If you’re new to sourdough and feeling a bit overwhelmed, you’re not alone. When I first started, I searched endlessly for easy sourdough tips that weren’t overly technical or demanding. Over time, I’ve gathered a handful of practical tricks that genuinely make sourdough baking easier, less messy, and a lot more enjoyable. These aren’t strict recipes – just the sourdough tips I wish someone had shared with me from day one.
1. Use the Oven Light Trick for Faster Fermentation
One of the most useful sourdough tips I’ve learned is using the oven as a warm, stable environment for both your dough and your starter. You don’t turn the oven on – just switch on the oven light.
That tiny bulb gently raises the temperature by a few degrees, creating ideal conditions for:
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Bulk fermentation
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Final proofing
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Encouraging a sluggish starter
If your dough seems sleepy or slow, try placing the covered bowl in the oven with the light on. Those extra degrees can shave hours off the process without risking overheating.
2. Bake the Loaf Even If It Looks Wrong
Here’s one of the most important sourdough tips for beginners: bake the loaf anyway.
A flat loaf?
A weirdly shaped loaf?
A loaf that looks like folded-up laundry?
Bake it.
Even the most “failed” sourdough loaf tastes miles better than supermarket bread. And every loaf teaches you something – about fermentation, shaping, hydration, or timing. Perfection isn’t the goal. Progress (and delicious bread) is.
3. You Can Keep Your Starter in the Fridge for a Week
This is one of the sourdough tips that genuinely changed everything for me: your starter is far more low-maintenance than you think.
You don’t need to feed it every day.
You don’t need to hover over it.
You don’t need to rearrange your life around it and arrange a babysitter for when you take a trip out of town.
You can simply put your starter in the fridge and leave it there for a week (or even longer) and it will be absolutely fine. When you’re ready to bake, just take it out, give it a couple of feeds, and it springs back to life in no time – even faster when you incorporate tip #1.
Sourdough does not need to be a full-time commitment.
4. Do Stretch-and-Folds Right in the Bowl (one of my favourite sourdough tips)
If you like keeping things easy (and clean!), this is one of the best sourdough tips to know:
You don’t need to turn the dough out onto a work surface for stretch-and-folds.
Instead, you can:
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Wet your hand
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Slide it under the dough
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Stretch it upward
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Fold it over
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Rotate the bowl
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Repeat
That’s it—no flour everywhere, no sticky counter top, hardly any cleanup. Perfect.
5. Trust Your Hands More Than the Clock
Time-based instructions are only a guideline. Temperature, starter strength, flour type, and hydration change everything. One of the smartest sourdough tips is learning to feel when dough is ready:
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Smoother
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Stronger
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Puffier
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Slightly domed
Once you recognise those signs, you’ll never stress about the exact number of hours again.
6. Keep Your Hands Wet, Not Your Dough Covered in Flour
This tiny technique solves a huge problem: sticky dough. Instead of covering everything in flour, wet your hands. It keeps the dough from grabbing you and maintains the intended hydration level.
7. Document Your Loaves
A super underrated tip: take quick photos of each loaf. You’ll spot patterns, improvements, and mistakes far faster when you can compare visually from week to week.
Final Thoughts
Sourdough is a slow, rewarding hobby, and with a few simple sourdough tips, it becomes much more approachable. Whether you’re doing stretch-and-folds in the bowl, proofing your dough with the oven light, or learning to trust your hands, you’re already on the right track. Keep baking, keep experimenting, and enjoy every loaf – wonky or not.
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