I’m in awe of sourdough loaves with intricate scoring and the people who take the time to do that. But, I like a simpler approach to my everyday sourdough bread, just as I do with all the steps of sourdough; keep it simple.

My little scoring tool, called a lame bread tool, is a cheap one. I think I paid $3 for it. The handle is plastic and the blade is fixed, so once it’s dull, it’s done. But, that being said, I’ve used it (when I can find it in my utensil drawer) for nearly 3 years.

For this bread, however, I used a kitchen scissors and snipped the dough. And I like it. Most of the time, I score a couple of lines quickly across the top before setting it in my preheated dutch oven.

Snipping sourdough is the easy. Once your loaf is ready to go in the oven, at the time you usually score it, just make some snips, going in about 1/8”, at an angle with a kitchen shears. The dusting of flour makes the design more obvious, and gives it a rustic look, but is not essential.

I almost always throw in a combination of whole grain flours with a little sifted white wheat or white flour. The texture of the bread tends to be a little less holey that all white flour sourdough, but I actually prefer that for sandwiches. I know bakers online who throw out loaves that don’t have “perfect” sourdough holes. I suppose if you bake only to take a picture of the bread to show on social media, that is an acceptable practice, but I bake sourdough to share and eat, and so I have bread that is easier to digest. Because, I love my bread!

I hope you give this a go. It really is satisfying and easy and gives a rather dinosaur texture to the top of your sourdough bread!

Enjoy!

Anne Dovel
IG@prairiewomanarts