Your Beginner’s Guide to Sourdough Starter
It might be hard for maybe five days, but after that — easy peasy.
If you’ve taken a deep-dive to the internet to begin your sourdough journey, you probably already feel overwhelmed. I would guess you are tired of reading words like hydration, autolyze, discard, feeding, etc. I’ll admit it — it’s a language of its own for a while. Sometimes, I feel as though the expert sourdough overlords make sourdough sound complicated on purpose to discourage people from taking a whack at it. Let’s just throw away ALL of that info you probably didn’t need and start from scratch. I promise, it’s a lot easier than most people make it out to be.
What you’ll need —
- A food scale (check out my last post for my recommendation)
- A jar or sourdough crock
- A stirrer (I use a small silicone spatula for this)
- Unbleached all-purpose flour
- Filtered water
What you’ll do —
This process takes roughly 7–10 days until your starter is ready to be used in baking. Be patient with it!
Day 1:
- Add a clean jar to your food scale (measuring in grams), and zero the scale. Add 50g of unbleached flour and 50g of filtered water.
- Stir the flour and water together. You should end up with a thick pancake batter consistency.
- Cover with a paper towel and rubber band (or loosely put the cover back on top). Be sure not to tighten a cover on top (you want the starter to be able to breathe).
- Let sit for 24 hours. I keep mine on my kitchen counter.
Day 2:
- After 24 hours, observe your starter for any bubbles. It’s okay if you don’t see any yet!
- Dump out almost all of your starter into the garbage (or into a discard jar if you want to save your discard to use in other recipes). Try to avoid dumping your starter into the sink as it hardens when it dries. To do this, I dump all of my starter into the garbage, then just use what is scraping the sides moving forward.
- Scrape the existing starter off the sides and into the bottom of the jar.
- Add your jar to your food scale and zero the scale.
- Add 50g fresh unbleached flour and 50g filtered water.
- Stir together (should be thick pancake consistency).
- Let sit on counter for another 24 hours, loosely covered.
Day 3:
- Observe your starter for bubbles. You should be seeing some now!
- “Feed” your starter again. Discard all but a tiny bit of your starter, scrape down the sides, zero your scale, add 50g flour and 50g water, stir, and let sit.
- Today, watch your starter to see if it doubles/rises in size. You can even use a rubber band or expo marker to mark the starting point of your starter when you feed it, and see if it goes above that mark throughout the day.
- Let sit until tomorrow morning, loosely covered.
Day 4:
- Today, you will start feeding twice a day to really build the momentum. In the morning, discard down and feed your starter 50g flour and 50g water. Cover loosely.
- Watch for growth over the next twelve hours.
- If your starter is rising and falling, feed it again twelve hours later with 50g water and 50g flour. Cover loosely.
Day 5–7:
- Repeat step 4, feeding your starter 2x/day (morning and night). You will want to ensure that your starter is rising and falling in between feedings. If it is not, reduce your feedings back to 1x/day.
Day 8:
- Your starter is almost (if not already) active. An active starter is one that can be used in baking.
- Continue feeding your starter 1x per day.
- Try the float test to see if your starter is ready to be used in baking.
The float test:
- After feeding your starter, wait for it to double in size (normally, this is around 8–10 hours after you feed it).
- When your starter is at its peak (doubled in size), drop a very small amount into a small bowl/cup of water. If your starter floats to the top of the water, it is ready to be used to make all kinds of sourdough goodies.
Your starter can remain on your counter as long as it is being fed daily. If you plan to not bake for a while or are going out of town, simply feed your starter, then pop it in the fridge. Try not to leave it in the fridge for longer than two weeks in order to maintain its freshness. When you are ready to bake again, simply take it out, let it get to room temperature a bit, then feed as normal!
Need a good sourdough recipe? There are TONS online. I have yet to share my coveted recipe…should I?