Begin with one sourdough recipe, experts say, and bake it repeatedly

Erik Fabian, co-founder of Sourhouse, tells beginner bakers to choose one basic loaf recipe and bake it repeatedly until they learn what properly mixed, fermented and proofed dough looks and feels like. He frames that as a corrective to the way sourdough is often taught online, where snippets, hacks and algorithm-friendly tips can make a simple process feel far more complicated than it is.

Why one recipe beats recipe hopping

Sourdough has been humbling bakers for years because it rewards consistency more than novelty. The temptation for a beginner is obvious: one post promises a better crumb, another claims a more open score, and a third suggests a new flour, tool or technique that seems like the missing piece. Fabian’s advice cuts straight through that noise by treating the first successful loaf not as the end goal, but as a baseline.

That baseline matters because sourdough depends on learning how dough develops over time. The ingredients are only part of the story; the bigger challenge is learning how fermentation changes the dough’s texture, rise and smell. If you keep the formula steady, every change becomes easier to read. If you keep changing the formula, you lose the ability to tell whether the dough improved because you handled it better or because you changed everything else at once.

What to keep constant while you learn

The beginner trap is not just trying too many recipes. It is also moving too many variables at once, then expecting the dough to explain what happened. One recipe, repeated several times, gives you a stable reference point for the things that actually matter: how hydrated dough feels in your hands, how fast it ferments in your kitchen, and how proofed dough behaves before it goes into the oven.

Keep the recipe itself steady, and use that repetition to train your eye and touch. The real goal is to notice whether the dough is stronger than it was last time, whether it has moved far enough during bulk fermentation, and whether proofing is complete or still short. When those signals start to make sense, you are no longer guessing from internet folklore. You are reading your own dough.

• Keep the flour blend the same until you can predict the dough’s feel.

• Keep the loaf shape and bake schedule steady long enough to compare outcomes.

• Keep notes on what the dough looked like at the end of mixing, during fermentation and at proof.

• Keep the temptation to chase every new trend out of the way until the basic loaf is reliable.

Watch the dough, not the feed

The online sourdough world often sells the idea that every loaf needs a special flour, special tools or a clever technique to be worth baking. Fabian’s advice makes observation more important than gear. A single repeatable recipe gives you something social media cannot: a direct comparison between what the dough did this time and what it did the last time.

That comparison is where confidence grows. When a loaf turns out well, you can ask which part of the process improved. When it falls short, you can see whether the problem was under-fermentation, over-proofing or a weaker dough structure. Without that repetition, every result feels random. With it, each loaf becomes part of a pattern you can actually learn from.

When experimentation actually helps

Experimentation is useful, but only after the baseline is doing its job. Fabian’s logic is that once you have a few successful loaves under your belt, you finally have a reference point strong enough to make changes meaningful. At that stage, switching flours, changing hydration or adjusting fermentation becomes a way to test a clear question instead of guessing in the dark.

That order matters. If you experiment too early, you can mistake novelty for improvement and end up with no clear read on what worked. If you wait until you can already bake a solid loaf, each adjustment has a purpose, and the results teach you something specific.

A practical rule for novices looks like this:

First, lock in the base loaf

Bake the same recipe until the dough’s feel, rise and timing start to look familiar.

Then, watch one variable at a time

Change one thing only after you know what the unchanged version is supposed to do.

Finally, use the result as a comparison point

Treat each variation as a test against a loaf you already understand.

The real payoff: pattern recognition

Repetition narrows variables instead of multiplying them. It teaches fermentation, dough strength and timing faster because it strips away noise and leaves patterns you can compare from one loaf to the next. After a few good loaves, you have a baseline for judging changes in fermentation, structure and timing.