. Let it cool for one hour before slicing into it. (Slicing into it while it’s warm makes the bread gummy)

Notes

You can use either active bubbly starter or unfed discard starter.
I most often make this recipe with DISCARD (unfed, flat and runny starter) instead of active, fed and bubbly starter. And it turns out every bit as good!! I use the same weight measurements of discard as I would with fed bubbly starter.
Measurements in cups: 1/2 cup sourdough starter, 2 tsp salt, 1 1/2 cups water, 4 cups flour