Discover how to make the perfect Christmas sourdough bread in 2026. Follow our step-by-step guide, explore festive flavours with cranberries and walnuts, and learn the techniques and tools needed to bake a beautiful artisan loaf at home.

Autumn baking, Halloween bread, pumpkin bread, artisan sourdough, seasonal baking ideas.

bread is better when you make it with other people.

You shaped it.
You fermented it.
You scored it.
You put it in the oven. And then something extraordinary happens. For the next few minutes, your dough is neither simply dough nor bread. It is changing. 1. The final expansion The first thing you notice is the rise. Your loaf suddenly becomes larger, sometimes dramatically so. This is called oven spring. But it isn’t simply “the yeast making more bubbles”. As the dough heats, the gases already trapped inside it expand. Water al