Sourdough Stuffing With Mushrooms and Sage: The Thanksgiving Side Worth Planning Three Weeks Out

Thanksgiving is on 26 November, and the planning has already started: Butterball's 2026 Togetherness Report, surveyed in July and written up by Food Network last month, puts the average guest list at ten and finds that 85 percent of hosts want guests to pitch in, mostly with the washing up. The dish that decides whether the host is relaxed by then is not the turkey. It is the stuffing, because stuffing is the one tray that can be built a day early and still be the thing people reach for twice.

Sourdough is having its stuffing moment. Sunset's November 2026 cooking list, published on 29 October, names an artichoke and parmesan sourdough stuffing as the most popular stuffing recipe in the magazine's archive, and a run of new sourdough stuffing recipes has landed on food sites in the first days of November, among them Erin Dooner's herb version, published on 2 November, which makes the point that different sourdough loaves absorb broth differently and that the bread must be properly dried first. The reason the loaf works is structural: a crusty, open-crumbed sourdough stays in distinct, custardy cubes under broth and egg where a soft sandwich loaf collapses into paste, and its lactic tang cuts the richness of butter, gravy and bird.

This version pairs it with mushrooms cooked hard in butter until their edges brown, and fresh sage. The smell of the two together in the pan is the smell of the holiday.

Ingredients

Serves 12 as a side. Total time about 1 hour 30 minutes (35 minutes preparation, 55 minutes cooking), plus a day of drying the bread, or an hour in a low oven.

• 550 g day-old sourdough bread, crusts on, torn or cut into 2.5 cm pieces (about 12 cups)
• 115 g unsalted butter, plus extra for the dish
• 500 g mixed mushrooms, such as chestnut and oyster, torn or thickly sliced
• 2 medium onions (about 300 g), finely chopped
• 3 celery sticks (about 150 g), finely chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 2 tablespoons fresh sage leaves, finely chopped, plus 8 whole leaves
• 1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves
• 2 tablespoons flat-leaf parsley, chopped
• 600 ml chicken or turkey stock, plus up to 60 ml more if needed (vegetable stock for a vegetarian tray)
• 2 large eggs
• 1.5 teaspoons fine sea salt, or less if the stock is salted
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Method

1. Dry the bread. Spread the pieces on two trays and leave uncovered overnight, or bake at 120C (100C fan) for 45 to 60 minutes, turning once, until hard and dry all the way through. Weigh after drying if you can; the recipe assumes dried bread.
2. Heat the oven to 180C (160C fan, gas 4) and butter a 23 x 33 cm baking dish.
3. Melt 30 g of the butter in a large frying pan over high heat. Add half the mushrooms in a single layer and leave them alone for 2 to 3 minutes until browned underneath, then stir and cook 2 minutes more. Tip into a very large bowl, repeat with another 30 g butter and the rest of the mushrooms, and season them lightly.
4. Lower the heat to medium, add the remaining 55 g butter, the onions and celery, and cook for 8 to 10 minutes until soft and translucent but not coloured. Add the garlic, chopped sage and thyme and cook 1 minute more. Scrape everything into the bowl with the mushrooms.
5. Add the dried bread and parsley to the bowl and toss well so the butter and vegetables coat the cubes.
6. Whisk the eggs with 600 ml of the stock, the salt and pepper. Pour about two thirds over the bread and fold gently, then add the rest in two stages, tossing between additions, until the bread is moist throughout but the cubes still hold their shape. If the loaf was very dry and the bowl looks parched, add up to 60 ml more stock.
7. Pile the mixture into the dish without pressing it down, scatter the whole sage leaves on top and dot with a little extra butter. Cover tightly with foil.
8. Bake covered for 30 minutes, then remove the foil and bake 20 to 25 minutes more until the top is deep golden and crisp at the edges and a knife in the centre comes out hot.
9. Rest for 10 minutes before serving so the custard sets and the tray holds together on the spoon.

Make-ahead, variations and storage

The whole tray can be assembled through step 7 a day ahead and refrigerated covered; bake from cold, adding about 10 minutes to the covered stage. The dried bread keeps in a sealed bag for a week, which is the part worth doing this weekend. For a richer tray, brown 400 g of sausage meat before the mushrooms and fold it in; for a sweeter one, add two peeled, diced apples with the onions. Chestnuts, 150 g cooked and crumbled, are a good swap for half the mushrooms.

Leftovers keep for three days in the fridge and reheat best in a 180C oven, uncovered, for 15 minutes; the microwave turns the crust soft. It also freezes, baked, for up to a month.

Three weeks is enough time to find a good sourdough loaf, stale it on purpose, and bake this tray once as a rehearsal. By the time ten people arrive on the 26th, it will be the one dish on the table nobody has to think about.