Making Your Own Starter
I remember feeling so overwhelmed when I began exploring the world of sourdough. No matter where I looked, I couldn’t find an exact answer to anything and I didn’t understand why - but now, I do. It’s a process and a learned skill that works differently for everyone. Think about this: if you read our What is Sourdough Starter? blog, you’ll know more about what a starter consists of. We briefly explained that starter is water + flour + bacteria from the environment around you. A huge part of starter is the bacteria that’s pulled from your environment because the healthy colony of microbes is what causes your starter to rise and fall.
If we all have different environments in our homes, it makes sense that the process will look a little differently for everyone.
That being said, it truly is a learned skill. Anything worth knowing takes time to learn, a bit of experimenting and usually, a failure or two before a success. And that’s perfectly normal.
I said all that to be real with you up front but also to encourage you that you can do this! Don’t give up if you hit a bump or two. I’m sharing all of my tips and tricks (and I’ve tried many because I’ve experienced a flop more than a time or two) to hopefully help cover all the bases!
Flour and Water Basics
Essentially, all you need is flour and water. There’s always debates about which water or flour you should use but the same applies as above: there really is no right or wrong answer, but some things do work better than others.
What type of flour should I use?
Funny thing is, before I began making sourdough, I had no clue there were different kinds of flour. That’s laughable - but it’s true. I was more the “let’s just buy a boxed cake or brownie mix and call it a day,” type. However, flour type does actually matter, especially for developing a strong sourdough starter.
All purpose flour is most commonly used and it works well, but make sure it’s unbleached all purpose flour. Didn’t know that was a thing? Me neither! Will bleached all purpose work? Maybe, but I don’t know. I’ve never tried it because the process of bleaching flour takes out all of those good microbes that the starter needs to thrive.
Whole wheat flour is a powerhouse, I’ve found. I actually feed my own starter with a ratio of about 80/20 unbleached all purpose flour and whole wheat flour. It’s simple, I just fill a ziplock bag with a mixture of the two and use that to feed my starter each time instead of pulling out each kind and measuring it perfectly. I’m all for taking steps to make things easier on myself! I’ve had great success with 100% unbleached all purpose and 100% whole wheat, but I’ve found that when using whole wheat flour only, the starter is extremely dense and thick (not a bad thing) but it makes any bread you bake just as dense (even when using only all purpose for the recipe) instead of the much sought after open, light and airy crumb that you ultimately want to achieve in artisan loaves.
Bread flour is another good option! This flour is a bit more costly, but it works well to establish a healthy starter.
Additionally, rye and einkorn flours can be used, though I have no experience with those.
As far as brands go, they all work differently but none are “bad.” I’ve used Great Value, King Arthur and Kroger Brand to name a few, but I now use Azure Standard’s Organic All Purpose Unbleached Flour or Bread Flour because it’s more cost efficient to buy in bulk when running a micro-bakery out of your home!
Water is water, right?
Well, sort of. Thing is, you want the water to be clean and free of chemicals - to the best of your ability. City tap water tends to have fluoride and other chemicals that may lessen the health of your starter. Do people use city tap water and get great results? I’m sure they do. I, however, prefer to use distilled or filtered water. We live on a farm, so we have a well for our water source. I filter our well water and use that in my starter and this is my typical result:
Sourdough has been around for thousands of years and I highly doubt that our ancestors had highly filtered or distilled water to use in their starters, yet we see thriving starters that are hundreds of years old! That just goes to tell you that honestly, sourdough is pretty resilient. Are there better options than others? Yes, but it truly isn’t all that finicky.
What You’ll Need
A glass jar with a breathable lid, something sturdy to stir with and a rubber band. Our Sourdough Starter Jar Kit comes with everything you need to get started!
The jar can have a metal lid, a wooden lid or a cloth lid, but the starter needs oxygen, so whatever lid you use, make sure it’s isn’t air tight. This can include a wooden lid with the silicone seal removed or a metal or plastic lid that just isn’t tightened all the way. Or, you could use a tea towel with a rubber band securing it to the jar to keep dust and bugs out.
The mixture will get thick and sludgy, so you’ll want something sturdy to stir with. Either a danish dough whisk, firm silicone spatula (our kit includes both of these!) or a wooden spoon.
The rubber band or timing band will be for marking the level of your starter once mixed thoroughly to watch for the amount of rise.
The Process
Day 1: Mix 1 cup flour and 1 cup water, stir vigorously. You want to make sure the flour is fully incorporated into the water to form a thick paste. Cover with a loose lid or tea towel and set aside.
Day 2: Discard half of the mixture from day 1. Like literally, throw it in the trash. I’ll explain why in just a bit, but it’s crucial at the beginning. After discarding half, add 1 cup flour and 1 cup water to the remaining mixture. Stir vigorously to mix well and cover, setting aside.
Days 3-5: Repeat the steps from day 2.
Days 6-7: Repeat the steps from day 2, but feed it every 12 hours instead of every 24 hours.
By this point, you should see bubbles forming in your starter. This is the colony of bacteria forming. Some say that if bubbles are forming by day 7, your starter is strong enough to bake bread. I disagree. I’ve made many starters in my day and trust me, your starter needs to be strong and healthy in order to make a loaf of bread rise beautifully. What can I say? I’m more of a realist because I’ve tried to make bread with seven-day-old starter and I ended up with a flat, doughy lump of bread that was so dense I could hardly cut through it. Again, is this everyone else’s story? No, but realistically, sourdough takes time to strengthen and the longer you work to strengthen that starter (by feeding it often), the better rise you’ll see in a loaf of bread.
Patience, my friend. It’s worth it!
Maintaining Your Starter
Do I have to keep feeding it every 12 hours?!
Deep breaths - no! After you’ve “bulked” your starter (by feeding it every 12 hours for 2-3 days), if you see bubbles forming, you can begin feeding it every 24 hours again. If you need a break, you can stick it in the fridge after a feeding, which causes it to go dormant until brought into the warmth of your kitchen again. Refrigerating a starter won’t hurt it at all, in fact, I do it often, most of the week until it’s time to bake again. When you’re ready to start feeding it again, take it out of the fridge and feed it a 1:1 ratio of flour and water and allow it to rise and fall once before baking with it. Basically, take it out of the fridge, feed it, allow it to rise and fall, discard half (or don’t - it’s okay to skip that step as long as you have room in your jar) and feed it again, planning to bake when it reaches its full rise on the second feeding.
After your starter is healthy, bubbly and rising with each feed, it’s just maintenance from there on out!
As a general rule, if you keep your starter on the counter, it needs to be fed once every 24 hours.
If you plan to keep your starter in the fridge when not in use, I typically don’t go any longer than two weeks without feeding it, but it’s best to feed once a week when storing in the fridge. If you forget, 99.9% of the time, it’ll be just fine - you just don’t want to ignore it long enough for it to mold. It shouldn’t - but there’s always a chance!
Even if you’re in a busy season of life and don’t plan to bake much at all, you can simply keep your starter alive and active by just pulling it out of the fridge once every week or two, feeding it and popping it right back in. I’m telling you, it’s very resilient but you can’t neglect it completely. ;)
How much do I feed when maintaining a healthy starter?
This really depends on how much you plan to bake. If you’re planning to bake often, you’ll want to feed it more. If you’re simply just trying to keep it alive, you don’t need to feed it much at all, even ¼ cup of flour and ¼ cup of water should be just fine.
For example, I use my starter quite often, multiple times a week. If I plan to bake two artisan loaves, I feed approximately 2 cups of flour and 1-1.5 cups of water or until I reach my desired consistency.
After you have a healthy starter, the flour to water ratio or amount of flour and water that you feed with doesn’t necessarily matter quite as much as getting your starter to the right consistency. Again, this will be different for everyone. I’ve had my starter lose its strength before, so I’ve had to give it a boost and I did that by actually measuring out my feeds to get it back on track. A weak or new starter requires a bit more precision with feedings than a well-established starter. When I find myself with a starter that isn’t rising well or looks inactive even after feeding, I typically resort back to actually weighing out my water and flour for feeds or measuring them evenly, either way, but I do a 1:1 ratio. So I’ll feed 100g flour and 100g water, or 1 cup flour and 1 cup water in order to get it where it needs to be again. Don’t fret - it can be saved!
While maintaining a healthy starter though, after you’re comfortable with it, you’ll know what to begin looking for consistency-wise. In general, I feed until I get a peanut butter-like consistency. Usually, that looks like a bit more flour than water. However, if I want my starter to rise quicker, I give it less food (flour) meaning that it won’t have as much to eat and it’ll rise quicker, and that looks more like a thick pancake batter.
TIP:
If you find yourself with a super healthy starter that’s rising too quickly, say you feed it before bed to bake with in the morning, but by the time you wake up, it’s already started to fall too much; you’ll want a thick, peanut-butter (or thicker, just until the flour is incorporated) consistency. This means that you’re feeding a higher flour ratio which gives your starter more to eat throughout the night, making it rise slower.
If you want to bake quickly and don’t want to wait 6-8 hours for a good rise, you can feed your starter less flour and more water, which will make a runnier end-result, but will cause it to rise quicker as it has less to eat through. This will look more like pancake batter. Of course, it still needs food - so you don’t want it to be watery, but a slightly thinner consistency will always rise quicker.
*These things should only be done with a healthy, established starter.
When building the strength of your starter, you really want to keep it consistent to build that little community of microbes, but as you get more comfortable with your starter and reading its activity, things like this can be used to make the timing of it all fit your schedule a little better.
How long before I can use my starter to bake bread?
I’d say you need at least two weeks of feeding and building your starter in order to make a decent loaf. In my experience, really, it took closer to a month of baby-ing my starter before I was able to see a decent loaf, but again, it will vary for everyone because of different factors like flour type, water and temperature.
Temperature matters, too?!
Indeed, it does. Bacteria thrives in warm environments, so naturally, your starter should rise quicker in the summer than in the winter. This is the reason for putting your starter in the fridge when you’re ready for a break: the cold air causes it to go dormant, while warm air encourages its activity. Actually, if your house is cold, it’s ideal to place your starter somewhere warm to activate that rise. I’ve put it in the oven with the light on before, though I don’t encourage this as I’ve seen many horror stories of people forgetting it’s in there and pre-heating the oven - no fun! Another clever place I’ve found to keep my starter on cold days is on top of the TV satellite receiver. Silly, but totally works because it’s always warm!
Let’s Talk Discard.
At the beginning of my journey, it was all confusing to me - but I really couldn’t figure out why we’d just throw this stuff away instead of using it to make another starter?! But really, it’s simply just because at the beginning, it’s literally just flour and water (no good bacteria yet) and if you don’t discard it, you’ll be seeping sourdough starter out of your ears. Okay, not really, but when you keep adding a cup of flour and water to an accumulated 6+ cups of flour and water, you’re eventually going to run out of space and quite frankly, you just don’t need that much at all.
Now, after the first 5(ish) days of literally throwing that discard in the trash, you can begin to use it in lots of recipes! Check out our discard recipes - we share both breakfast and dessert recipes where starter is used! I hardly ever have discard anymore because I bake so much, but I find myself feeding just to discard in order to have some for my favorite recipes that don’t need active starter!
The best way to do this is to put it in a separate jar in the fridge with an airtight lid. You don’t need to use it right away, either. As long as it’s in the fridge, it stays good.. for a long time. Quite frankly, it just gets more sour with time, but I’ve yet to have a refrigerated discard mold.
I know this was a lot, but I hope it helps! Just remember one thing: nearly everything seems intimidating and overwhelming at the beginning, you just have to keep going. Learning to make sourdough is an incredible skill to have - it will be so worth it when you begin pulling beautiful, puffy loaves of bread out of the oven and get to watch your family enjoy them!
There aren’t enough blogs in the world that can teach you what experience will.
Keep going, you got this!
