The Ultimate Guide to Feeding Your Sourdough Starter: Tips and Tricks for a Happy, Healthy Culture
I am beyond excited to share all I know about sourdough and I'm starting with the starter! I highly recommend either getting some starter from a friend or buying one from me. When I first started working with sourdough I attempted to make my own starter and while I know many people who have been successful with this, I failed miserably. I think it's extra difficult to do when you have never worked with a starter before.
What is sourdough starter?
A sourdough starter is a living culture of yeast and bacteria that is used to leaven bread dough. In other words, it's what makes the bread rise. The yeast and bacteria are actually ALIVE and they eat the flour and water which creates air bubbles that make beautiful bread.
What ingredients do I need?
Organic Flour (I use all-purpose flour, but your starter can be fed all different kinds of flour. It's best to stick with the type of flour it's accustomed to being fed)
Filtered Water
Sourdough Starter
What tools do I need?
How do I feed my sourdough starter?
Put the jar of unfed starter on the scale and zero it out.
Add water to the jar that's about the same amount as the starter that's already in the jar. This does not have to be exact. If you are a person that must be exact (I see you LOL) then you can measure out the starter and at the same amount of water. Stir this up. I usually use a chopstick for this.
Next, at the same amount of flour. So! If you added 100 grams of water, you should add 100 grams of flour. This puts your starter at 100% hydration. You will see this on recipes all the time. They will ask for starter at 100% hydration.
Stir this all up! Then leave on the counter with the lid loose on top. In anywhere from 6-12 hours this should have doubled in size and will be very bubbly. This now considered active starter and you are ready to bake!
What do I do next?
Once your starter is active, you can either bake with it or seal it and put it in the refrigerator. If it's in the refrigerator, you only need to feed it once a week. This means you follow the same process above. If you leave it on the counter, you need to feed it daily.
If you do not use your starter, you will want to discard some of the starter before feeding it. The reason we do this is because the starter will be large because you didn't use it and so you will need to feed it a lot. You never HAVE to discard starter... you just need to think about how large you want it to be.
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