Learn How to Bake Sourdough with BBC Good Food

Take your sourdough baking skills to the next level

Baking’s popularity has exploded during the COVID-19 lockdowns, and none more so than sourdough, which became a national baking trend in Britain during the pandemic.

On this course, you’ll learn how to bake the perfect sourdough bread. Alongside baking gurus at BBC Good Food, you’ll get top tips and tricks to make delicious sourdough loaves, pizza bases, and more.

Learn how to make a sourdough starter and more

Sourdough is notoriously tricky to get right. Many websites will give you advice on how to bake with sourdough, but BBC Good Food’s tried-and-tested method comes with a high success rate and guaranteed accessibility.

You’ll get a beginner’s guide on how to make and care for a sourdough starter, how to keep it alive, and how to put it to good use in a great bake – going from flour and salt to loaf of bread.

Discover how long to autolyse sourdough, and great sourdough recipes

After the introductory first week, you’ll go on to learn how to autolyse, prove, shape, and score sourdough.

You’ll understand how to deal with fluctuations in weather, what to look for in ingredients, and what bakeware and kitchen equipment you need.

You’ll also explore how to use leftover starter, as well as how to bake enriched doughs, sourdough pizza bases, and sourdough flatbreads.

Become a better baker with BBC Good Food

BBC Good Food has been providing cooks worldwide with accessible and innovative recipes for over thirty years.

You’ll learn from their expert bakers not only how to bake better sourdough, but how to become a better cook – improving recipes, exploring new flavours, and changing your techniques to leave friends and family coming back for more!

This course is designed for beginner to intermediate bakers.

Whether you want to learn how baking works so you can be more experimental with your bakes, you’re looking to avoid unhealthy bakes and want to bake from scratch with family, you’re interested in becoming a baking hobbyist, or you’re an experienced baker and want to add new abilities – this course has something for you.

• Starting sourdough
• Introduction to sourdough
• Making your starter
• What you will need for making bread
• Getting ready to make your first batch of dough
• Baking a basic loaf
• Making a dough
• Shaping and baking
• Basic loaf troubleshooting
• Your second loaf
• Beyond basics
• Introducing different flours
• Shaping and advanced scoring techniques
• Crumb structure and evaluating your loaves
• Baker's percentages and hydration
• New shapes and focaccia
• How to read and interpret recipes
• Shaping bread dough
• Next steps: Baking on trays, stencilling and flavour changes
• Focaccia
• Pizza and sweet bakes
• Sourdough pizza
• Enriched doughs and cinnamon buns
• How to make a fruited sourdough
• Sourdough recap: What we've learned in this course