I’ve been baking sourdough for a few months now. Always slightly random but I seem to be hitting on a fairly good recipe.

The original sourdough starter is based on Beth Hensperger’s in The Bread Bible (great book).

Sponge:
75g sourdough starter
350 - 400 ml water
250g strong white flour (I may add a little rye as well)

Mix these together and leave overnight, in the morning it should be nice and bubbly.

Then mix in:
5g salt (approx 1% ratio to flour)
200 - 250g strong white flour

I add in the second lot of flour at about 50g a time and stir in with a wooden spoon to mix. Once you’ve added 200g then add the rest only as needed, a wetter dough is better. I may give it a very light kneed, but only to make sure everything’s mixed nicely.

Leave to rise for three hours until doubled in size. Turn out gently onto a floured surface and shape however you like.

I bake for 45 - 50 minutes at 200 degrees to make sure it cooks through. Needs to sound really hollow when it comes out.

Where it normally fails for me is in getting the right amount of flour to water. It can be too dense and not rise enough or too sloppy and spread more sideways then up.

Anyway still having fun experimenting and tweaking this one.