The Sourdough Journey
A 2-Day Live Online Workshop + Sourdough Starter Course
Two days. One beautiful loaf. A skill you’ll keep for years.
Join me for an immersive, hands-on sourdough experience where we’ll work together live from our kitchens through the complete process of making artisan sourdough bread.This is not a watch-and-learn class. You’ll be mixing, fermenting, shaping, scoring, baking, and evaluating your loaf alongside me—learning not only what to do, but how to understand what your dough is telling you.
Your workshop also includes access to a Sourdough Starter Course, designed to help you create, feed, understand, and maintain your own starter from scratch.
DAY 1 — MIX • FERMENT • SHAPE
This is our main bread-making day.
Together, we’ll prepare the dough and work through the fundamental stages that build structure, flavor, and fermentation.
You’ll learn about water and dough temperature, hydration, initial mixing, autolyse, final mixing, gluten development, and the windowpane test.
From there, we’ll move into bulk fermentation, learning how temperature affects fermentation and how to recognize changes in the dough rather than relying only on a timer.
Once fermentation is complete, we’ll divide the dough and practice both pre-shaping and final shaping.
We’ll work with two classic artisan sourdough shapes:
- Boule — round loaf
- Batard — oval loaf
After shaping, the loaves will complete their final proof before going into the refrigerator for an overnight cold retard.
Day 1 includes scheduled breaks while the dough rests and ferments, so you will not need to remain online continuously for the entire process.
DAY 2 — SCORE • BAKE • COOL • CUT • UNDERSTAND
It’s baking day.
We’ll take our cold-proofed loaves directly from the refrigerator and prepare them for the oven.
You’ll learn how to properly preheat your baking vessel, transfer your dough safely, and use a bread lame to create intentional scoring patterns.
We’ll explore how scoring depth and blade angle influence the way your loaf opens in the oven and how to encourage the beautiful raised edge known as an ear.
Then we bake together.You’ll learn about steam, covered and uncovered baking, oven spring, crust development, color, and how to determine when your loaf is fully baked.
Once our loaves have cooled properly, we’ll cut into them together and move into one of the most valuable parts of the workshop: reading the finished loaf.
- We’ll examine:
- Crumb structure
- Crust development
- Oven spring
- Scoring
- Shape
- Fermentation
Overall structure — What You’ll Learn
- During this workshop, we’ll cover:
- Understanding an active sourdough starter
- Baker’s percentages and hydration
- Choosing and working with flour
The importance of water and dough temperature
- Ideal fermentation temperature
- Initial mixing
- Autolyse
- Final mixing
- Gluten development
- The Windowpane Test
- Bulk fermentation
- Reading fermentation cues
- Dividing the dough
- Pre-shaping
- Creating surface tension
- Shaping a Boule
- Shaping a Batard
- Bench rest
- Final shaping
- Preparing and using a banneton
- Final proofing
- Overnight cold retard
- Using a bread lame
- Scoring depth and angle
- Creating an ear
- Baking with a Dutch oven
- Understanding steam and oven spring
- Crust development
- Reading crumb structure
- Recognizing under- and over-fermentation
Troubleshooting your finished loaf — Included: Sourdough Starter Course
Your live workshop also includes access to a separate Sourdough Starter Course, designed to help you build a strong foundation before bread-making begins.
In this self-paced course, you’ll learn how to:
- Create a sourdough starter from scratch
- Feed your starter properly
Understand daily changes in aroma, texture, and activity
- Recognize signs of a healthy starter
- Understand peak activity
- Know when your starter is ready to bake with
- Maintain your starter long-term
Refrigerate and refresh your starter — Troubleshoot common starter problems
Who Is This Workshop For?
This workshop is perfect for you if you’ve always wanted to make beautiful artisan sourdough but didn’t know where to begin.
It’s also ideal if you already have a starter but aren’t sure when it’s ready to use, or if your sourdough sometimes works beautifully—and sometimes doesn’t—and you want to understand why.You may also be looking to improve your fermentation, shaping, scoring, oven spring, or crumb structure.
Or perhaps you simply want the experience of making bread alongside an instructor in real time, with guidance throughout the entire process.
No advanced bread-making experience is required.
Workshop Schedule Notice
Please note that the workshop date is subject to change based on enrollment.
This live workshop requires a minimum number of participants in order to run as scheduled. If the minimum enrollment is not reached, the workshop date may be rescheduled.
If any changes are necessary, all registered participants will be notified in advance and provided with the updated workshop date and details.Thank you for your understanding and flexibility.
Purchase This Workshop
The Sourdough Journey
A 2-day live online workshop + Sourdough Starter Course.
- Secure payment
- 6 months access
- Instant access
What Our Students Say
2 reviews
“Such an enjoyable and thorough class! Sourdough had always seemed quite daunting to me, but Leili made the whole process feel manageable and easy to understand. I really enjoyed learning each step, and somehow came out the other side with two actual loaves of bread! 😂 They tasted absolutely fabulous too. I’d definitely recommend the class to anyone wanting to learn sourdough without feeling overwhelmed.”
“Such a lovely workshop! I really enjoyed learning from you.you made sourdough feel much easier to understands. and i loved all the helpful tips and details you shared.thank you for your, kindness patience. and for making the class so enjoyable.i’m so happy i joined!”
