Mastering Sourdough: Common Mistakes And How To Avoid Them

The authentic good taste of sourdough is familiar, especially to those who love it. Like other types of bread, it’s delicious, but it’s that tanginess which makes sourdough bread appealing.

Butter this bread and toast it, and you get it chewier. Tastes more amazing. People love food with a balance of sourness, sweetness, and saltiness, so sourdough bread ticks all the right boxes. Plus, it’s also the perfect choice for keto believers.

However, you won’t be able to enjoy the magic of its tempting flavors and benefits if you don’t bake it right. Learn about the common mistakes in making sourdough, how to avoid them, and TrueSourdough, offering courses in crafting the best.

1. Leaving Your Sourdough Starter For So Long Between Feedings

While it’s still true that sourdough bread starters are resilient, withstanding scenarios when they’re left for some time, they will “die” if you leave them for so long in between feedings.

“Dead starters” mean they’ve become inactive, stopping to respond to regular feedings after being unfed for what seems like forever. Doing so will also cause it to develop molds or discoloration.

How to avoid this: When you notice your sourdough starter is looking a bit off, don’t think about your money getting wasted. Throw it away and start all over again. You’ll realize this is even better than baking bread that can’t be eaten.

Also, watch out for “threats” to your starter, especially in the first six to 10 days after its creation. Be sure to keep a regular feeding schedule. Store it at a proper room temperature since the yeast can die at 60 degrees Celsius.

2. Getting Excited About Baking Your Sourdough Too Soon

The rule of thumb is to wait a few days, up to even a week, until your starter is ready for baking. Bubbly starters are not equivalent to readiness, so be patient. Baking your starter too soon will give you a sad, pancake-like loaf you won’t enjoy eating.

How to avoid this: There are a lot of reasons to get excited about baking your sourdough, but this won’t work in certain scenarios. If you’re uncertain if your sourdough is up and ready, use the float test. Here, you drop a teaspoon of your starter into a water-filled glass. If it floats, they’re ready.

3. Failure To Autolysing Your Dough

Autolysing is a technique that can be used with several kinds of bread. Here, you combine just the flour and water, allowing the mixture to rest before adding yeast, salt, other starters, or other ingredients.

This technique helps make shaping your dough less of an effort, so it becomes a loaf with better texture, rise, and flavor.

How to avoid this: Simply don’t skip this step as others would.

4. Not Letting The Bread Proof Long Enough

Baking bread is both an art and a science. As the latter, each step in the process must be accurate and timed, including the proofing phase. Not proofing your bread in the required time results in large, uneven tunnels in the finished product or a leaden-damp texture.

How to avoid this: Leave the sourdough to proof for four hours or a bit more. You can also do the poke test or poking it. If the hole quickly pokes back up, it’s not yet wholly proofed. A “bouncy feel,” an elastic texture, and a shape that’s smooth and domed are some signs your sourdough is ready.

5. Not Using The Right Water

There’s such a thing as “right water” when baking sourdough? Yes. A lot may use water from the tap. But this is full of chlorine and other sourdough-unfriendly chemicals that ruin its starter’s yeast.

How to avoid this: Filter your water first with your water filtering machine. If you don’t have this apparatus, fill a pitcher with unfiltered water from the tap. Then, leave it for about a day to allow this to off-gas before using it in your sourdough starter.

6. Throwing The Sourdough Discard

The sourdough discard is just as important, so don’t throw it away. Doing so will keep you from seeing its magic, such as the various recipes you can make using it.

How to avoid this: After you’re done with your starter, use the discard in other recipes, including pancakes, banana bread, and even fried chicken.

Moreover, you can also store this sourdough discard in your fridge to have it on hand for other baking duties. The best part? It doesn’t require feeding. So, like a bottle of wine, it stays suitable for ages, offering a wondrous bonus for baking between loaves of sourdough.

7. Failure To Properly Scoring The Bread

Scoring is all about simply cutting into the lump of the dough that’s to go for baking. If you score your sourdough prior to baking, it will split slightly in its last minutes in the oven, resulting in a bread that’s not enticing to eat.

How to avoid this: Score the bread on top to push it to its natural fault line. Failure to score or scoring not deeply enough results in the bread bursting out the side and not in perfect shape.

Use a bread lame, razor blade, or sharp serrated knife to score the top of your loaf. Be sure to breach the outer surface into the dough beneath around half an inch.

8. Not Removing The ‘Hooch’

This is related to the first mistake emphasized earlier. Leaving your starter for too long causes it to form a layer of liquid on top. Sourdough baking prodigies call this a “hooch,” a sign it’s been left for so long without feeding. Seeing this doesn’t mean you’ll have to throw it away, so here’s how to mend this.

How to avoid this: The hooch isn’t something you want to keep as it is. If it’s just a thin layer beginning to form, give it a stir and feed. But, if it’s quite prominent, pour it off – unless you want a bread that tastes bad.

Those are eight big mistakes that uninformed bakers commit when making sourdough bread. You can notice that most of them fall under the dough preparation stage. Do you want to perfect your sourdough? Enroll in TrueSourdough, offering online courses about the intricacies of crafting the tastiest sourdough bread.