Making sourdough starter is easy but it takes time and care. It is basically growing wild yeast and lactobacillus (a good bacteria used in the food industry) that are already present in the flour. With the adequate temperature and humidity and using very basic ingredients and tools, you will be able to create your own starter at home within one week. Flour and water. A glass jar, a spatula and a kitchen scale. If you don’t have a kitchen scale, you can use measurement cups instead.
Recipe
Tip 1: This recipe for sourdough starter is for a 100% hydration starter. There are many different recipes with different levels of hydration. You can always start with 100% and later reduce it if you want.
How much time do you need?
Preparation time: 15 minutes per day (hands on time)
Resting time: 6-7 days with intervals of 24 hours after each feeding, them 8 to 12 hours after Day 7 approx.
Total time: 7-10 days
Material:
Kitchen scale
Spatula
500 ml glass jars
Spoons
Basic Ingredients:
Bread flour (unbleached) or wholemeal flour, up to 1kg.
Water, at room temperature
Enhance your sourdough starter with these ingredients: I suggest that you only try these once you have achieved a basic starter by using plain or whole meal flour + just water. Trust me, just water and flour works =)
Other flour options: enriched wholemeal flour, organic flour (this one works really well!!), rye flour (a bit expensive though), mix of organic flours. These are rich flours and will produce a different, and sometimes better starter, but they are more expensive than plain white/wholemeal flour.
Other optional ingredients: ¼ teaspoon of sugar, ¼ teaspoon of honey, diluted fruit water, drained raisins water. These high sugary products will boost the yeast and other microorganisms fermentation.
Filtered water (chlorine free) or mineral bottled water.
Heads up!: If you have a kitchen scale, weight the glass jar and take note of the weight. It will help you to save time when feeding your starter as you will need to discard half of it each time. Either you transfer the part you want to feed to a new jar, or discard half of the starter from the original jar. Knowing the weight of the jar makes this second option easier.
Example: jar weights 200grs. Jar plus starter are weighting 256 grs. You know you have to scoop out starter until you reach 228 grs. That way, you keep half of the total, 28 grs.
Method:
Day 1:
Combine 30 g (1⁄4 cup) of white flour and 30 g (1⁄8 cup) of water in a medium jar. Mix well with a spoon until smooth. The consistency will be sticky and the texture a bit granny. Using a spatula, stir down and clean the sides. Cover the jar with plastic wrap or a lid (do not close it tight), and let it rest at room temperature, at about 24-30 degrees C for 24 hours. The optimal temperature is 25 degrees C. Set an iterative alarm on your mobile for the following days so you don’t forget to check it =)
Pictures: New Starter on Day 1. Just mixing flour and water. Just a wet dough ball, not smelly at all.
Note: Every time I say room temperature, I am referring to 25 degrees C, even though yeast and the bacteria will happily grow at any temperature between 25-35 degrees C, 25 is ideal. 30 is better but leads to a good environment for other microorganisms to grow, some of them not too desirable. Go for 30 degrees only when you have an active and strong starter but nor for creating it. if you go above 35 degrees, the yeast will not survive.
Tip: Always use perfectly clean utensils, at all steps of the process and while maintaining your starter. As you are wanting to create wild yeast and bacteria (lactobacillus), you have to minimise the risk of growing ‘undesirable’ microorganisms.
This is the basic recipe but it’s important that you use unbleached flour. Nowadays commercial flours undergo long industrialised processes that clean the flour but also kill all the microorganisms naturally present on it. The flour contains many types of natural yeast and lactobacillus bacteria. They are in dormant state as their environment is dry but with the addition of water and food contained in the same flour, plus the right temperature, they’ll sure wake up 😊
Tip 2: I strongly recommend using regular wholemeal flour to prepare a sourdough starter. It’s much richer than plain white flour and in my case, the results where straight forward and I had a sourdough starter in just 5 days. While with white flour, it took me several weeks to create a strong and healthy sourdough starter.
Tip 3: It’s the middle of winter and need a warm spot? Use the oven turned off with the light on. Cover the glass jar with a kitchen towel and place in the oven, far away from the light, 20-25cm away from the light the temperature is about 25 degrees C. Too close to the light, the temperature will reach almost 30 degrees C.
Day 2:
Do you see any bubbles on the surface of the started, and maybe it has increased in size? That’s a good sign! There is definitely something going on. You have created the right environment for the microorganisms to wake up and start fermenting (living!) . See picture of Day 2 of the Wholemeal Starter I made recently. The little piece of dough started releasing fluids and it seems more sticky.
Picture: New starter on Day 2. The ball started like decomposing. It was sticky and I could see bubbles and some fluids which were the result of some microorganisms fermentation activity.
It’s also okay if you don’t see anything; the bubbles might have appeared and dissolved before you checked your starter or while you were sleeping.
Many people prefer to do the first feeding on Day 2, but I have had better results doing the first feeding on the third day. I suggest you let it rest at room temperature for another 24 hours.
Heads up! Have you got any light brown liquid in your starter?
At any time of the process, brown liquid might appear on top of the starter or in the middle. This liquid is called “hooch” and is an indicator that the microorganisms have been eating and as a result of that, they have thrown some residues to the environment… dew!, I know! But they are living organisms and the food they take has to go somewhere! =) Long story short, your starter is ready for its feeding. It’s best to pour off the residual liquid, along with any discoloured starter present.
You may also note a very strong smell, similar to alcohol or acetone, all these products are also residues of the natural fermentation process that the microorganisms do. This absolutely is normal.
Tip 4: Please do not be alarmed about the presence of hooch (light brown liquid). You’ll see it regularly. Your starter is not dying.
Day 3:
It’s time to start feeding your starter. Remove and discard approximately half of your starter from the jar. It’s important you do this and you continue doing so for the following days as you will be basically applying ‘natural selection’ and allowing the stronger and healthier yeast and lactobacillus to grow and they need to have enough space to multiply. You are looking for the strongest strains.
Add 60 g (1⁄2 cup) of flour and 60 g (1/4 cup) of water. Mix with a spoon until smooth and clean the sides using a spatula. The texture will be more viscous and stickier than on Day 1. Cover with the lid (loosely), and let rest at room temperature for another 24 hours.
See picture below of Day 3 of the wholemeal starter I made recently. I neglected for a couple of hours at about 27 degrees Celcius and a layer of white mould formed at the top of the starter. It's not here in the pictures though. If that happens to you, carefully remove them and transfer fresh starter from the the bottom of the jar into a new and clean jar and feed normally. The enviroment will keep becoming more acidic and the molds will go away (they can't survive in such an acidic enviroment)
Pictures: New Starter on Day 3. It started bubbling very nicely and it was able to double in a long 8-10 hours.
Days 4, 5, 6 and 7:
Repeat the feeding process detailed on Day 3. Remove and discard half of the starter, and feed it with 60 g (1⁄2 cup) of all-purpose flour and 60 g (1/4 cup) of water.
From day 4 onwards you should note that your starter begins to rise after a few hours of being feed. It raises and then it falls down. You will be able to see this on the sides of the jar (if you have cleaned it before with the spatula =) It is becoming a living mass.
The smell will change and it will become sour and pungent. You will also start seeing bubbles in the middle of the mass. It will look like a sponge and the consistency should be fluffy. The pictures below show the regular feeding and raising process of a starter that is already alive and active.
On Day 7 to 10, your starter should be able to double or triple in size in 4 hours at about 25-28 degrees Celcius. Below there is a picture of my starter on Day 10. After Day 7, I started feeding it twice a day (every 12 hours) and closer to Day 10, I fed it every 5 hours to make sure it was strong enough to double in 4 hours.
The consistency should be sticky and viscous. See picture below.
Picture: A new born starter. Made of organic wholemeal flour. It took me10 days to get it active and strong before I could use it in baking.
Tip 5: The smell should not be like bad milk or bad yogurt, nothing like that at all. Always check for strange colouring: green, yellow, pink… they are a bad sign. Also, if you don’t see any activity after 2-3 days, no bubbles at all, sadly, your started has passed away. You will need to discard it a start over.
Feeding your starter: See pictures below.
Is your starter ready?
There are several signs that will tell you when your starter is ready to be used to make bread.
These are my top 5:
1. The starter will grow in size and it will double or triple in 4-5 hours at room temperature. The edge in the surface must be rounded and it should not have started falling down or colapsing. See picture below.
2. The appearance will be spongy, full of bubbles.
3. The smell should be sour, like fermented raw bread before going into the oven; not pungent.
4. If you keep it in the fridge in dormant state, you’ll see that it starts bubbling a bit as soon as it reaches room temperature. Almost whispering: I’m here, and I’m hungry!
5. The floating test: 4 hours post feeding, scoop on a teaspoon of starter and gently drop it in a glass of water. Does it float? Then it’s time to start making homemade bread! 😊
Now you have to name it! Name it with a funny, distinctive name. Mine, which was born in April 2020, was named Vincent Van Dough 😊 Yep, I have always been a big fan of Van Gogh’s paints! The on the tall jar.
And I've got another born in August which I named Isadora (the one in the chubby jar., first picture of this article.
The 2 pictures show a starter that is on its optimun point and ready to be used.
Picture: Active starter. The edge in the surface must be rounded and it should not have started falling down or colapsing.
Picture: Active starter. bubbly, spongy and sticky.
Picture: Three active starters: the one in the left is made of rye flour, middle one is made of wholemeal and the one in the right is a sample of the second one that I fed with white flour. You can absolutely use any type of starter with any type of flour to make any type of bread =) It does not matter what your starter is made of. What matters is how much you use and how strong and resilient the start is.
How to maintain your sourdough starter?
Your starter is now alive and it will need regular discarding and feeding. Otherwise, it will die. I opt for different options to maintain my starter and also to preserve a few backups in case it dies. You may think, well, if it dies, I can make another one. The short answer is yes. However, while you familiarise yourself with the process of maintaining a starter and you use it for baking, you may get to the point of obtaining a really good starter and you will become fond of it. If you create a new one, it will be different. It will not be the same, it could be better, it could be worse, but not the same. When you have obtained a super active and resilient starter, a strong strain, you are going to love it! A well-fed and well-maintained starter can live for years and even centuries.
Here you go, four different ways to maintain your starter:
Daily fed starter: if you plan to bake every day, it’s better if you keep your starter at room temperature. Feed it every 4-6 hours for a very active starter. Or every 6-12 hours keeping in mind that you may starve it a bit and that way, it will become more acid.
Weekly fed: if you plan to bake once a week, it’s best to keep your starter in the fridge (2-8 degree C). You will save flour, time and in the end, money! This is my preferred one. The yeast and bacteria go into dormant state and slows down their fermentation process. They sleep =) I keep my starter in the fridge. The day I am ready to bake (usually day 6-8 after the last feeding), I take my starter out of the fridge, let it reach room temperature (takes about 2 hours) and then I feed it normally. After 4 hours is ready to be used. Keep in mind to create enough starter for your recipe plus for your backup. Don’t use it all =) Take the amount you need for your recipe and put the rest back in the fridge. Feed again in one week =)
Freeze it: keeping the starter in the fridge is not very practical as you may need to feed it several times to wake it up and to help it recover strength. The frozen state is good for backups. I have a backup of my starter in the freezer, just in case something goes wrong and I lose my current strain. Take it out of the freezer, let it melt. It’s better if you place in the fridge for one day before placing it at room temperature. Once it’s been at room temperature for 2 hours, feed it at normal schedule for several round until it doubles in 4-5 hours.
Desiccate it: similar to the frozen option, it’s a backup option and you will need to feed it several times before it’s active again. Add a couple of tablespoons of desiccated starter and dissolve in water (2 in 1: 2 tbsp starter in 1 tbsp water). Let it hydrate for 1 hour and check the hydration. Add more starter and water as needed. Feed at normal schedule until it doubles in 4-5 hours. I also have a backup of Vincent in my pantry, as desiccated starter. See picture below.
Picture: Dessicated starter. It can be stored at room temperature for up to a year. Great for backup =)
Tip 6: If you need to use a big batch of starter, instead of discarding half of it when feeding it, divide it into two jars and feed the two halves separately. Careful here, if you don’t need that much, only feed one half and use the other half for other recipes. There are countless recipes to use starter discard (discard doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to put in the trash bin =)
Tip 7: Both keeping at room temperature or in the fridge, will require regular feedings and that will help to keep improving your yeast and lactobacillus strains. The starter will become stronger week after week...
Picture: Active starter ready to use n beaking. Spongy and sticky.
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