Sourdough bread is AMAZING. The flavor, the texture, the smell… The best thing about sourdough bread is that it is easy to make a sourdough starter from scratch.
All it takes is patience and a little know-how to make a sourdough starter. Even then, the only real trick to making a great loaf of bread is to make sure that your starter is happily bubbling away before you bake with it.
Here is everything you need to know about making and maintaining a sourdough starter. There is a recipe for a homemade starter at the bottom of the post, but I recommend reading the whole post.
1. Creating a Sourdough Starter from Scratch
Though lots of places sell sourdough starters, within 24 to 48 hours your local strains of yeast and bacteria will have taken over the party. So it’s not worth spending money on a particular heirloom starter.
The best way to get a healthy starter is to create it from scratch and take a few weeks to build it up. By creating a good starter you will actually be improving the strains of wild yeast and bacteria in the air of your home.
Not only are the wild yeasts and bacteria perfect for baking bread, but they’ll also give you a good dose of probiotics for your skin and in your lungs!
See the bottom of the post for a simple recipe for making a traditional sourdough starter.
2. How to Feed Your Sourdough Starter
Feed your culture equal parts of water and flour. It is best to do this by weight (eg. 1 oz culture will eat approximately 1 oz flour and 1 oz water per day.)
However, you can also guestimate and do it by volume, adding flour until it is the consistency of a thickened sauce.
Sourdough starter is extremely flexible and forgiving. We never measure when we feed our sourdough starter and we’ve been baking bread with it since the early 2000s.
If you keep your sourdough at room temperature it will need to be fed at least every 24 hours to keep bubbling happily. In the refrigerator, it will need to eat at least once every 5 days.
If you plan on making bread regularly, then it’s a good idea to treat your starter like a pet and feed it regularly. Then it will be healthy and ready whenever you want to bake bread.
3. What is Sourdough Hooch
You can leave the starter in your fridge for up to a month without feeding. However, it will develop a brown liquid on top. This is called hooch, and it needs to be poured off before you start feeding it again.
It will take a few feedings to make your starter “happy again” but it will revive!
Here’s what the sourdough hooch looks like after a few weeks in the fridge. It can even get darker than this and still be fine to use.
If you aren’t making sourdough bread monthly, then I recommend making your culture from scratch each time. Once you’ve built up the right strains of yeast in the air of your home, it usually only takes 3-5 days to create a starter from scratch.
And that happens to be the same amount of time it would take to revive an unhappy starter.
4. Sourdough Discard
I’ve never discarded sourdough starter…
Never…
Ever…
It seems like a huge waste, and I’m really not sure why sourdough discard is a thing.
Here is how you can avoid throwing away sourdough starter:
- Store your starter in the fridge when you’re not baking to slow down the fermentation.
- Use your excess starter to make things like pancakes, granola bars, or sourdough cobbler.
- If you still have too much starter then make these sourdough buns which use 2 cups of starter.
5. Fun Sourdough Facts
Who wouldn’t love some fun facts about sourdough starter? Here’s a bit of history and flavor to think about when baking your first loaf of bread.
- The flavor and properties of your sourdough are based on the local strains of yeast and bacteria. This variability in yeast influences the flavor and leavening time, which is why every region of the world has its own type of bread.
- Some areas have famous strains (Montreal, San Francisco) but most places should be able to make a decent sourdough starter. However, air pollution may result in a bad tasting or underactive culture. In that case, I recommend following a different method to make a quick and easy sourdough starter instead.
- Sourdough has a long history. It is even depicted in the artwork of ancient Egypt!
- Before the advent of modern heating, people in northern climates used to keep their sourdough warm in the winter by taking it into bed with them.
How to Make Sourdough Starter From Scratch
It’s easy to make a healthy sourdough starter from scratch. All it takes is patience and a little know-how. Here is everything you need to know to make a bubbling and delicious sourdough starter.
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Total Time: 5 minutes
- Yield: Approximately 1/2 cup 1x
- Category: Bread
- Method: Sourdough
- Cuisine: Traditional
- Diet: Vegan
Ingredients
- 1 oz flour (approx. 3 Tbsp)
- 1 oz chlorine-free water (1.5 Tbsp)
- Additional flour and water as needed, see notes
Instructions
- Make sure to use flour that doesn’t contain any additives and beware of bread flour. The additives do not help catch and maintain a sourdough starter. It’s best if you can find plain milled flour.
- Create your starter by mixing the flour and water in a glass container. Mix it with a fork and loosely cover with a tea towel and leave it in a warm spot. (Above the fridge works well).
- Check the starter twice a day and mix vigorously with a fork to bring air into the mixture. It should start forming bubbles within 2 to 7 days (depending on your air quality, see above for details).
- Once it has started to smell sour and is bubbling, then you need to feed the starter daily. For the first feeding add 2 oz (6 Tbsp) of flour and 2 oz (3 Tbsp) of water and mix vigorously to incorporate air.
- Keep feeding the starter daily (see section above for details). Within 4-5 days, of feeding, you should have an active, bubbling culture. That means you are ready to bake bread!
Notes
- If you end up baking a lot of bread, then I recommend getting a digital scale
that has a zeroing function to make feeding easy.
- The exact ratio of water to flour will depend on whether you’re using white, spelt, rye, etc. The goal is to make a thick, fully hydrated mix, but it shouldn’t be stiff. It will become more liquidy as the yeasts and lactic bacteria start to break down the starches. However, feel free to adjust the water to flour ratio as necessary.
- I don’t believe in wasting sourdough starter, which is why I only start feeding my starter AFTER it has started to bubble. See the section above for information on how to feed your sourdough starter and avoid sourdough discard.
that has a zeroing function to make feeding easy.Keywords: feeding, hooch, vegan, dairy free, egg free, simple, easy, homemade, discard, no discard, probiotic
I have tried to make starter several times and never successfully.
I like the simplicity of your recipe. I also like the small amounts of flour we start out with so I don’t have to discard so much.
In fact, you don’t discard at all. Does this come later when making the bread?
What’s your next step?
There isn’t any discarding with this recipe. 🙂 It seems like a waste. If you are having problems developing a starter, make sure you’re using unfiltered water. The other issue is if your house is too “clean”, like if your air is filtered with a hepe filter then you won’t have the free-range yeasts to culture your sourdough. Here’s the next step: https://www.fermentingforfoodies.com/archives/111 Then just choose a recipe! https://www.fermentingforfoodies.com/sourdough
Does it matter what type of flour you use? Whole wheat? All purpose?
I’ve used white, wholewheat and rye. When using rye or wholewheat you may need to add a little extra water, or do it by weight. It doesn’t really matter. But if it’s your first time it may take a while to catch your sourdough. However, the more you make it, the easier it will be, because you’ll have more of the right types of yeast and bacteria in your home.
Starting a starter always seemed more daunting to me than it really is. I had many failures where I was on a schedule and thought that if I had a little bit of bubbliness after 5 or 6 days, I could stick to my bread making schedule and bake. I thought that there was something wrong with my baking technique. This last time, I kept my starter going for 3 weeks. The first couple of bakes out of it I did weren’t that great, but by the end of the 3rd week, I made a loaf that was the best I ever had, no add’l yeast boost, just pure sourdough. It was gorgeous! And I noticed that the starter was at a completely different level of bubbliness than the previous week. Not just a few bubbles here and there, but 8 hours after feeding, it had grown to around double volume. The bread was toothy and chewey. There’s nothing like a good sourdough, but I’ve learned my lesson: don’t bake with it until it’s well and ready, there are no shortcuts!
★★★★★
Great! An active starter really is key to good sourdough.
Hi there I have a starter 150 years old they said anyways I dried it and brought it back to life it was doing every thing I thought was right but when I made my sour dough it didn’t rise ,I left it in my oven with light on but maybe got to warm would that be the reason not sure wha5 do do 8 did put the fridge I would like to tr6 it again and see what happened as iam just new to this sour dough baking
Thanks Val
It sounds like you might need to spend a week feeding your sourdough starter. Feed it a bit of flour and water every morning, and mix it with a fork twice a day. After 5-7 days it should be back to bubbling. Good luck!
Hi, I made a started but I used a small container. Can I remove it and put it in a larger container? And can I make a starter while the lid is closed or do I have to put a cloth on the container?
Feel free to move your starter to a larger container. You will need to make it with a cloth, not a lid, because sourdough is really based on the natural yeast and bacterial cultures in your home. They are really what is culturing your flour.
If it’s your first time, it can take extra time to get everything bubbling, because you need to get the culture going in your flour and the air of your home. Good luck!
Ekşi mayayı buzdolabından çıkardıktan sonra beslemek için ne kadar zaman geçmesi gerekiyor.?
Ekşi mayayı tekrar buzdolabına koyduğumuzda beslemeli miyiz?
I usually pull the sourdough out of the fridge every 2 weeks for a full feeding and to bake with it. Otherwise, it just isn’t vigorous. If you want to give it a quick feed, then just add flour and water and keep it in the fridge. I also always give my sourdough a good feeding before I put it back in the fridge (after using it). Enjoy!
Great site that I just came upon while searching for info on cheese making. I’m quite new to cheese making. On the other hand, I have been working with sourdough for quite a while now. Being a very lazy person, I have devised a way to keep my mother culture without having to feed it regularly. Here’s how I proceed. First, build a very robust mother culture (I use organic sifted whole wheat flour, stone ground rye, water, sprinkle of sea salt). Then rub in as much of additional whole wheat & rye as needed to provide a dry mix of sourdough culture. No water, just flours (roughly 2/3 whole wheat to 1/3 rye). Refrigerate the mix that no longer requires feeding & will keep a fairly long time. The longest that I’ve gone is 3 months. Whenever you need to bake something, just remove some of the mix & feed it three to four times over a 24hr to 48hr period until you get a robust culture. The rest remains in the fridge until there is only a small portion left. That portion is then used to start a new batch of dry mother culture. I hope some of your readers find this helpful. Cheers!
Interesting… I’ve never heard of storing sourdough that way. I’ll have to try it out sometime. Thanks for sharing!
My pleasure! This is where I got my inspiration:
“Every week after he is done mixing, Dave takes two hundred grams of ripe starter, doubles its weight in flour and works it until it has the consistency of bread crumbs. Then he lets it sit in the walk-in cooler for six days. The following week when he needs the starter again, he sifts out the flour from the little clumps of sourdough, adds enough water to the chunks of starter to make them mushy (which takes one hour), then adds back the flour he has just sifted. That constitutes the first feed. He then lets the starter ferment overnight for ten to twelve hours at room temperature (which usually means the high 70s), feeds it again and lets it ferment four and a half hours and feeds it again. This time the fermentation is really quick (only three hours). The last build is pretty mild.”
Thanks for sharing! I had to delete the URL or my spam filter wouldn’t let it post. Cheers!
Hi, I love your website! This is my first time making a starter. What should the consistency be when I put the 1 oz of oat flour with 1 oz of water? Mine is thick and slightly hard to stir. It is sticky and thick. Should I add more water? I started it yesterday, is it ok to make adjustments?
Sourdough is really forgiving. What matters the most is the wild yeasts in your indoor air. An exact ratio of flour to water isn’t necessary, and it’s fine to adjust as you go along. Oat flour really absorbs a lot of water compared to buckwheat and other GF grains. So I would add a bit more water. Aim for a muffin batter consistency. Good luck!
Can I cover the starter with a lid once it’s in the fridge?
Yes! Best if you use an air-tight lid in the fridge so it doesn’t mix with fridge smells. Enjoy!
Excellent info on starters. There is very little info out there on oat starters.
Great! Oat is my favorite because it is so naturally sticky and flavorful. I find rice a bit bland. 🙂