Welcome! Glad to have you here!

• Download a PDF copy of our West Side Sourdough recipe and starter care guide

• How to shape a batard! We don’t press our dough as firmly in the beginning but otherwise this is close:

Warm Weather Notes

Hot house/apartment baking is a unique challenge. When I tested our WSS recipe as written with cold tap water on a hot day (see photo at top of page,) my dough came out at 80 degrees! I did a bulk rise of 1 1/2 hours with two folds, then put it into the fridge almost immediately after shaping. I did leave it out for about half an hour before preheating the oven the next day, but I really didn’t need to. Next time, I’d use even colder water!

Cold Weather Notes

Patience is the key to home baking if it’s a little cool where you live. Don’t be afraid to use water that feels lukewarm to the touch (should still be cooler than body temp) and expect that you might need to let the dough rest a lot longer than written! Use caution if rising in a warm place like inside of a slightly warm oven, since the bread might rise more quickly than you expect. Do not put your bread right on top of a hot radiator, it will start to bake (just ask how we know.)

Flour Notes

You can substitute any strong bread flour or KA all purpose for the bread flour in the recipe, and use any whole grain flour (ideally local or regional if you can get it, depending on where you are) in place of the Farmer Ground Flour we recommend if you’re around here. Want to get weird? Try substituting for the rye flour! Use buckwheat, einkorn, emmer, amaranth… it’s a small enough percentage that you can get fun flavor results without compromising the bread’s character much.

Books etc.

• The book that taught our founders to bake… aka Bread by Jeffrey Hamelman… aka the Bible

• An incredible book of European bread by Dan Lepard - not sourdough but very worthwhile recipes to try at home (and the source of our pickle brine rye bread)

• This book by a Black sourdough baker should definitely be on your wishlist! a slew of recipes you might not have thought of making with sourdough… like beignets and pan de coco. Here’s the interview that got us really excited about it

• Technically not a book… but try out Tartine’s recipe! You could also buy the Tartine Bread book, but it’s mostly just this (very good) recipe, plus his version of bakers math confuses us.

• Also not a book! The forums at The Fresh Loaf are full of useful home baking advice, plus perspective from other small bakers. If you have a question about bread baking, search their archives… full of answers!

Supplies

SFBI online store is a great source for high quality stuff. You can really go overboard on tools but for home baking, your basic priorities should be:

• scale (every bakery has this one)

• thermometer (we like these or these)

• basket/linen to rise (in our punk bread share days we used small woven baskets and (clean) napkins, which you can definitely find secondhand for cheap)

• bench knife & bowl scraper

• razorblade, scissors or sharp knife for scoring

• Dutch oven (or any deep covered casserole! again, hit the secondhand store)

• a good bread knife. Any restaurant supply store will have something workable… or splurge on a Wüsthof.