Hello Sam,
We understand people wanting or needing to bend a recipe to their schedule instead of the other way around. Of course you can skip the 15 hours step and proof at room temperature and then shape, and you will very probably get a decent loaf, it just won’t be a San Fransisco Sourdough with the more complex sourdough notes and enhanced flavor development. So for this particular recipe, you are skipping quite an essential step, but it is better to do it your way than not being able to bake at all.

Hope you will also find the time to make the whole recipe as presented, in the near future or maybe check out some of our other recipes with shorter lead times.
May we suggest:
WKB sourdough with two schedule suggestions for the weekend
www.weekendbakery.com/posts...sourdough/
And our pain naturel, a favorite with many people:
www.weekendbakery.com/posts...n-naturel/
Or our levain with lots of whole wheat
www.weekendbakery.com/posts...vain-loaf/

Enjoy your Weekend Baking

Hello Mark,
Great to read a bit about your (sourdough) journey.
Yes, you can indeed keep the starter in the fridge instead of at room temp to develop more slowly. Our experience with this particular recipe and using the fridge even longer to develop the preferment are limited, but in general you could take another extra 24 hours fridge instead of the 9 at room temp in the recipe or you could take even longer and go to 33 to 34 hours (24 + 9) and it will add one extra day in total. This will mean 67 hours of development in the cold for your starter (72 hours is a bit of a maximum we think).
Other options to get more sour in your bread that we would prefer to try first with this recipe are found with our sourdough tips under ‘ More sour please!’
www.weekendbakery.com/posts...ough-tips/

Hope it will be excellent and you will get the tang you are looking for!

Greetings from Holland,

Ed & Marieke

Hello Tara,
Our advice: This is a starter that is showing wonderful activity. When in doubt do not wait after you see such good activity and put it in the fridge. It is better to work with something that (if so) is a bit underdeveloped rather than (almost) over the top. Further development will always be possible at a later stage and especially during the final proof.
If you see some growth and some bubbles, that would already good enough to go to the next stage.
Hope this helps you for now.
As you bake more, you will get more comfortable with the dough and recognize signs and feel the dough and see the ‘wobble’ when final proofing et cetera. Twice for this recipe that is really challenging is not that much. So great that you keep trying. Maybe another suggestion to vary with other recipes like our WKB no knead sourdough: www.weekendbakery.com/posts...sourdough/
This recipe is a bit quicker and straightforward to make, also great for gaining experience and getting results sooner.

Hope you will have some great loaves soon and best wishes for 2026!

Ed & Marieke

I am terribly sorry for troubling you once again with another question! I’ve tried twice now to make this and it hasn’t turned out and I’m determined to keep trying. With respect to the levain build, the first two times I tried the recipe, even after the 9 hours of counter time, there was no rise at all. This time for some reason, maybe because my starter is more mature now, my levain has more than doubled and has the most beautiful dome I’ve ever seen but there is still 1:41hr left of my 9hr counter time. So my question to you is: what exactly are we looking for visually during this 9 hr counter time? So that instead of watching the clock, I’m watching the levain behavior and knowing exactly when I need to put it in the fridge for the 34hr fridge time. Thank you so much for all your information so far.

Hello Tara,
Ideally it is best to stick to the recipe, because you will have a good base to make the recipe your own the more you bake it. But yes, you have some leeway with this dough, so some extra hours will probably still be alright (it also depends on the temp of the dough going into the fridge and the fridge temp itself). There is a point where the dough will over-proof or the gluten structure will at least deteriorate. You should of course just go ahead and bake it if and when you are able to do so, unless you establish the dough has collapsed. You can also shorten the time you take to proof the dough after you have taken it out of the fridge, especially when you see the dough has grown considerably during the fridge time.

We would encourage you to use the Dutch oven to get the best baking result in this case. Even when it flattens it can still bounce back a bit profiting from the direct heat from the pan. We would bake it with lid on for halve of the baking time, then take it off.

Best of luck with the baking!

Thank you so much for your reply! Getting close to baking time which brings me to a couple more questions if I may…
I timed it wrong and my shaped dough went in the fridge yesterday afternoon for its 15hrs so how much longer than the 15hrs can the dough stay in the fridge until ready to bake?
And you don’t mention a preheated Dutch oven like most other recipes do so how do or would you bake it? (I have a Dutch and/or my new oven is capable of steam injections).
Thank you!

Hello Tara,
It is no problem at all to use the sourdough culture straight from the fridge. Much more important is to control the temperature of the dough through the whole process.
‘Room temperature’ is a bit vage maybe, because how warm are homes during different seasons, but for this recipe, try if possible to keep the dough at about 21 to 22 Celsius during the room temp stages (The dough calculator states 20, but trying to keep it just above that will help you to make sure it is at least 20.
The second question: It really will make almost no difference to the end result, as the amount of culture is so small compared to the total amount of dough. You can always compensate when making the final dough. Most of the time we are not exactly sure of the % of our own culture, after many years we usually do it by eye. It looks like a thick paste but is still easy to stir.

We hope the recipe will turn out well for you.
Enjoy your baking!

Hello Tween,
We can tell you the salt or what type you use is not the problem. It could be the starter was over-fermented before you used it, this may have exhausted its leavening power. Feed / refresh it regularly and also do this the day before you are going to use it in your preferment.

If you think, I am already doing all of this stuff and it is still not working, we would suggest to start over and first buy a new bag of organic whole rye flour and start up a new sourdough culture with it. This will rule out anything that is not working with your current culture.
(If you need instructions you can find ours here:
www.weekendbakery.com/posts...asy-steps/)
Next we would advice to try a relative straightforward recipe like our pain naturel and see how that goes:
www.weekendbakery.com/posts...n-naturel/

Hope it will work out for you!

Wonderful, thank you for sharing. So glad we could be a small part of your success and you were able to delight your friends from the US.

Enjoy your next bake!

Thank you so much for your reply, Marieke and Ed!

By the way, I’m from Germany and I’ve never had a San Fran loaf before trying this recipe, but my American friends here say it tastes just like the real thing 🙂

Hello Jasmin,
Thank you for this. The recipe stems from 2012 and nor we nor anybody else has ever seen / mentioned this inaccuracy in the time table. You are very right, the time you need is closer to 1 hour and 20 minutes. So we adjusted the time table immediately.
A relieve to know you still could make good loaves with the other instructions of the recipe.
Thank you again for noticing and pointing it out to us. Much appreciated!

Wishing you many more excellent loaves and baking joy

Marieke & Ed

day 3 17.00 h – 18.40 h Making the dough

Starter + water 1 minute stirring
Add flour + salt 3 minute kneading
15 minutes rest
Stretch and fold
15 minutes rest
Stretch and fold
40 minutes rest at room temperature
day 3 18.40 h Put dough in fridge for 15 hours

How do 2×15 minutes plus 40 minutes = 1 hour 40 minutes? Even if you add some buffer between the steps, it’s 1 hour 20 minutes max for me.

The issue is probably my brain, but I mean it still always turns out great! I just wanted to ask if someone can clear this up for me, simply because I always stand there scratching my head wondering if I’m missing something. Is there maybe supposed to be a third stretch and fold?

Hello Tim,

Here are our tips for more sour starting with your starter:

-Maintain your starter at a lower hydration level (more thick paste like consistency). Lactic acid-producing organisms like a wet environment whereas acetic acid is produced more abundantly in a drier environment.
– Refrigerating the culture also slows down the yeast activity and lets the bacteria dominate and produce more sour acids.
-Working oxygen into the starter by mixing during feedings should also promote more acetic-acid sourness.
– Acid-producing bacteria like whole grain flours, so use more of them.
-Trying to achieve a longer, slower rise is always advised for more sour – this is already very much part of the SF recipe, so the only extra thing you could add is doing the final proofing also in the fridge and bake the bread the next morning.
Sourness also comes with age. If your culture is still very young it may need to ripen a bit more to show its full potential.
Your own culture might very well ‘act different’ from the one from your wife and produce more sour notes.

Wishing you all the best with your culture and the baking!

Hello Sheryn,
The bread is not baked in a basket or any type of baking mold or pan. In our case it is baked directly on the stones in our oven. If you bake one loaf, you can bake it on a baking sheet on baking paper or also use a Dutch oven in your oven to bake the bread. You bake the loaf the first 20 minutes with the lid on and the rest without the lid. This also works very well for a good result. You can google this method to see how it works exactly, we do not yet have instructions for it, but hope to show it soon on our site.