How to approach a sourdough formula

And how to adjust it to your environment and flour.

We’ve all been there when we started this journey, we’ve mistaken the process of making sourdough as a recipe we just need to follow to a tee and it’ll be looking the same. After all that is what those cake recipes and cookbooks told us! Until we face a rock hard, dense and gummy crumb or a sad looking flat loaf and wonder what went wrong. How can something that works so well for one person, lead to such an awful result for me? The key factor people often overlook in making sourdough breads is that it is not a recipe to start with. It is a fermentation process that uses certain ingredients and based on those ingredients and temperature, the dough develops and ferments mostly on its own and our only task is to watch it and if needed, adjust it.

So let’s look at a basic sourdough formula and I’ll explain to you how you can turn this into a bread without even needing a “recipe”. You’ll also be able to make up pretty much any formula on your own. Be using percentages in my explanation you’ll also (hopefully) understand baker’s percentages!