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HandoutHandout 1: Supply & Shopping List
Handout 1: Supply & Shopping List
Okay. Before we touch flour, let's get you set up right. I'm giving you two tiers here — what you actually need to bake decent bread, and what's nice once you know you're sticking with this. Buy the first list. The second list can wait.
I'd rather you spend your money on good flour than a fancy proofing basket you're not sure you'll use.
Budget Tier — get this before class
- Kitchen scale, grams setting. About $15. Non-negotiable, and I mean that. Cups are a guess. Grams are a measurement. This is the single biggest reason your bread will turn out — or won't.
- Bread flour, 5 lb bag. King Arthur is what I use and what I'll have in class. Costco carries a big bag too if you want to split it with someone.
- Large glass or plastic jar, wide mouth, at least a quart. This is your starter's house. I use a wide-mouth quart mason jar. No lid that seals tight — starter needs to breathe, or it needs a lid you loosen.
- Rubber band or dry-erase marker. For marking how high your starter climbs. Sounds silly. You'll use it constantly.
- Mixing bowl, one big one. Stainless or glass, big enough that dough can double and not climb out onto your counter. Ask me sometime about the night mine did that. Richard cleaned it up and never said a word, which was worse than if he had.
- Bench scraper or a wide, stiff spatula. A few bucks at any kitchen store. Makes handling wet dough way easier.
- Kitchen towel or plastic wrap, for covering the bowl.
- A sheet pan and a stainless bowl big enough to flip over it. This is your starter setup for baking with steam. You do not need a Dutch oven to get started. I baked good loaves this way for months. Buy the flour first, buy the toys later.
- Instant-read thermometer, the cheap kind. Helps you check your water temp and your baked loaf.
That's genuinely it for week one. Maybe $40-50 total if you're buying everything new, less if you've got half of this already in a drawer.
Nice-to-Have Tier — once you know you're keeping this up
- Dutch oven, 5-6 quart, enameled cast iron. Gives you the best crust with the least fuss. Wait until you've baked a handful of loaves the sheet-pan way first.
- Banneton (proofing basket). Pretty, helps with shape, not required. A bowl lined with a floured towel does the same job.
- Dough scraper set (bowl scraper + bench scraper). Small upgrade, makes cleanup less annoying.
- A second jar just for discard, if you start baking with your discard a lot — and you should, I think tossing it out is wasteful. Pancakes, crackers, whatever. Don't dump it down the drain, by the way. It'll clog on you, especially with our hard water already working against your pipes.
- A proofing box. I built mine out of a plastic tote and a seedling heat mat from the garden section. Total cost maybe $25 and it's the reason I can proof dough consistently through the winter without babysitting the thermostat. Not required for class but if you get serious, it's the upgrade I'd make first.
Local-ish shopping notes
Macey's and the regular grocery stores around American Fork carry bread flour but check the bag size, sometimes it's only the small ones. Costco's bag is a better deal if you know you'll use it. Whatever store you're in, get bread flour specifically, not all-purpose, if you can — more protein, better rise.
One more thing on our end of things: our air here is dry and we're sitting around 4,600 feet. That affects hydration and how fast your dough can crust over before it even proofs. We'll get into that more in the starter lesson, but don't be surprised if what you buy or measure needs a little adjusting from what a recipe off the internet tells you. Most of those are written by people at sea level with humidity we don't have.
Bring your scale and your jar to class. Everything else I'll have extras of if you forget.
HandoutHandout 2: Sourdough Cheat Sheet
Handout 2: Sourdough Cheat Sheet
Print this, flour on it, whatever. It's meant to get used, not kept nice. Everything's in grams because that's the only way I'll write a recipe. Get a scale if you don't have one, they're about 15 bucks and worth every penny.
The basic ratio (baker's percentages)
- Flour: 100% (this is your baseline, everything else is a percent of this)
- Water: 75–78% (I run closer to 78 with our dry air, more on that below)
- Starter: 20%
- Salt: 2%
Example for a standard loaf: 500g flour, 385g water, 100g starter, 10g salt. That's it. That's the whole load calc.
Timeline, roughly
Step Time Feed starter Morning, or night before Starter ready to use Doubled, 4–8 hrs after feeding, floats in water Mix dough 5 min Autolyse (flour + water rest, no starter yet) 30–60 min Bulk ferment 4–6 hrs at 75–78°F Shape 10 min Cold retard (fridge) 8–16 hrs, or overnight Bake 45–50 min total Our elevation and dry air mean timelines from a lot of online recipes are going to lie to you a little, especially the coastal ones. Watch the dough, not the clock. I mean that plainly — set a timer as a reminder to go check, not as the actual finish line.
How to tell your starter's ready
Doubled in size, dome on top, smells sour-yeasty not like nail polish. Drop a spoonful in water — floats, you're good. Sinks, give it another hour.
If it's ever pink or orange, throw the whole jar out and start over. Don't try to save it. Learned that one the hard way.
How to tell bulk ferment is done
Dough's puffy, jiggles a little when you nudge the bowl, maybe 30–50% bigger, not doubled. I'd rather you pull it a touch early than let it go too long. An underfermented loaf slices fine. An overfermented one turns into a gummy slack mess that won't hold a shape. That's just my take, but I've made both kinds and I know which one I'd rather serve.
Shaping, quick version
Flour your hands and the counter lightly, don't overdo it, you want a little grip. Fold the dough into itself, tension the surface by dragging it toward you in a circle, into the banneton or bowl seam-side up.
Scoring
One clean straight slash, about half an inch deep, at an angle, done fast and confident. That's the whole trick — confident, not careful. If you want wheat stalks and leaves, I'll be honest, that's not my department. I got bored with fancy scoring after about two weeks. Look up a video for that part.
Baking, Dutch oven method
- Preheat oven and pot to 500°F, 30–45 min.
- Drop dough in, lid on, 20 min.
- Lid off, drop to 450°F, 20–25 min more, until deep golden.
- Internal temp should read 205–210°F if you want to check with a thermometer.
No Dutch oven yet? Don't sweat it. A stainless bowl flipped over the loaf on a sheet pan works. Buy the flour first, buy the toys later.
Quick troubleshooting
- Dense, gummy center: underbaked, or water was too cold and crusted the outside before it could rise. Let it bake longer, check water temp next time (I aim for about 77°F).
- Flat loaf, no oven spring: overfermented, or starter wasn't active enough when you mixed.
- Too sour for your taste: shorter bulk ferment, or feed starter more often.
- Sticky dough you can't handle: it's probably fine, resist adding flour. Wet hands instead of more flour.
Discard from feeding your starter isn't garbage. Pancakes, crackers, whatever. Use it.
WorksheetHandout 3: Bulk Ferment & Shape Tracking Sheet
Handout 3: Bulk Ferment & Shape Tracking Sheet
Fill this in as you go. Don't trust your memory on timing — I don't trust mine, that's why I built this thing.
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Starter Check (before you mix dough)
- Time fed: __________
- Hours since feeding: __________
- Did it double? Y / N
- Smell: sour / yeasty / sweet-ish / off (if off, oh man, don't use it)
Dough Mix
- Flour type/brand: __________
- Total flour weight (g): __________
- Water weight (g): __________
- Hydration %: __________ (water ÷ flour x 100 — this is just a load calc, don't overthink it)
- Salt (g): __________
- Water temp used: __________°F
- Room temp at mix time: __________°F
Reminder: our dry air pulls moisture out of dough faster than a lot of online recipes plan for. If your kitchen's running warm and dry, I'd rather you add a splash more water than fight a stiff dough all afternoon. That's just me.
Bulk Ferment Log
Check the dough every 30-45 minutes. Note what you see, not just the clock.
Time What it looks like Fold done? - Total bulk time: __________
- Dough temp at end of bulk: __________°F
- Poke test result (springs back slow / springs back fast / doesn't spring): __________
My honest opinion: a lot of people push bulk too long chasing that big airy crumb and end up with a slack, gummy mess. I'd rather you pull it a hair early and get a loaf you can actually slice. Watch for a slight dome and some visible bubbles at the sides of the container — you don't need it doubled and jiggly.
Shaping
- Pre-shape rest time: __________
- Final shape: boule / batard / other: __________
- Bench flour used (light hand, please): __________
Cold Proof
- Time into fridge: __________
- Fridge temp (check with a thermometer, not a guess): __________°F
- Total cold proof time: __________ (8-16 hours is the range I work in, longer isn't automatically better)
Bake Day
- Oven preheat temp: __________°F
- Preheat time (30-45 min minimum with your baking vessel inside): __________
- Score pattern: straight slash / other: __________
- Bake time covered: __________
- Bake time uncovered: __________
- Internal temp at pull: __________°F (I look for 205-210)
After the Cut
- Crumb: open and airy / tight and even / gummy in the middle
- Crust: good color / pale / too dark (if it's dark, was your oven running hot? mine did once and I burned a whole batch for a gym crowd — that one was on me)
- Would you change anything next time?
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One last thing. If something goes sideways today, write down what you saw and when. That note is worth more than a perfect loaf, because it's the thing that keeps you from repeating my mistakes instead of your own.
HandoutHandout 4: Troubleshooting Guide
Handout 4: Troubleshooting Guide
Everything on this list happened to me at least once. Some of it happened more than once, because apparently I don't always learn the first time. Find your problem, read the fix, move on.
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1. Starter isn't rising, or barely moves. Give it more time before you panic — a new starter can take 5-7 days before it does anything convincing. If it's older and stalled, check your kitchen temp. Mine likes 74-77 degrees. If your house runs cold in winter, that's your answer. I built a proofing box out of a plastic tote and a seedling heat mat for exactly this. Cheap fix, works every time.
2. Starter has pink or orange streaks. Throw it out. Don't smell it, don't taste it, don't try to save it. Pink means bad bacteria got in, and it's not worth the risk. Start over with a clean jar. This happened to my very first starter and I about cried, but a new one from scratch is a five-day inconvenience, not a tragedy.
3. Dough won't come together, feels shaggy and dry. Add water a tablespoon at a time. Our dry air here pulls moisture out of dough faster than recipes written for humid places account for. If you're following an online recipe from somewhere coastal, expect to add a little more water than they call for. That's just how it goes at our elevation.
4. Dough is a sticky, unworkable mess. Too much water for your flour, or your flour has less protein than the recipe assumed. Add flour a tablespoon at a time until it's workable. Oh man, I know it's tempting to just add flour by the handful — don't. Small additions, mix, check again.
5. Loaf came out dense with a gummy middle. This is almost always underproofed, or your water was too cold when you mixed. Cold water crusts the outside of your dough here before the middle ever gets going, especially in dry winter air. Aim for water around 75-80 degrees when you mix, warmer in winter than you'd think you need.
6. Dough overflowed the bowl during bulk ferment. You forgot about it. I know because I did this exact thing before a Saturday framing job — left it overnight, came home at four, and it had climbed out onto the counter. Set a timer. An actual timer, not a mental note. Bulk ferment usually runs 4-6 hours at room temp, less in a warm kitchen, longer in a cold one.
7. Bread is flat, doesn't rise in the oven. Overfermented. This is the mistake I see most, because everybody's chasing that big airy crumb and pushes fermentation too far. A dough that's gone too long loses its structure and just spreads instead of rising. I'd honestly rather you pull it a little early. Underfermented bread you can still slice and eat. Overfermented bread is a pancake.
8. Crust is rock hard, almost burnt. Your oven runs hot, or you left it in chasing a darker crust like I did once — set off my own smoke alarm and served a gym group jerky-hard bread. That one's on me. Get an oven thermometer, they're cheap, and trust it over your dial.
9. Loaf spreads out instead of holding a round shape. Under-shaped, or the dough was too wet for your skill level yet. Shaping builds tension on the outside of the dough, kind of like how a good tie-down keeps a load from shifting. If you're new, go a touch drier on hydration until your hands catch up.
10. No oven spring, loaf doesn't open up where you scored it. Either your scoring wasn't deep enough (go a good half inch, confident cut, one pass) or your oven wasn't fully preheated. Give it a full 30-45 minutes to heat with your Dutch oven or stone inside before the dough goes in. Rushing this step wastes everything you did before it.
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If you're still stuck after this, bring your starter or a photo of your loaf to class. I can usually tell what happened just by looking, sometimes just by feel. That's not magic, that's just doing this wrong enough times myself to recognize it in someone else's dough.
podcast_scriptClass podcast — episode 1
Audio coming soon — show notes below.
JESS: —so I'm just saying, if the smoke alarm goes off during class, that's a normal Tuesday for us at this point.
SHARON: Oh man, don't scare them off in the first five minutes.
JESS: I'm not scaring them, I'm preparing them. This is Sharon Atkinson, she teaches Sourdough Bread from Scratch, and I'm Jess, I produce these things for Utah Community Learning. Sharon, tell people what they're actually signing up for.
SHARON: Flour, water, salt, and time. That's it. That's the whole class, really, we just spend six weeks arguing with the "time" part.
JESS: You say that like it's simple.
SHARON: It is simple. It's not easy. Those are different things. I came at this thinking bread's just a load calc with wetter numbers, and hydration percentage, sure, that clicked the first afternoon. What didn't click was waiting. I've spent forty years on job sites where a frame goes up and it stays up. Bread doesn't work that way. It makes you wait on it, and it doesn't care that you've got somewhere to be.
JESS: You've told me the smoke alarm story. Should we do the smoke alarm story?
SHARON: Oh, the jerky bread. Yeah, that one's on me.
JESS: Set it up for people.
SHARON: So I'd had a gym crowd over — some folks I work out with early mornings — and I was chasing a darker crust, really wanted that deep mahogany color you see in the nice photos. Left it in too long watching for it. Alarm goes off, whole kitchen's got smoke in it, and I pull out this loaf that's basically leather. Crust like a boot sole.
JESS: And you served it anyway.
SHARON: I served it anyway. Told them straight up, that one's on me, my oven runs hot and I got greedy with the color. They were polite about it. Somebody said it'd make good jerky if you fed it to a dog, which, fair.
JESS: This is a pattern with you, owning it in real time.
SHARON: Well, what's the alternative. I'd rather tell you where I blew it than have you think it's supposed to look like a hockey puck or taste like a boot. My first real loaf ever was dense as a brick, too, before I figured out our dry air here crusts the outside of the dough before it's even had a chance to proof properly. Nobody warns you about that in a recipe written by somebody at sea level with regular humidity.
JESS: Okay, give the podcast people something they can use tonight. No class required.
SHARON: Buy a kitchen scale. Fifteen dollars, maybe twenty. Weigh your flour and water, don't measure by cups. Cups are not consistent, a cup of flour packed is a different cup than one scooped light, and you'll never repeat a good loaf if you don't know what you actually put in it. That's the single biggest thing. I'm a little annoyed, honestly, that recipes still get printed with cups on them.
JESS: You say that a lot.
SHARON: Because it's true a lot. Grams. Get a scale. That's the tip, that's free, you don't even have to come to class for that one.
JESS: What's on deck for session two, for the people who did sign up?
SHARON: We're making a starter from scratch. Flour, water, a jar, and patience — there's that word again. I'll tell them up front some of theirs might go pink around day four or five, and if that happens, don't panic, don't try to save it, just dump it and start over. Happened to me my first time and I about cried over a jar of flour paste.
JESS: What'd you do?
SHARON: Second try, I put it in the oven with just the light on for warmth, kept it steady, and that one took. I still keep that same starter going now, named it — well, Richard named it, really. He calls it the sponge and it stuck.
JESS: The sponge gets its own segment eventually, I feel like.
SHARON: The sponge is the whole class, Jess. Everything else is just what we do with it once it's alive.
JESS: All right. Bring a scale if you've got one, bring a jar either way. We'll see everybody Tuesday.
SHARON: Wear something you don't mind getting flour on. I mean that.
podcast_scriptClass podcast — episode 2
Audio coming soon — show notes below.
JESS: —so I told her, I said if the dough climbs out of the bowl one more time I'm calling animal control.
SHARON: Oh man, don't even joke, that's a real thing that happened to me once.
JESS: Wait, seriously? Okay, we have to back up. Tell the people.
SHARON: So this was a Friday, I had a framing job Saturday morning, and I set a dough to bulk ferment before bed, figuring I'd deal with it at like six a.m. Just totally forgot about it. Got home from the job site at four in the afternoon and that dough had climbed clean out of the bowl and onto the counter. Like it was trying to leave the house.
JESS: No.
SHARON: And Richard had already cleaned it up. Just wiped the counter down, didn't say a word to me about it.
JESS: Which is somehow worse than him saying something.
SHARON: Way worse. I'd rather he'd teased me. Instead I just get this quiet counter and I know exactly what happened.
JESS: Okay but this is a good excuse to actually talk about bulk ferment, because I feel like that's the part people mess up most.
SHARON: It's the part I mess up most, and I've been doing this two years. Bulk ferment is just the first rise, after you mix the dough and before you shape it. That's when the dough's building strength and flavor. And the mistake — my mistake, specifically — is thinking of it like a load that's cured once it hits a certain time on the clock. It's not. It's done when it looks and feels done.
JESS: What's it supposed to look like?
SHARON: You want it puffy, not doubled and desperate. Jiggly a little when you nudge the bowl. If you poke it gentle with a wet finger, the dent should slowly fill back in, not spring back fast and not just sit there like a hole in drywall.
JESS: Okay that's the tip, right? People listening who aren't taking the class, they can use the poke test tonight if they've got dough going.
SHARON: That's the one. Poke test. Forget the clock, especially around here — our dry air and the elevation mess with timelines you'll read online. Somebody in Florida tells you ninety minutes, that means nothing to us at 4,600 feet with our dry air. Watch the dough, not the recipe.
JESS: And this is why you built the — what do you call it, the tote thing?
SHARON: The proofing box. Yeah. That's a plastic tote with a seedling heat mat under it, and I stuck a thermometer inline so I can hold it right around 78 degrees. I built that specifically because I know I can't be trusted to babysit dough on my own timeline. I measured it, leveled the mat, labeled the whole thing. It's the most me solution I've ever come up with, and Richard still laughs at it, but I use it every winter.
JESS: It's very "measure twice, cut once" for bread.
SHARON: That's exactly it. It's a load calc with wetter numbers, that box is just me building tolerance back into a process I know I'll rush.
JESS: Okay, last thing before we wrap — what are we doing next class?
SHARON: Shaping and scoring. We'll take the dough through a stretch and fold session first so everybody feels what good gluten structure is supposed to feel like under their hands, and then we shape into a boule, and I'll show my one straight slash. I'm not going to pretend I do the fancy wheat-stalk designs, that's not my thing, but I'll get you a clean score that opens up right in the oven.
JESS: No pressure to make it pretty.
SHARON: No pressure. Pretty's optional. Rise is not.
JESS: Perfect note to end on. See everybody next week — bring your starter, fed and happy, please.
SHARON: And don't forget your scale.
podcast_scriptClass podcast — episode 3
Audio coming soon — show notes below.
JESS: —okay but you can't just leave it there, what happened to the deck?
SHARON: There is no deck. That's the whole joke. Richard finds this sheet of paper in my truck, numbers everywhere, percentages, and he holds it up and goes "are we building the deck out of dough now." Because it was a lumber takeoff sheet. I'd flipped it over and converted a bread recipe into baker's percentages right on the back of it, didn't even think about it, that's just where the paper was.
JESS: That's so you though.
SHARON: Oh, completely. Hydration percentage is just a load calc with wetter numbers. Once that clicked I couldn't unclick it. I look at a recipe now and I'm not thinking "two cups of water," I'm thinking 78 percent, does that track for this flour, does that track for our air.
JESS: Which is a good segue actually, because last week people were asking about that. The air thing.
SHARON: Right, our dry air and the elevation. We're up around 4,600 feet here and it is dry, dry enough that dough can crust over on you before it's even done proofing. I had a loaf early on come out looking like a hockey puck, dense, gummy in the middle, wouldn't rise right. Took me a while to figure out the water was too cold and the surface had crusted before the inside ever caught up.
JESS: So what's the actual fix. Like if somebody's listening and not even in the class.
SHARON: Two things, and you can do both tonight if you've got a starter going. One, use water on the warmer side, I like it around 90 to 95 degrees for the final dough, not hot, just warm to the wrist. Two, cover your dough like you mean it. Plastic wrap pressed down, or a lid, not just a towel over the bowl. Our air will pull moisture off the top faster than a coastal recipe expects, and then you get a skin, and a skin stops your rise cold.
JESS: Warm water, tight cover. I can do that.
SHARON: That's it. That's the whole tip. Fifteen-dollar scale, warm water, real cover. You don't need anything fancier than that to get started.
JESS: Okay, so, the thing I actually wanted to ask about today. Somebody in the Tuesday group said their starter doubled crazy fast and they didn't know if that was good or bad.
SHARON: Oh man, I love that question, because I remember exactly what that felt like the first time it happened to me. My starter doubled in four hours, first time, and I took a picture of the jar with a rubber band on it marking the line. Like you'd photo a finished frame, you know, before-and-after. I still have that picture on my phone. That was the day it clicked that the thing was actually alive and actually working, not just sitting there.
JESS: That's a good moment.
SHARON: It's a really good moment. Four hours is fast, that tells you your sponge is strong and your kitchen's probably warm enough that day. Doubling is what you want, whether it takes four hours or eight just depends on your temperature. I wouldn't worry about the speed, I'd worry if it wasn't doubling at all.
JESS: Good to know. Okay, last thing — next session.
SHARON: Next time we're doing shaping and scoring, and I'll say up front, I am not your girl for the fancy wheat-stalk designs on top of a loaf. I did that for about two weeks, got bored, went back to one straight slash across the top and never looked back. That's just me. But I will show you exactly how to do that one clean cut so your loaf gets good oven spring instead of splitting open wherever it wants.
JESS: Honest advertising.
SHARON: That's the only kind I do. Bring your starter fed and see you Thursday.
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