By beginner I mean that I’m the beginner and this is my guide to navigating a sourdough starter. Yes, I, much like half the world during lockdown, decided to make a sourdough starter. I’ve spent the last month developing the starter and testing recipes so I could give you a beginner’s sourdough guide straight from a beginner herself.
I wanted to start off by saying it’s not as complicated as it all seems— i know there’s a lot of competing information out there that comes with a lot of technical jargon, but it’s really about finding the right information. I’ll post the helpful guides I found when starting out here and here, but for those of you who aren’t interested in doing the reading I’ll sum it up for you below:
When you begin making a sourdough starter, you’re essentially fermenting water and flour, which contains a colony of microorganisms including wild yeast and lactobacilli. Flour naturally contains a variety of yeasts and bacterial spores (that’s why you really shouldn’t eat raw flour, folks). When wheat comes into contact with water, the naturally occurring enzymes break down the starch into sugar, and over time, with fresh feedings of water and flour, the yeast metabolizes those sugars and develops a stable culture that creates rise in dough. As the sugars are metabolized, the yeast produces carbon dioxide gas, thus creating the leavening agent inside the dough it's baked into.
Now you don’t need a master’s in microbiology to make a sourdough starter (I certainly don’t have one), but I think it’s good to have a base understanding of the chemical process happening inside of your sourdough starter. Truthfully, I believe there are only three really important parts to beginning a successful sourdough starter: flour, ratio, and feeding times.
How to Pick the Right Flour
You can have a successful starter using a lot of different kinds of flour. The four most common types are Rye, Unbleached All Purpose, Whole Wheat, and Unbleached Bread flour. It’s important to note that I cited Unbleached flour because bleach affects the fermentation process and can hinder the development of the microbes in your starter, and that is what makes a delicious and sour loaf of bread. I personally use a 50/50 combination of Whole Wheat and Unbleached All Purpose flour. This combination of flour makes a really tasty loaf of bread, but you can make a very successful loaf of sourdough with any of these flours. Just pick your favorite and dive in!
Getting the Correct Ratio to Feed your Starter
Now that you picked your flour, you can start to develop your starter (it’s only flour and water after all). But don’t stress, it’s easy! There are a lot of different ratios that your starter can thrive at, but we’ll keep it simple at 100% hydration (that’s a fancy term you’ll hear a lot for equal parts flour, water, and starter). Ratios for feeding are often given in X:Y:Z, X being the amount of starter, Y being the amount of water, and Z being the amount of flour. It’s also important to note that ratios are commonly given in weight measurements like grams and ounces (you're gonna need a scale to make a starter, did I forget to mention that?).
If this is your first time, I suggest that you start with a small amount of flour and water and see how it develops, you can always build it up later. Personally, I began with 10 grams of flour and 10 grams of water, used a medium-sized mason jar, mixed the water and flour together, loosely placed the lid on top, and let it sit out on my counter for three days. Then I began a regular feeding of 1:1:1 every day.
Feeding Times—How Much and How Often?
For the first couple of days you just leave the starter alone, letting the flours and water mingle and develop their microbes. Then, about three days later, start feeding your starter every day at a 1:1:1 ratio and discard the excess starter (don’t start saving the starter yet, you could get sick if you eat an undeveloped starter). Discarded starter means that you throw out excess starter during your feedings. We have to discard the excess developing starter or else the 10 grams of starter, flour and water will grow to 100 grams each after just a few days! It can get pretty unmanageable pretty quickly (trust me).Then, around your sixth or seventh day of feeding once a day, you’ll switch to feeding it twice a day. It’s very important to keep your feeding schedule consistent—your starter thrives on consistency!
One key thing to look for as your starter develops is how much it rises. if your starter begins to double in size consistently, then your starter is close to being ready for use. But it’s important to remember this: the first week of developing your starter is a wash. It will take about two weeks to develop an active and healthy sourdough starter. The first week, your starter will have a lot of inconsistent activity, rising and falling at weird times, so it’s best to just stick to a consistent feeding schedule and wait it out.
After the first week, you might even have to adjust your feeding schedule based on how much your starter grows in between feedings. If your starter develops a liquid on its surface before your next feeding, your starter “peaked” and began to develop alcohol, commonly known in sourdough starters as “hootch”. Don’t fret, your starter isn’t ruined, you just need to feed your starter sooner.
You’ll need to keep an eye out for your starter’s peak. This means the starter doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled in size within a 4-6 hour period (if it’s tripling or quadrupling in this amount of time, your starter is likely fully developed). This is why many people use a rubber band around their jars to measure the rise of their starter. It’s at the starter’s peak that you want to feed it. As your starter begins to even out and gets closer to being fully developed, it will reach its peak several times a day. But nobody has the time to tend to their starter five times a day! So you’ll have to adjust your ratio. Start with 1:1:2, then after a day or two you can adjust to 1:1:3, and then 1:1:4 and even up to 1:1:5. This will give you more time in between the starter’s peak and its need to be fed.
Other Notes and Things to Consider
Temperature of Starter
This is actually kind of important, especially now that the weather is cooling down. Most people can leave their starter out on the counter without a problem, but “room temperature” is a bit vague. Ideally, your starter will thrive at a temperature range of 70-80 degrees F. While keeping it at cooler temperature won’t ruin your starter, it will hinder its growth and make it difficult to gauge the progress. On the other hand, keeping your starter at a warmer temperature can accelerate the rise and development of your starter. Though it’s best not to exceed 90 degrees or you could be in danger of upsetting the delicate balance of microbes inside of your starter. Essentially, the warmer the temperature you let a starter ferment at and the more you run the risk of spoiling it.
The best trick for keeping a starter at a consistent temperature is to place it inside of your oven with the light on. The light keeps the oven a little bit warmer than the rest of the house. I throw my starter in the oven along with an oven thermometer so I can better gauge the temperature, turning the light off once it reaches the right temperature.
What Does it Smell Like?
It’s a weird question, but a very helpful guide when assessing how close your starter is to maturity. If it smells acrid then it’s either not ready or it’s spoiled. If it smells bready and yeasty, it’s probably stabilized and close to ready for use.
When Will It be Ready?
Personally, I was too afraid to use it before my two weeks were up, but if your starter smells yeasty and reaches its peak at consistent times before 14 days are over, you might be ready to bake with your starter! Yay!
Long Term Storage
Now that you have an active, healthy starter, you can continue to feed it and care for it indefinitely! But it’s not realistic to feed your starter every day for however long you want to keep it. So, what many of us do is throw it in the refrigerator. The cooler temperature slows down the starter’s rise for a long while. I would suggest that every week or two you pull it out of the fridge, let it come up to room temperature, give it a few feedings and put it back into the fridge immediately after its feeding. The cool temperature slows the process, but it doesn’t stop it entirely, so it’s best to care for it every few weeks.
When Can You Start to Save the Discard?
You can start to save your discard as soon as you think you’re ready to bake with your sourdough starter. I keep my discard in a jar in the fridge for later use. It’s also a great back-up in case anything happens to your sourdough starter. You can siphon off the discard to make more healthy and active starters! Just give a few grams of discarded starter a couple regular feedings and it should be ready to go.
Or, you can save up the discard and use it in recipes like waffles, crackers, and cookies which I’ll be posting soon!
When in Doubt, Stick it Out
You might think you’ve ruined your starter several times (I certainly did), but you’d be surprised how resilient your starter actually is. As long as there isn’t an acrid smell, and there are no orange or pink streaks in your starter, it’s still alive and usable! Just keep on with regular feedings and see what happens, you might be surprised how it comes out.
Sourdough Starter
Ingredients:
Flour
Filtered water
Directions: (Note: These are suggested directions accompanying a suggested feeding schedule. Every starter is different and will develop differently, so adjust accordingly!)
Day 1: Combine equal parts flour of your choice and water in a clean mason jar (I suggest 10g of flour and of water). Loosely place a lid on top and leave it in a temperature controlled environment (like an off oven with the light on) for three days.
Day 3: Discard some of the starter so you only have 10 grams left in the jar, and add 10 more grams each of water and fresh flour to the jar. Stir to combine and leave it in your temperature controlled environment for 24 hours.
Day 4-7: Repeat steps for Day 3.
Day 8 AM: Discard your starter so that you have 10 grams of starter remaining. Add 10 more grams each of water and fresh flour to the jar. Stir to combine and leave it in your temperature controlled environment for 12 hours.
Day 8 PM: Discard some of your starter so that you have 10 grams of starter remaining. Add 10 more grams each of water and fresh flour to the jar. Stir to combine and place a rubber band around the outside of the jar where the top of the starter begins. (This is about the time you should begin keeping track of your starter’s peak). Place your jar inside a temperature controlled environment for 12 hours.
Day 9-12: Continue to discard and feed your starter at regular intervals and adjust your feedings to accommodate your starter’s peak. If you notice that your starter is peaking regularly within a 4-6 hour period, or your starter is developing hootch before your regularly scheduled feeding, then you can adjust your feeding ratio accordingly. Also, you can start to save your discard at this stage as long as it’s rising at a stable rate and your starter smells yeasty, not acrid.
Day 13-14: Continue to discard and feed your starter according to its development and begin making sourdough bread! Maintain and store your starter long term according to my notes above.
Enjoy!
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