Free sourdough app and guide
Sourdough that fits your day.
Pick a recipe and your pot. OpenSourdough gives you every gram and every step on a clock, then moves the plan when your dough runs fast or slow.
Recipes, from a first loaf to a wet 82% dough.
To grow a starter, with a plan for every one of them. Or buy one.
A baker’s rule of thumb: about twice as fast a rise for every 8°C (14°F) warmer. Your timings adjust.
Sign-ups. Your bakes are saved on your phone, nowhere else.
The app
Your recipe, on a clock.
Tell it how warm your dough is and it times every step for your kitchen. Tap each step as you go.
Tap done. The plan updates.
Every step gets a start time: levain, folds, shaping, fridge, oven. Finish early or late and the rest of the day moves with you. Dough still slow? Add 15 minutes.
- Timed to your kitchen. Warmer dough, shorter steps.
- Every step says what to look for, so you know when it is done.
- Alerts for each step while the app is open with the screen on. A web app cannot wake a locked phone, so for the overnight wait it tells you when to set an ordinary alarm.
Pick your pot. Get your grams.
Choose your Dutch oven, tin or pan. The app sizes the dough to fit it, lists every gram to weigh, and changes the bake to suit it.
- Counts the flour and water in your levain, so the water you pour is right.
- Includes the levain build: equal parts, mixed about five hours ahead.
- Water temperature for the dough temperature you want.
Know when your starter peaks.
Log a feed, then tap when it peaks. After a few feeds you know how fast yours is.
- When the next feed is due, on the schedule you set.
- A journal for every bake: recipe, dough temperature, rating and notes.
Try it
Temperature sets the pace.
As a rule of thumb, dough rises about twice as fast for every 8°C (14°F) warmer. Drag the slider and watch the overnight loaf's schedule change.
At 68°F the bulk ferment takes about 5h 39m. At 80°F, about 3h 10m. Same recipe, same flour.
This is the temperature the recipe is written for. Start to finish: 27h 20m.
Starter guide
Grow a starter from scratch.
You need flour, water, a jar and one to three weeks. The plan tells you what to feed each day and what you should see, including days 3 and 4, when most people give up too early.
- Day 1
Mix 50 g flour with 50 g water
Or 20 g of each. White, whole wheat or rye. Cover loosely and keep it warm.
- Day 2
Bubbles, then nothing
Those first bubbles are not yeast yet.
- 3–4
Looks dead. It isn’t.
Keep feeding. This is where most jars get binned.
- 5–9
Rising again
Feed twice a day from day 7.
- 10+
Doubles in 4 to 8 hours
It is ready to bake with.
In a hurry? You can buy a starter and skip the wait.
Recipes
Five recipes. Every step timed.
Each one has every gram and every step on a clock. Read it here, or open it in the app and let the timers run.
Country loaf, overnight
The everyday loaf. Crackly crust, open crumb, gentle tang.
Country loaf, same day
Levain at 7 am, out of the oven about 7:25 pm at 75°F. Milder, and it wants a warm kitchen.
First loaf, 70%
Start here. A firmer dough that is easy to shape.
Open crumb, 82%
A wet dough for a glossy, holey crumb. For practised hands.
Sourdough focaccia
No shaping, no scoring, no Dutch oven. The easiest win.
Watch the dough, not the clock. The timings are a guide. The dough decides.
Dough Lab
What does more water do?
Slide the water, starter, salt, whole wheat and temperature and watch the crumb, the handling, the sourness and the timing change. The sliders stop before a recipe stops working, and tell you why.
Open the Dough Lab
Troubleshooting
Fix your next loaf.
Start with what you see. Each answer gives the likely cause and what to change next time.
Dense crumb
Most often an under-fermented bulk, or a levain that was not lively when it went in.
The fix →Gummy inside
Two different faults look identical: cut too soon, or baked too little.
The fix →Flat loaf
Three different faults, each with its own fix.
The fix →No oven spring
Over-proofed dough has no lift left.
The fix →Too sour
Sourness comes from acid.
The fix →Starter won’t rise
Usually too cold (below about 70°F / 21°C, day or night), or fed too rarely.
The fix →Install
Put it on your home screen.
No app store. It installs from your browser in a few seconds, opens full screen and works without signal.
Free for good
Free. Private. Offline.
No sign-up and no subscription. Everything you log stays in your browser, on your device.
No sign-up
Open it and bake. There is no account to make.
Your data stays put
Bakes and feeds are saved on your device, not on a server. Save a backup file from the Journal tab to keep them safe.
Works offline
Once it has loaded, it runs with no signal at all.
No ads in the app
The app will never show ads. If this website ever does, they stay on the website.
Start today. Bake tomorrow.
Your first loaf: a firmer dough that is easy to shape. Levain in the morning, shape in the evening, bake after breakfast. The app tells you when.