How to Make and Freeze Sourdough Loaves in Bulk

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Making sourdough loaves for your family can be so simple. But no matter which way you spin it, it’s still another task on the to-do list. I have found that I simply do not have the time to make most of our staple foods unless I make them in bulk.

Once you start making some type of food for yourself, it’s so hard to go back to store-bought products! (Does anyone else feel like it’s a little dangerous to switch to making from scratch in this way?!)

We regularly make large batches of things like yogurt, sourdough tortillas, granola, refried beans, hash browns, bread, cleaning products… to name a few! With four littles and a household to keep up with, there is honestly just not enough time to do these things unless I work in bulk!

So while making sourdough bread isn’t hard (and really doesn’t take that much time), I was getting a little overwhelmed by going through my 24-hour bread-making routine every week or so.

Once I figured out how to make 4 loaves of sourdough at a time, the process felt so much more do-able! It hardly takes any more time to make four loaves compared to making two, but only having to bake bread every 3-4 weeks (which is about how long it currently takes us to go through 4 loaves) feels a lot simpler!

bulk batch of four loaves of sourdough bread cooling on counter

Can You Freeze Sourdough Loaves?

This is the most important question about making sourdough in bulk. The answer is YES! You can totally freeze your sourdough loaves. After cooling completely, just pop each loaf in a freezer Ziplock bag.

While fresh sourdough loaves only have a shelf life of about 3-7 days at room temperature, you can keep your whole loaves in the freezer for 3-6 months.

Freezing is a great way to extend the life of your fresh bread for future use. You’ll have homemade bread all ready for you when you run out of your current loaf!

Tips for Freezing Sourdough Bread

To freeze, I would definitely recommend making sure you have a freezer bag versus a regular/sandwich plastic bag in order to prevent freezer burn. Avoid using plastic wrap or other thin wrapping materials.
For best results, remove as much air as possible from the bag.
Don’t forget to label your bread bag with the date before freezing, and always use your oldest loaves first.
While you can freeze either an entire loaf of sourdough bread or individual slices of bread, we find that freezing a whole loaf of bread at a time is just simpler and less time consuming. They don’t take more than a few hours to thaw, so we just pull a loaf from the freezer whenever we’re getting to the end of the prior loaf. If you’d rather freeze slices, simply slice your loaf before putting it in your freezer bag and transferring it to the freezer. You can put parchment paper between the slices to keep them from sticking together if you’d like.

Does Sourdough Taste Good After It’s Been Frozen?

If you freeze your homemade sourdough bread correctly, you shouldn’t notice much of a difference in taste compared to your fresh bread. The most important thing is to make sure that it’s packaged well in order to prevent freezer burn, and that you let it thaw thoroughly before cutting.

Although there’s nothing quite like a fresh loaf of bread out of the oven that’s just cooling and ready to eat, we really don’t notice a different between our frozen and then thawed bread loaves compared with the unfrozen loaves that have been in the fridge for a day or two.

(And if it’s a choice between a frozen loaf of homemade sourdough bread and store-bought bread, the taste and quality is still astronomically better!)

Why Make Sourdough Loaves in Bulk?

Making sourdough loaves in bulk is an easy way to cut your prepping and baking time down while still providing healthy, delicious, fresh sourdough bread for your family! When I went from making two loaves at a time to four at once, I found that I spent about half the amount of time each month making bread.

Making and freezing bread in bulk is a convenient way to simplify your busy schedule and save your extra loaves for later use!

(Currently, we’re prepping for another baby, so I’m stocking the freezer with 10 loaves so I don’t have to think about making bread at all for the first couple of months!)

Sourdough bread freezes quite well, and the only extra cost is some gallon-size freezer bags (about $0.07 per bag!). It’s totally worth it to have your own bread on hand whenever you need it!

Freezing your bread can also cut down on food waste, since frozen loaves can store for 3-6 months. This takes the pressure off if you don’t eat your fresh loaves right away.

My Method Making and Freezing Sourdough Loaves in Bulk

Come join me in the kitchen! I’ll show you exactly how I make and freeze my bulk loaves – including a timeline.

My favorite bread recipe is Farmhouse On Boone’s no-kneed sourdough bread. I prefer to use the stretch-and-fold method rather than a bread mixer. But you can totally make loaves in bulk regardless of the recipe you choose!

6am – I measure and combine my ingredients. The recipe I use makes two loaves, so I just double it and have two large bowls on the counter holding two loaves each.
6:30-late morning – Stretch and folds! The recipe I use has 6 stretch and folds. While each one only takes about 2 minutes, it does mean that I have to be home available for the morning. Making double the amount of loaves takes away an entire morning per month that I would have to be available for my bread every 15-30 minutes.
8pm – The bulk fermentation process takes most of the day. In the evening, I’ll split and shape each bowl of dough into two loaves (so four loaves total).
8:30pm – Refrigerate! This was the trickiest part for me – trying to fit four bowls of bread in the fridge overnight to proof! I’ll share a few tips for how I do this in the next section!
6/7am – Bake! This was another tricky part for me – figuring out how to bake all four loaves in a timely manner the following day. I’ll share more tips on this below, too!
10am – After baking, I set my bread on wire racks. Around mid-morning, they’re cool and ready to be put into freezer bags and taken down to the freezer!

More Tips for Making Sourdough in Bulk

Here are some tips that have helped me to easily make and freeze sourdough bread in bulk. I make four loaves at a time, which usually lasts us about a month or a little less. If you have more fridge space (or a second fridge), you could make even more if you wanted!

Don’t forget to feed your starter (enough). Remember, you’ll need more starter to make more loaves! Don’t forget to feed your starter a little extra the night before to ensure you have enough.
Keep plenty of flour on hand. Four loaves uses a lot of flour! Make sure you are well stocked so that it’s easy to make as much as you need, when you need it. The recipe I uses needs a little over 15 cups of flour to make four loaves.
Don’t make bread the day after grocery shopping. One reason I didn’t make bread in bulk sooner was because proofing in the fridge overnight takes up a lot of room. Our fridge always seems to be running out of space, so trying to shove four bowls in there isn’t always easy. One of the easiest ways to get around this is to make your bread a day or two before you stock your fridge – not right after a large grocery trip!
Stack creatively. When you do get to cramming many bowls in your fridge, get creative! I like to use a long wooden board or thin cutting board to create a surface so some of them can stack on top of each other.
Bake early in the morning. Another problem I ran into when I first started making bread was needing to have two mornings open back to back – one to do my stretch and folds and the next one to bake. We’re home a lot, but sometimes the time I needed bread happened to not be when I was home for two mornings in a row. The simple solution was to proof for a little bit less time! I found that my bread does fine if it’s in the fridge for less than 12 hours. So even if I don’t start proofing it until 9pm, I often start baking at 6am or sooner the next day. Using my two dutch ovens, I can still bake all four loaves (in two batches) and have them cooling on the counter by 7:30 or 8am and then I can head out the door if needed.
Don’t worry about preheating for an hour. Another big hurdle that kept me from making sourdough for a long time was that almost every recipe I found said to preheat the dutch oven for at least an hour. To me, that just sounded like tons of propane (although that was before we got our wood stove, which made preheating free!). Perhaps this is the best way to get crispy bread, but I do not do this anymore- and I honestly haven’t noticed a difference at all. I just stick my cast irons in, and when the oven is preheated, I bake my bread. This cuts down a lot on the baking time, especially when you’re making multiple loaves at once.

FAQs About Freezing Sourdough Loaves

How long does it take to thaw a sourdough loaf?

We prefer to freeze bread in whole loaves rather than slices. When freezing bread whole, I find it takes about half a day to defrost on the counter. Of course, this depends on the temperature of your house, too.

If you have the time, the best option is just to pull out your next loaf and stick it in the fridge when the current loaf starts getting to the end. If I’m in a hurry, I’ve also sliced the loaf in half and set it in the oven on low heat.

How do you freeze sourdough bread in slices?

If you’d rather be able to grab a slice of bread from the freezer at a time, you can freeze in slices! Just wait until your loaf cools thoroughly, then slice your bread. You can use parchment paper between each layer to keep them from sticking together, then transfer to your freezer-safe bag.

How do you make sure frozen bread doesn’t get freezer burn?

We’ve never had a problem with freezer burn. All we do is put our bread in freezer-safe bags. If you’re reusing a bag, make sure it doesn’t have any holes or scrapes. If you’re planning to freeze your bread for many months or just want some extra protection against freezer burn, you can wrap it in plastic wrap before putting it in your freezer bag.