Easy No-Knead Sourdough Peasant Bread

This easy no-knead sourdough peasant bread is soft, fluffy, and doesn’t need any long rising times. It works with either fed or discard sourdough starter!

Contents

This might be the easiest sourdough bread you’ll ever make! And it’s absolutely amazing.

Since the recipe calls for either fed or discard sourdough starter, you don’t need to plan in advance, which means you can have a piping hot loaf of bread fresh out of the oven in just an hour or two.

A Very Popular Recipe

Based on the intense popularity of this easy peasant bread recipe, it was only a matter of time before I hit you with a sourdough version.

I know sourdough might sound intimidating (and even a bit annoying since it seems to be so in-your-face trendy lately) to some of you. I get it! But keeping a sourdough starter doesn’t have to be time intensive, and you don’t have to bake artisan sourdough bread with the ornate carving of a tree slashed on top every day (or ever!).

I personally subscribe to the Lazy Girl sourdough method. And it has brought a lot of peace and good carbs to my life.

Thanks to recipes like today’s easy sourdough peasant bread and these sourdough pumpkin muffins, I can bear my testimony that it is 100% worth keeping a sourdough starter in the depths of the refrigerator.

*I also have a few other easy sourdough discard recipes up my sleeve to share with you in the next little while, and I CANNOT WAIT THEY ARE SO AMAZING.

Also, can we please take a moment of silence to acknowledge that this easy sourdough peasant bread might possibly make the best grilled cheese in the history of ever?? That reason alone should get you hustling to whip up this bread.

Sourdough Starter

This recipe calls for either sourdough discard (you can use it straight out of the refrigerator) or fed sourdough starter.

If your sourdough starter is thicker than mine (pictured below), you may need to add more water to the recipe. If your sourdough starter is thinner, cut the water in the recipe by 1/2 cup and add more only if needed.

A Wet and Shaggy Dough

The dough for this sourdough peasant bread comes together fast, and because the dough is much wetter than traditional bread dough, it can easily be mixed by hand.

Mix until all the dry ingredients are incorporated and the dough forms a very rough ball in the bottom of the bowl.

Let the dough rise right in the bowl until noticeably puffy and mostly doubled. Depending on the warmth of your kitchen, this will take about 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

Because the dough is so soft and sticky, you won’t be able to create much of a shape with your hands.

Instead, take a rubber spatula and scrape the dough away from the sides of the bowl toward the center.

Abandon the idea of a nice, smooth, taut loaf. That is not this bread, and that is ok. 👍🏼

Baking Pans

I prefer to bake this bread in a 9-inch pie plate. I like the shape of the finished loaf – not too tall, not too flat.

I find that the bread bakes slightly taller in my metal or ceramic pie plates, but a glass pie plate works well, too. Make sure to grease the pie plates VERY well with either nonstick cooking spray or a healthy amount of butter.

It’s very normal for this bread to split on one side or the other while baking. That’s due to a lot of reasons (namely the wetness of the dough + the sourdough oomph).

Fed Sourdough vs Sourdough Discard

Below, you can see there is a slight difference to the look of the baked bread when baked with fed sourdough vs sourdough discard.

The bread on the left was made with fed sourdough starter and the bread on the right was made with sourdough discard.

Both loaves are soft, fluffy, and perfect once sliced. The loaf with the fed sourdough starter is ever so slightly airier in texture.

Important Note: make sure to bake this bread fully.

Otherwise, because of the wet dough, it might be gummy inside. I’ve found this sourdough version needs a longer baking time than the original regular peasant bread recipe.