Bake planning

Sourdough Baking Schedule Calculator

Sourdough is mostly waiting, and the waiting is where a bake goes wrong — you either start the levain too late or pull the dough out of the fridge at midnight. Tell this calculator when you want the bread out of the oven, how warm your kitchen is, how much starter is in the dough and whether the loaf will retard overnight, and it works backwards into clock times for every step. Everything runs in your browser; the times you type are never uploaded, saved or sent anywhere.

Your bake

Your own device's clock and time zone. Every time in the schedule is local to you.

The temperature where the dough sits, not the oven. Warmer kitchens ferment faster.

Grams of starter for every 100 g of flour. More starter means a shorter bulk.

The open-baking guide asks for 30–60 minutes so a stone or steel is properly hot.

Start at 475 °F for 15 minutes with steam, then drop to 425 °F for 30 minutes. Done at 205–210 °F internal.

Final rise

The dough is baked straight from the fridge, so this is the whole final rise.

Your timeline

Fill in your bake time on the left and press Build my schedule. The step-by-step timeline appears here, starting with the moment you need to feed the levain.

How to use the schedule calculator

  1. Pick the finish line first. Set the date and time you want the loaf out of the oven — a Saturday morning, or the evening you actually want to eat. Every other time is built backwards from it.
  2. Tell it how warm the dough will be. Room temperature is the single biggest lever on how fast sourdough moves. A 68 °F kitchen takes roughly twice as long as an 83 °F one, so use the temperature where the bowl will actually sit, not the thermostat reading from another floor.
  3. Set the starter percentage. Enter the grams of starter per 100 g of flour. The site's sandwich bread uses 260 g of starter for 1,000 g of flour, which is 26% — most of our loaves sit between 15% and 25%.
  4. Choose the final rise. A cold retard gives you a night off and a sharper flavour; a room-temperature proof is faster but has to be watched. The calculator swaps the step out and moves everything else.
  5. Read it, copy it, print it. Copy the plain-text version into your notes app, or print the table and stick it on the fridge.

A worked example

You want a loaf out of the oven on Saturday at 5:00 PM, your kitchen sits at 72 °F, the dough takes 20% starter, you autolyse for 30 minutes and the shaped loaf retards 12 hours in the fridge. Baking on a stone with a 45-minute preheat, the calculator gives you this:

  • Feed the levain at 3:21 PM on Friday — about 6 h 54 min at 72 °F.
  • Autolyse at 9:45 PM, mix at 10:15 PM.
  • Bulk ferment for about 5 h 10 min, finishing at 3:40 AM.
  • Shape, rest 20 minutes, then into the fridge at 4:15 AM.
  • Preheat at 3:30 PM, load the cold dough at 4:15 PM.
  • Out of the oven at 5:00 PM, cooled and sliceable around 7:00 PM.

Those numbers are the sample this page loads with Load an example. Change any one of them — a 78 °F kitchen, a 16-hour retard, a pan loaf — and the whole chain shifts.

How the fermentation pace is worked out

The schedule is arithmetic, not a measurement, so here is exactly what it assumes. Bulk fermentation starts from a 4 h 30 min baseline at 75 °F with 20% starter. For every 15 °F the room sits above that reference the time is roughly halved; below it, roughly doubled. The starter percentage is then applied as a square-root adjustment against that same 20% reference, so 40% starter shortens the bulk by about 30% and 10% stretches it by about 40%. The levain build uses the starter guide's own window — a 1:1:1 feed that doubles in 4–8 hours — on the same temperature curve.

The result is a plan, not a prophecy. Dough temperature, flour strength, how active your starter is today and how much you handle the dough all move the finish line by an hour or more in either direction. Use the clock to know when to start looking, then judge the dough: a risen, domed, jiggly bulk is done whatever the timer says.

What this calculator does not do

  • It does not measure your dough or your starter. The windows come from the temperature-and-inoculation model above, not from your kitchen.
  • It does not bake for you, and the internal temperatures it lists are the site's cues for a done loaf — confirm with a thermometer and the colour of the crust.
  • It does not add a warm-up rest after the cold retard: the dough goes from fridge to oven, which is the usual way to score a firm loaf. Add 30 minutes on the counter yourself if you prefer a warmer dough.
  • It does not handle pre-ferments other than a straight levain, and it does not scale a recipe — use the hydration calculatorfor the formula maths.
  • It does not send your times anywhere. There is no account, no history and no network call — close the tab and the schedule is gone.

Questions bakers ask about sourdough timing

How long does sourdough take from start to finish?

Longer than the recipe's bake time suggests. A loaf built on a levain that needs six hours to double, five hours of bulk fermentation, a twelve-hour cold retard and a 45-minute bake lands around 26 hours — which is why most of our recipes say 12 to 24 hours start to finish. The two levers you actually control are how warm the dough is and how much starter goes in.

What if my kitchen is colder than the calculator expects?

Enter the temperature where the bowl will sit — a cold kitchen changes the plan a lot. Fermentation roughly halves in speed for every 15 °F the room drops below 75 °F, so a 65 °F kitchen needs close to double the bulk time of a 75 °F one. If you cannot warm the room, lengthen the bulk and judge the dough rather than the clock: a domed, jiggly, slightly risen mass is ready.

Should I proof at room temperature or retard overnight?

A cold retard buys you a night's sleep and gives a sharper, more sour flavour, and the schedule simply moves the final proof into the fridge. A room-temperature proof is faster and easier to watch but has to be timed to the hour, because an over-proofed loaf bakes flat. If you want bread in the morning, retard; if you want it this evening and you are home, proof warm.

Can I bake straight from the fridge?

Yes, and that is what this schedule assumes. A cold, firm dough scores cleanly and holds its shape going into a hot oven. The calculator does not add a warm-up rest after the retard; if your dough feels tight and slow to spring back, leave it on the counter for 30 minutes yourself and shift the bake time.

How do I know when bulk fermentation is actually done?

The clock tells you when to start looking, not when to stop. Look for a 30% to 50% rise, a domed rather than flat top, a few bubbles around the edge of the bowl, and dough that jiggles when you shake the bowl and pulls away cleanly. Warmer and longer is not automatically better — past the peak, the dough goes slack and the loaf bakes flat and gummy.

Can I use this for bagels, focaccia or a pan loaf?

Yes — pick the closest bake profile so the oven step carries the right time and internal temperature, then read the matching page for the shaping and boiling steps this timeline does not cover. Bagels, focaccia, sandwich bread and enriched doughs all run through the same four phases: levain, bulk, shape, final rise.

Once the schedule is set

The timeline tells you when to be at the bench. These are the pages that tell you what to do when you get there — and the other two calculators that do the formula maths: