About

Sourdough Companion is a community of bakers & bread eaters interested in the ancient art of naturally leavened bread. Sourdough bread uses slow fermentation, wild yeasts and a symbiosis of organisms to produce bread of distinct flavour, texture, and health benefits.

Sourdough Companion hopes to connect bakers from around the world to enjoy this art form. Home bakers & professionals are welcome to join in the discussions, either by signing up or browsing existing topics.

The heart of this website is its community. Bakers from all parts of the world exchange recipes, share ideas, and help each other out. To get a feel for the community spirit, you might like to check out a few forum topics; The Flatbreads Bake-Off and the Ciabatta Bake-off.

With sourdough recipes, videos, photos and tutorials, there's more than enough to get you started. Whether you're new or experienced, jump on in!

New to Sourdough bread? Check out SourDom's beginners tutorials for a clear and concise how to on Sourdough baking.

Berry Woodfired Sourdough Fruition Focaccia St Andrews, Ken and Tomas

About us

Sourdough Companion began in 2005 by father and son, Graham and Maedi Prichard. Since then we've grown and discovered people from all over the world making sourdough!

We didn't want to have to talk about ourselves but you kept on reading!....

Graham Prichard is a sourdough baker and photographer. He runs Companion Bakery and the Artisan Baker Association.

Maedi Prichard is a musician, poet and a fan of all things different. Maedi manages the technical side of Sourdough Companion and dabbles in web development. You're welcome to email him with questions and comments.

Please get in touch on our contact page.

 

Unique features of Sourdough Companion / What we're proud of....

The Community

We're most proud of the people! We're eternally grateful for the lovely folks we've met in the baking community. People who share their knowledge, their thoughts & their bread (photos only at this point, sorry!). And are more than happy to help fellow bakers out with their baking adventures. Every day new topics are posted in the forum whether they be simple questions, photos or advice.

 

Easy to use Recipes section & Bakers percentages

The Recipes section of Sourdough Companion is a place for bakers to store & share their favorite recipes. You are able to browse breads of particular styles such as Baguettes, Ciabattas, Fruit Breads, Pizzas, or just browse all breads that are naturally leavened.

Bakers Percentage
When you upload a recipe into the Recipes section, a Bakers Percentage table is automatically created from your ingredients. Seasoned bakers will be aware of the benefits of a bakers percentage table, but they can still seem quite intimidating at first:

Bakers Percentage is simply a table listing the percentage of every ingredient's weight relative to flour weight. So flour would be '100%' and every ingredient would be a percentage of this. Percentages in this format can make it really easy to see what's going on inside your dough. For example you may notice that your recipe uses too much salt, or not enough starter. See an example recipe using bakers percentage.

So we hope you enjoy uploading and finding new exciting recipes. Please sign up and upload your own recipe or head straight to the Recipes section.
 

Baking Standards

Until now there has not been an easily identifiable standard for Sourdough bread. This meant that bread with commercial yeast or industrial souring agents could be called sourdough.

Sourdough Companion hopes to open a dialogue between bread eater and baker. Bakeries featured on Sourdough Companion are encouraged to communicate with customers by listing a few of their breads, and the ingredients and processes that go into them. A bakery does this by benchmarking their bread with the Artisan Baker Association's sourdough baking standards.

 

Help & Support

If you have a product query, need assistance using this site or have any other questions or thoughts, then please contact us

If you'd like to join Sourdough Companion, please go to the sign up or login page. And don't forget to send us feedback, tell us how we're doing!