How To Convert Any Yeast Bread Recipe to Sourdough

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Learn how to convert any recipe to sourdough. Any bread made with commercial yeast can be adapted to wild yeast bread. This simple conversion will allow you to start or advance your sourdough journey while still enjoying your favorite yeast recipes.

In college, my closest friend taught me how to make bread. We spent long afternoons in her kitchen while she taught me about understanding dough texture, kneading, and, of course, eating bread right out of the oven.

She inherited these skills from the women in her family and generously passed them down to me. For two decades, I’ve used and honed everything she taught me.

But when I started experimenting with sourdough, I didn’t want to abandon the recipes she shared with me. They aren’t just a list of ingredients. They are part of my core memories of our friendship and my lifelong interest in baking bread.

Luckily, converting any recipe to sourdough is simple. Along my wild yeast journey, I’ve turned my favorite yeast recipes into sourdough sandwich bread, maple oatmeal bread, and more.

With this simple conversion and a few tips and tricks, you can easily convert all your favorite yeast breads into sourdough.

Why I Switched To Sourdough

Sourdough often gets a bad reputation for being complicated or time-consuming. But honestly, it has made my life easier because it doesn’t require much attention or time except in the margins of my day.

Now that I am a mom, I don’t have the solid blocks of time needed to make yeast bread. The dough is always ready right when I have to run out the door or when I’m wrapped up in something else.

But I can make sourdough dough in the morning, let it ferment all day, and get back to it when my little one is in bed. On hectic days, I can store sourdough dough in the fridge and bake it a few days later when convenient.

Without that flexibility, I wouldn’t have homemade bread each week, and the skills and lessons I learned years ago would be lost.

Learning to convert any recipe to sourdough has allowed me to continue baking even during busy seasons of life.

Video – How To Convert to Sourdough

Check out my easy-to-follow video of how to convert any yeast recipe to sourdough.

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Yeast vs. Sourdough Starter

Both commercial yeast and sourdough starter are used to leaven bread dough. Essentially, they are both yeasts, but they significantly differ in how they are cultivated and affect the dough:

Commercial Yeast

Commercial yeast, also known as baker’s yeast, is the type of yeast you’ll find in the baking aisle of most grocery stores.

It is a single strain isolated and manufactured because it works particularly well as a leavening agent.

Baker’s yeast comes from the Saccharomyces cerevisiae fungal species, also known as a “sugar-eating fungus,” which is closely related to mushrooms (who woulda known?!).

Though it is one yeast strain, it derives from a combination of yeasts that made European grape wine and Asian rice wine. Scientists believe the two strains crossed paths thousands of years ago, creating what we now know as baker’s yeast.

Unlike sourdough starter, which works slowly, commercial yeast works quickly and leavens dough in about 1-2 hours. Its speedy process is due to selection pressures on baker’s yeast to ensure it ferments quickly (source).

Baker’s yeast comes in three forms: active dry yeast, instant yeast, and fresh yeast.

Sourdough Starter

Sourdough starter is a combination of flour and water that is fermented into a symbiotic colony of yeast and bacteria (SCOBY).

Though it looks like a jar of batter, a sourdough starter is actually a living colony. As the water and flour ferment, the starter cultivates yeast from the air, the type of flour you feed it, and the surrounding environment.

Unlike store-bought yeast, which is a single strain and highly predictable, a sourdough culture contains various yeast strains and is somewhat unpredictable.

Don’t let that scare you away from sourdough. With a little practice, you can usually predict sourdough or at least know what to do when it acts up.

Sourdough’s fermentation process is much slower than that of commercial yeast. Dough with commercial yeast takes about 1-2 hours to rise, while sourdough takes 5-12 hours, depending on the recipe and conditions.

If you are ready to start your sourdough journey but don’t have a starter, download my FREE guide to making and using sourdough starter. You’ll be on your way to making your own sourdough starter in no time!

Benefits of Replacing Yeast with Sourdough Starter

• Sourdough health benefits – Sourdough is a prebiotic food, meaning that the fiber in the bread feeds good gut bacteria, and some lactic acid bacteria in sourdough have probiotic properties.
• Flavor – Sourdough goods often have a more complex flavor. You can control the process to increase or decrease the sour taste of your bread and baked goods.
• Low gluten content – Because the grains are fermented, sourdough is usually lower in gluten than other types of bread.
• Longer shelf life – Sourdough bread lasts longer than bread made with commercial yeast, and you don’t have to worry about funky preservatives like those in store-bought bread.
• Fun – Experimenting with different types of baking is a simple and fun hobby and a great way to enjoy a little “me-time” that also feeds your family.

What To Consider When Replacing Yeast with Sourdough Starter

How much yeast?

Check to see how much yeast the recipe calls for. Generally, 100 grams of starter is equivalent to one packet of commercial yeast.

If your recipe calls for less than a pack of yeast, don’t sweat it. Just stick with 100 grams of sourdough starter.

Using a little extra sourdough starter doesn’t have the same effect as using too much commercial yeast. Your dough might ferment a little faster, but the overall impact is inconsequential.

How much flour and liquid are used?

Take note of the amount of flour and liquid in the yeast bread recipe. You will need to adjust the measurements to account for the starter (I’ll explain below).

How much time do you have?

Making sourdough is a marathon, not a race. Depending on the recipe and the environmental conditions, sourdough dough can take 5-12 hours to ferment (and sometimes more).

The good thing about sourdough, though, is that all of that rising time is hands-off. One of the reasons I prefer sourdough is that it gives me more time to make the dough and bake it.

I don’t always have time to make and bake the dough in one go-round, but I can almost always make the dough in the morning and finish the process after my little one goes to bed.

Yeast to Sourdough Conversion

Converting your yeast bread recipes to sourdough is simple. And with this quick formula, you can adapt any yeast bread recipe to a sourdough one:

1. Weigh 100 grams of sourdough starter. Remember, this will be used instead of commercial yeast, so don’t bother getting the yeast out.
2. Reduce the flour in the original recipe by 50 grams and the water by 50 grams.
3. Follow the recipe as usual, accounting for the sourdough starter and the reduced flour and water.
4. Be sure to allot more time for the bulk fermentation. If you want to speed up the fermentation process, I recommend using a proofing box.

Check out the example recipe below to see what the conversion looks like.

Cup Conversions Explained

The easiest way to convert a yeast recipe to sourdough is using weight, not volume. It is a more precise and repeatable way to bake.

But you can still convert a yeast bread recipe to sourdough if you don’t have a kitchen scale. It’s just not as cut and dry.

Here is a general guide for using cup measurements:

• Convert from grams to cups – 100 grams of starter is approximately 1/2 cup of sourdough starter, which is equivalent to 1/3 cup flour + 1/4 cup water. It is important to note that a bubbly starter takes up more volume, and this conversion assumes you are using an active and bubbly starter.
• Conversions explained – This seems a little off because 1/3 flour and 1/4 cup of water don’t add up to a 1/2 cup. But this is because we are converting from grams to cups, and 50 grams of flour and 50 g of water convert to different volumes (water weighs more than flour, so you need a smaller volume).
• Measurements needed – If you are using 1/2 cup of starter, you will need to reduce the flour in the recipe by 1/3 cup and the liquid by 1/4 cup.

See the conversion example below to see how it works in a recipe.

The Purpose of Reducing the Flour and Water

Sourdough starter is made of flour and water. Reducing the flour and water in the recipe ensures that your dough doesn’t contain extra flour and water from the starter.

Technically, you could add starter without reducing the recipe’s flour and water. But I only recommend that if you are familiar with making dough and understand dough hydration.

The Importance of Starter Hydration Levels

When converting a yeast bread recipe to sourdough, I recommend using a healthy starter with 100% hydration.

That’s just an overly fancy way of saying that when you feed your starter, you give it equal parts flour and water.

This is important because the conversion reduces both the flour and water by equal parts (50 grams).

So, you want the 100 grams of starter you add to the recipe to be made of 50 grams of flour and 50 grams of water.

Bread Conversion Example

Before I started making sourdough, this was my go-to sandwich bread recipe:

• 250 g water
• 500 g all-purpose flour
• 7 g active dry yeast
• 30 g sugar
• 10 g salt
• 28 g butter

To convert it to sourdough, I would use the following measurements:

• 250 g water >>> 200 g water
• 500 g all-purpose flour >>> 450 g all-purpose flour
• 7 g active dry yeast >>> 100 g sourdough starter
• 30 g sugar
• 10 g salt
• 28 g butter

If you are using cup measurements, it would look like this (check out the cup conversion explanation to see how this works):

• 1 cup water >>> 3/4 cup water
• 4 cups all-purpose flour >>> 3 2/3 cups flour
• 1 pack active dry yeast >>> 1/2 cup of sourdough starter
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp butter

Changes in the Baking Process

For the most part, you can expect sourdough dough to feel and look the same as any yeast bread dough. However, how the dough behaves when using sourdough starter will be pretty different:

• Longer rise time – Sourdough takes much longer to rise. You can anticipate the first rise to take 5-12 hours, and the second rise usually takes 2-3 hours, depending on the type of recipe.
• Less predictable – Sometimes, sourdough seems to have a mind of its own. The ambient room temperature, the type of flour, and the strength of your starter all affect the fermentation process, so it isn’t quite as predictable as commercial yeast.
• Cold proofing – Many sourdough recipes recommend cold proofing, which involves storing the dough in the fridge for 12 hours or more. You don’t have to cold proof sourdough, but it does create a more complex flavor. For rustic boules, baking cold dough creates a fuller, bouncier bread.

When Converting to Sourdough Will NOT Work

Just about any recipe will work. But there are a few circumstances when converting to sourdough isn’t ideal:

• Bread machines – I don’t have experience baking sourdough in a bread machine. However, many sourdough bakers have noted that making sourdough recipes in a bread machine doesn’t produce great results. If you have a different experience, let me know. I’m curious to hear about it!
• Non-yeast recipes – Sourdough starter can’t replace baking soda and baking powder. Though you can throw a little discard into just about anything—like quick breads and cookies—you will still need the baking soda and baking powder.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to “punch down” sourdough dough like yeast dough?

No, guard those precious bubbles like your firstborn! Sourdough bread dough isn’t punched down like yeast bread dough.

Punching down allows the gases to redistribute in yeast breads. Since yeast breads rise quickly, it’s no problem letting the dough rise again after punching it down.

Sourdough is slow to rise. If you were to punch it down, the dough would take too long to rebuild the gas and will likely overferment.

Can you replace baking soda and powder with sourdough starter?

Any recipe can be converted to sourdough. However, sourdough starter does not replace baking soda and baking powder.

This is usually not an issue for yeast bread recipes. However, if you want to convert your quick bread recipes or sweet treats to a sourdough discard recipe, you will need to include the baking soda and/or baking powder.

If you want to experiment with sourdough discard recipes, our current family favorites are sourdough chocolate chip skillet cookie, sourdough Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and sourdough lemon bars.

How much sourdough starter equals one packet of yeast?

100 grams of sourdough starter will replace one pack of yeast.

Why does sourdough need a longer rise time?

Sourdough uses wild yeast, which is yeast cultivated from the environment. Generally, this yeast is just slower to get the job done.

Commercial yeast is a single strain of yeast that has been isolated and manufactured for its quick results.

Do you have to bake the bread longer when converting to sourdough?

No. The fermenting and rise time will definitely take longer. But the baking time should be the same.

Can I use yeast and sourdough starter?

Yes! I haven’t tried this, but many home bakers have noted in Facebook groups and blogs that adding a little yeast to sourdough dough works.

It will speed up the rate at which your dough ferments. And the flavor and texture of the bread may differ. But you can definitely experiment with making a hybrid sourdough-yeast bread.

Sourdough traditionalists may have opinions about that. But remember, this is your home and your journey. If baking bread brings you great joy, how you do it doesn’t matter. It just matters that you do.

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If you tried converting a yeast bread recipe to sourdough, let me know how it went in the comments below.

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