How to Put Edible Images on Sourdough with Wafer Paper
If you caught my Practical Magic inspired Sourdough reel — you may have wondered how I created the book pages with writing and images. I’ve got all the steps and links below to walk you through it so you can do this too!
You’ll need a basic sourdough recipe and all of your traditional tools like a lame, dutch oven, colored flour, etc. You can view my favorite tools HERE.
The images are printed on wafer paper: a food-safe sheet typically made from rice starch, water, and oil. It’s ultra thin, neutral in flavor, and bakes right onto your sourdough crust!
You’ll also want an edible printer. This is somewhat of an investment but if you are looking to do this often, and have the freedom to create your own custom designs, you’ll want one. If you simply want to work with edible images every now and then, I recommend picking up pre-made wafer papers from 3catsandapig! She is a good Instagram friend of mine and sells many designs on Etsy. She may also be able to provide custom orders.
Want Ready Made Wafer Papers?
Here you go! I absolutely love 3CatsAndAPig wafer papers- she has the best designs!
Watch the Process
In addition to the steps outlined below, I highly recommend viewing the carousel I created for this loaf HERE for visual reference. It will give a bit of extra guidance to ensure you are a success when you apply your wafer papers.
Note: This post contains some ads and affiliate links. If you purchase through a link, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my work and helping me continue sharing sourdough tutorials!
What you’ll need
Step-by-Step
1. Create Your Design
- Begin a new project in Canva or another editing app of your choice.
- Canva Size recommendation: Youtube Thumbnail 1280 x 720 px
- Create, select, or upload the design of your choice.
- Use the Auto-adjust setting to make the color vibrant. You may need to trial and error this a bit to find the best match for your image/printer capabilities.
- Download your image as a PNG.
2. Print Your Design
- Find your downloaded image, open, and select print
- Printer Settings: scale your image to the appropriate size to match your dough. This may take troubleshooting. I sometimes print 3-4 sizes so I can easily choose the best size as I prep my dough. 50% or smaller seems to work well for me. Select ‘auto paper select’ and normal quality. For my printer I do NOT use best quality- I find it makes the wafer paper rip or smear.
- Load your wafer paper into the tray so that the image prints on top of the textured side of the wafer paper.
- Print your image and allow it to dry for at least 30 minutes before applying it to your dough. I try to do it the day ahead if possible.
- Trim your wafer paper design to fit your dough. You can do this ahead of time or as you are ready to apply it.
3. Apply the Wafer Paper to Your Dough
- Wipe off excess flour from the top of your dough.
- Spritz the entire surface with water so it is fully coated in a thin layer of water. The dough should be glistening but not dripping. I like to gently rub off excess water with my hand.
- Place your wafer paper design, textured side facing up, on top of the damp dough and gently press it down with light finger taps- do not rub or it will tear.
- Continue to decorate/score your loaf as you normally would! You can gently lay pieces of parchment on top of the wafers to cover them during flour dusting. Do not press the parchment down or leave it too long- it will stick!
- If the parchment does adheres a bit to the wafer paper you can carefully lift the parchment up by slowly rocking it side to side until it lifts away from the wafer paper.
That’s it! Bake your loaf as you normally would with one tip: lightly drape some foil over the images to prevent them from over-browning during the last 10 minutes of the bake.
If you give this technique a try, I’d love to see it. Tag me @the.sourdough.mama or send me a photo! Happy baking!
XO Katrina
Want More Sourdough Art?
If you loved this design, you’ll adore my Artistic Scoring Ebook linked below!
If you try this loaf, tag @the.sourdough.mama on Instagram- I love seeing your creations and often share them!
