How to make a sourdough starter

Every household should have a sourdough starter hidden somewhere, at the back of a shelf in their fridge.

Making your very own sourdough starter isn’t hard. What you need is water, unbleached whole grain flour and patience. That’s all!

At the end of the process, you will have your very own active sourdough starter to make anything your heart desires, from cakes to pancakes, crackers and rustic sourdough bread, bagels, focaccia and much more.

Furthermore, sourdough starters are exchanged, gifted and handed down through generations. So why not share yours with loved ones to help them start their own sourdough baking journey.

There is a lot of information online about making a sourdough starter, but this is a foolproof method that anyone can do.

What is sourdough starter?

A sourdough starter begins with mixing water and flour. Then, when left to develop, it turns into a living culture of lactic acid and natural yeasts found around in our environment. These ferment and populate in the starter, creating their unique microbiome and strains of bacteria.

Inside the sourdough starter, yeasts ferment the carbohydrates in the flour and produce carbon dioxide bubbles. They are what helps the dough rise, whereas the lactic acid bacteria in the starter give the bread its sour taste and help preserve and prevent the growth of foodborne pathogens in the sourdough.

In other words, sourdough is an active wild yeast ready to be used in baking instead of commercial yeast.

What are the benefits of using a sourdough starter?

When making bread with a sourdough starter, the bread loaf needs to sit and ferment for a few hours before baking.

This fermentation process reduces the overall gluten content in the bread loaf and enhances the bioavailability of nutrients in the flour used, such as dietary fiber and B vitamins. These bioavailable nutrients encourage the growth of beneficial bacteria in the gut and help build a robust gut microbiome and strong immunity.

Therefore it is important to use whole grain flour like rye, spelt, and wholemeal as these will give you the most health benefits for your gut microbiome.

Using a sourdough starter to make bread also gives the loaf a mildly sour taste, a wonderful airy texture and a crunchy crust. How can you resist!

How do you store the sourdough starter?

If you bake bread regularly, you can store your starter on the kitchen bench and remember to feed it daily.

If you only bake occasionally, store it in the fridge and feed it once a week using the same method.

When you are ready to bake, take it out of the fridge, feed it once or twice a day to activate it and keep it on the kitchen bench until it is airy and bubbly.

This process might take 1 to 4 days, depending on how neglected your starter was when stored in the fridge.

What happens if I forget to feed it?

Do not panic if you forget to feed it regularly. I have often neglected it for weeks in my ten years of maintaining a sourdough starter. It is a very resilient culture, and it will bounce back once you start feeding it again.

The bacteria in the culture are always active and need food to thrive. If you forget to feed them and they begin to starve, you will see a layer of dark liquid on top of your starter, indicating that they need to be fed. Don’t worry; they are tough to kill. Discard the liquid and feed, as usual.

What type of flour to use when feeding my sourdough starter?

When making a sourdough starter, use only whole grain flour, like whole wheat or rye, to jumpstart the fermentation process.

Once you have developed your starter, you can use other flours. The best will be any unrefined, good quality flour you have on hand like spelt, wholemeal, rye or some less commonly found flours like Kamut or Einkorn.

I always keep a bag of these flours on hand to mainly use when feeding my starter, but if you run out, you can use an inexpensive all-purpose flour until you buy a better quality flour.

Remember always to use unbleached flour to avoid introducing unwanted chemicals into your starter.

The sourdough starter will look, smell and act differently depending on what flour you use.

So to get the best results possible in your sourdough baking… FEED your starter THE BEST flour you can get your hands on.

Can two sourdough starters have the same qualities?

The answer is simply No; two sourdough starters developing in two different environments cannot have the same characteristics and act the same way in baking.

For example, your house and geographic location or even the physical place you store your starter will have different yeasts and bacteria to mine, resulting in a culture containing different strains of these yeasts and bacteria.

Other parameters such as the type of flour and the water used in the starter can also create different sourdough microbiomes.

Your starter also evolves and changes constantly. The initial population of microbes shifts and certain lactic acid bacteria or yeast species may die off or dominate the culture.

Every time you add flour or leave the starter on the bench to activate, or every time you add water, new microbes are introduced into your starter, and new ones dominate or die off.

Because of this diversity, each sourdough starter is unique and has its own microbe organisms, smell, look and personality and, therefore, will behave differently in baking.

How extraordinary is the science behind a sourdough starter!

How to make a sourdough starter

Angeliki

Making your very own sourdough starter isn't hard. What you need is water, unbleached whole grain flour and patience. That's all! At the end of the process, you will have your very own active sourdough starter to make anything your heart desires, from cakes to pancakes, crackers and rustic sourdough bread, bagels, focaccia and much more.

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 8

Course Ferments and Preserves, Sourdough

Servings

Ingredients

300 g whole wheat flour
300 g of water at room temperature (filtered water is best)

Instructions

Day 1: in a clean glass jar, place 50g of water with 50g of whole wheat flour and mix well. Partially close the lid or cover it with a towel and leave it on your kitchen bench.
Day 2: do not do anything today; just let it do its magic!
Day 3: using your scales, weigh out 50g from the starter to another clean glass jar and feed this with 50g of water and 50g of whole wheat flour. Mix well and leave it on your kitchen bench.
The rest of the sourdough starter left in the original jar, called discard, can be thrown away or left in the jar and stored in the fridge.
I don't like throwing away the discard; instead, I collect it in a glass jar stored in the refrigerator and use it for baking crackers, waffles, etc. There are plenty of recipes online using sourdough discard.
Day 4, 5, 6, 7: using your scales, weigh out 50g from the starter to another clean glass jar and feed this with 50g of water and 50g of whole wheat flour. Mix well and leave it on your kitchen bench.
What's left in the jar can be added to the discard jar and kept in the fridge.
Day 8: you will have seen lots of activity in your sourdough culture by now. Your sourdough starter is ready if it doubles in size within 1-4 hours from the time you feed it. It should be airy and bubbly and have a pleasant sour smell.
Sometimes a sourdough starter can take up to two weeks to fully develop, so give it some time. If you don't see much activity after 8 days, continue feeding it for couple more days.
You can also feed your starter twice a day, morning and night, using the same flour ratio to water.
Every culture is unique and reacts differently depending on the environment it is prepared in and the flour used. So do not be disappointed if your starter takes longer than normal to make.
Bake your first sourdough bread when your sourdough starter is ready to go!

Notes

1. Remember to use the sourdough started when it’s fully active and bubbly. Only then you will achieve the best results in your baking. This is an important point to remember.

A good way to check if your sourdough starter is ready to use is to place a rubber band around the jar to the level it is at the time of feeding. This way, it will be easier to see the starter’s growth and know if your starter is active enough and has multiplied after a few hours.

Another way to test if your starter is ready is to do the float test. Once you see that your starter has doubled in size, drop a small dollop of starter into a glass of water, and if it floats to the top, it means it is ready to use.

2. When you finish developing your starter, you have two options. You can store it in the fridge, feed it once a week, or if you bake regularly, leave it on your kitchen bench and feed it daily.

Keyword sourdough starter

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