I used Rye to start my starter. After about 2 weeks I then just fed it white bread flour to maintain. I think once you have an active starter i.e. active bacteria, you can feed it any flour+water. I used a 1:1:1 ratio.

When making my doughs I would use a variety of flours for flavour/texture.

Plus 1 to Cryoutilities. I tried everything and only once I had that installed GoW played smoothly with no crashes.

I’m no expert, please take the below with a pinch of salt (pun intended).

I keep my starter in the fridge and feed when I use it.

Make a levain: 60g starter (week old) 60g water 60g flour

Cover and leave that for 8 hours (remember to feed the starter and add back to the fridge).

Make the dough by mixing with the levain. Ratio is 1:2:3 (levain:water:flour): 10g salt 360g water (Lukewarm) 540g flour

I usually add the water, stir, add the salt, stir, add flour and mix by hand.

Cover and leave that 45min to an hour.

I then do a bit of a knead, then every 20mins do some coil folds. How many depends on how bothered I can be - between 1 and 5.

I give at least 2 hours from the last fold to proof, essentially at least 4 hours from making the dough. At this point dough should have doubled in size so you can also use that as a visual guide. How warm your kitchen is plays a bit part in how quick the proofing takes, hotter=quicker and colder=slower. So in winter I will wait a little longer.

Get the dough on your work surface and give it a quick shape. Let it bench rest for 5mins. During this time I get my proofing basket ready and make some space in the fridge.

Using flour, shape the dough and place in basket and then the basket in the fridge.

Leave this overnight.

Preheat oven to as high as it goes with Dutch oven inside.

Wait 30mins to heat up.

Get dough out the fridge and give it a brush to get some excess flour off.

Take the Dutch oven out and place the dough in the Dutch oven, score the dough, spray some water in the Dutch oven and place back in the actual oven.

Wait 30mins.

Turn oven down to 180 and take lid off the Dutch oven.

I then play it by eye on when to remove the loaf from the oven, usually 15-20mins. Depends how dark you like your crust.

Leave it to rest at least an hour before cutting into it. I’ve started leaving it another day and then cutting it all up and placing the slices in the freezer. Much easier cutting after a 1 day and this let’s me use the slices over the whole week.

It’s been a long time since I have looked at how to make soughdough loaves, so I probably have a few things wrong. However the above works for me. Let me know if you have any follow up questions and I’ll do my best to answer.

I picked up baking soughdough loaves - like a lot of people…

I’ve managed to keep the habit! I’ve made a loaf once a week (pretty much) for almost 3.5 years. Which is a crazy number now that I’ve calculated it.

Feeding/kneading/shaping/baking just became part of my routine and it is now super easy to maintain, especially with the 1 a week low commitment. It makes the best sandwiches!