hOW TO MAKE A SOURDOUGH STARTER
a step-by-step guide
it all starts with...a starter!
Ah yes, the sourdough starter..what the heck is it?
Simply put, a sourdough starter is just a mix of flour and water that is used to cultivate wild yeast that will, eventually, be an essential part of baking your sourdough loaf. The starter is used here in place of commercial instant or active dry yeast that a lot of bread recipes call for. It’s the fermented nature of a healthy sourdough starter that will really create the sour depth of flavor that sourdough loaves are known for (and named after!)
my sourdough starter story
I’ll be honest with you here… when I first made my starter at home I was so excited to be starting the process. I had this idea in my head that just because I know my way around a kitchen that my starter would surely come out great and be strong enough to bake bread by the end of the week, right?…Wrong!! Well at least for me!
Sourdough starters are living things, no two are the same! Some starters may be extremely active, healthy and ready to bake bread after the first week while others may be sluggish, slow and not ready for a while. There are many variables that can affect your starters’ progress such as type of flour used, feeding frequency and overall climate of where you live.
Now don’t get me wrong, the process of beginning your own sourdough starter and using it to make fresh bread can seem daunting, but it isn’t difficult! What it does take, however, is patience, trial and tribulation, sticking with the process and finding out exactly how your starter thrives best.
persistence is key
So there I was, excitedly mixing my flour and water together, covering my jar and leaving it overnight to do it’s thing. You can imagine my surprise when the next morning I went to check on my beautiful new starter (that I was sure would be bubbly, fermenting nicely and already super active,) only to find a un-risen, smelly starter with about a centimeter of brown liquid on top of the starter. Yeah…yuck, I know.
My initial thoughts were as follows… 1. WHAT is all that liquid… 2. Did I kill it?! 3. Did I trap some horrible bacteria from the air in there? 4. Maybe I should just toss it and forget this whole sourdough thing.
I decided not to jump to conclusions and to do some research. It turns out that the brown liquid is referred to as “hooch.” This is the natural alcohol that begins to produce when a starter hasn’t been fed in a while due to the fermentation process of the wild yeast. I continued to read that this was a normal occurrence and all I was supposed to do was drain the liquid off of the top, remove some of the mature starter and feed it with more flour… but the starter continued to get worse each day. More and more alcohol was being produced despite the fact that I was feeding it correctly every 24 hours. It started to smell so awful that I truthfully thought I could never possibly use it to make anything edible.
How did I fix it? I started feeding my starter every morning AND night instead of just once a day. Due to the warm climate of Hawaii (where I live,) it turned out that my starter was becoming “hungry” way faster than the average starter, causing alcohol to be produced at a higher rate. Finally! I began to have a starter that was becoming healthy, active and smelling like fresh, unbaked sourdough bread.
Since that time I’ve made tweaks to feeding times, frequencies, methods and flour types until I’ve found what works best for my little jar of wild yeast. Why am I sharing all of this? Simply to explain that each sourdough starter is unique and different and to tell you to keep pushing through even if your starter doesn’t quite spring into action right from the beginning!
So with all of that being said…this is how I created my personal sourdough starter that I continue to feed, maintain and use to bake bread at home! If you’re looking for a simple way to make your own starter, try this method out below, however, don’t be afraid to adjust flour blends, quantities, starter feeding times or other variables as you go along and find out what works best for your starter!
equipment needed to make a sourdough starter
You’ll need to make sure you have a few things on hand before making your homemade sourdough starter.
1. Unbleached Flour. I use a combination of Unbleached All Purpose Flour and Whole Wheat Flour.
2. A clear glass or plastic container. I use a wide-mouth quart mason jar. *Make sure your container is large enough to allow space for your starter to double or even triple in size. I recommend a quart or larger.
3. A food scale such as this one that I use.
4. You’ll also need clean, filtered water and a spoon. *Optional: 2 rubber bands.
INSTRUCTIONS
ingredients:
- 75 grams all purpose flour, unbleached
- 25 grams whole wheat flour
- 100 grams filtered water
method:
Making your starter:
- Start with your clear, clean container or jar. Place your jar onto a digital food scale and take note of the weight of your empty jar in grams. (This will be helpful later when discarding mature starter.)
- Zero out the scale so that the weight of the jar is not accounted for when you begin to measure out your flour.
- Using a small spoon, scoop all purpose flour into your jar until it reaches 75 grams.
- Add 25 grams of whole wheat flour to the jar.
- Slowly pour in clean, filtered water over top of the flour blend. (If your environment is rather warm, use cool water to slow down the process. Otherwise, use room temperature/lukewarm water, around 70-75 degrees.)
- Mix the flour and water together thoroughly until there is no dry flour remaining.
- Scrape down the sides of the container where any excess starter may be. You can use your spoon or a clean rubber spatula for this part.
- Loosely cover the top of the container. (I use a small square of paper towel or cloth and fasten it to the lip of the jar with a rubber band.) If your container has a screw top, don’t fully screw it on. When your starter ferments, pressure will build in the container if the cap is too tight.
- Mark the level of your starter right after feeding. I do this with a rubber band or string, that way you can see just how much it has risen over time.
- Leave your starter jar to rest at room temperature for the next 24 hours.
Maintaining your starter:
- After the starter has sat for 24 hours, uncover the top of the container and discard all but 100 grams of the mature starter. (Take the original weight of your empty container and remove spoonfuls of mature starter until the jar weight reaches 100 grams more than its original weight. Example: My empty mason jar weighs 423 grams. When I remove my mature starter I keep going until the scale says 523 grams.)
- Repeat the same feeding process as yesterday. (75 grams all purpose flour, 25 grams whole wheat flour, 100 grams water.) Leave to sit for 24 hours.
- Continue the same process every day, once a day. By days 3-5, you’ll likely start seeing some activity from your wild yeast. Activity includes things like: Air bubbles throughout the starter, a steady rise and fall of the starter level, a sweet & slightly sour smell of unbaked bread or frothy/foamy bubbles on the surface. However, if you don’t see activity yet, don’t be discouraged, keep going! (If you live in an extra warm environment like me and you notice your starter begins to produce a layer of alcohol on top, you may need to feed every 12 hours instead of every 24.)
How to know when your starter is ready:
Every starter will differ in the time it takes for it to be active and mature enough to bake bread with. For some, a starter may be ready by the end of week one. As I mentioned earlier in this post, my sourdough starter ran into some trouble early on and I didn’t bake with it until around week 4. Here are some tell tale signs that your starter could be ready to bake with.
- It is doubling or even tripling in volume within hours after a feeding.
- It has tons of air bubbles throughout and at the top. It could look almost foamy or frothy on the surface.
- Does it float? If you think your starter is strong and ready to use, scoop a teaspoon of mature starter out and place it on top of a glass of water. If it floats: it’s ready! If it sinks: it means it’s either not mature enough or it is a little past its bread making peak window and should be fed again.
Maintaining your starter when you’re not actively trying to make bread:
So say your starter has been healthy and active for a while and you’ve made a loaf of bread or two that you’re happy with but now you’d like to give it a rest for a while. This is the point that I got to and my question was, “Do I still need to keep feeding my starter every single day (in my case twice a day with a warm climate) if I’m not planning on making bread anytime soon?” The answer is no! If you’d like to take a rest from feeding your starter every day but you definitely still want to keep it alive so that you can still use it when you’re ready…here’s how!
- Discard and feed your starter as normal, loosely cover the top again BUT instead of leaving it out at room temperature…pop it in the refrigerator! Cooling the wild yeast down in the fridge will dramatically slow down how fast it feeds and you will only have to feed it once a week.
- After a week has gone by, remove your starter from the fridge to feed. I like to leave mine out to warm up for about 2 hours before feeding.
- When storing my starter in the fridge, I choose to feed it with less flour and water just to save some ingredients. I discard all but 50 grams of mature starter and feed it with 40 grams of all purpose flour, 10 grams of whole wheat flour and 50 grams of water. (You can either follow those smaller measurements or continue feeding as normal.)
- Mix up your flour and water as usual. Let it begin to feed at room temperature first for about 1-2 hours and then put it back into the fridge. Repeat the process weekly!
Transitioning your refrigerated starter back into one that can be used for baking:
- Remove from the fridge, discard all but 50 grams of starter and feed with the original flour and water quantities. (100 grams of flour, 100 grams of water.) Leave at room temperature for 12 hours.
- Continue to discard & feed your starter TWICE daily following the original ingredient quantities for maintenance. (Discard all but 100 grams of mature starter, add 75 grams all purpose flour, 25 grams whole wheat flour & 100 grams of water.) It’s good to feed your starter twice daily, or every 12 hours roughly, to “wake up” a sluggish and slow starter that’s been in the fridge.
- Do this every day leading up to the day you’re ready to bake bread. I recommend taking it out of the fridge 2-3 days before you plan on making bread.
notes & tips:
Why it’s important to scrape down the sides of the jar after feeding:
- After discarding & feeding your sourdough starter, you’ll probably notice that you end up with some excess starter that has made its way up the sides or around the top of the jar during the process. Try to scrape down the sides of your jar the best you can so that this does not build up! Letting excess starter build up around your jar can lead to mold growth (this happened to mine) and can also make it very challenging to eventually clean the jar out. I try to swap out the jar I’m using for an alternate every few weeks. To do this I just scoop 100 grams of mature starter into the new, clean jar and feed as normal.
What to do if you notice mold in your jar:
- Do you need to completely toss your beloved sourdough starter if you notice mold growing in there? Not necessarily. From what I’ve read, if you notice a small amount of mold on the sides of the jar (where excess starter has collected) or a little bit on the surface, then you should be okay to just remove the area and keep with the same starter. I personally had some growing on the side of my jar early on but was able to successfully remove it. (I would transfer to a new jar as well.) However, if you notice mold under the surface of your starter and all throughout, then it may be time to ditch it and start a new one. *Either way, I would still do some research on your own personal starters’ mold before continuing with it since mold doesn’t commonly grow on sourdough starters all that often.
What kind of flour blends can I try in my starter?
- I’ve personally seen people use all types of flour to feed their starters and each one will create different aromas and flavor notes. Some common types are unbleached all purpose, whole wheat, bread flour, rye, spelt flour and einkorn. I created my own starter using just all purpose flour but noticed that it was never really super active and growing at a fast enough rate. I then tried bread flour, which did produce a more active starter but I decided to switch to an all purpose and whole wheat blend, which I found has led to a super happy and active starter for me! Try a few out (giving them time to adjust to the new flour blend) and find which works best with your starter!
enjoy!
DID YOU MAKE THIS RECIPE?
tag @sweetenedwithsun on Instagram and hashtag it #sweetenedwithsun
*This post may contain affiliate links.
share this recipe:
SUBSCRIBE
Join the list for free healthy recipes, foodie tips & updates!
We respect your privacy.
