Simple Sourdough Starter
I am going to teach you an easy no fuss way to make a sourdough starter. It doesn’t have to be scary or complicated and you don’t have to be an expert to have a sourdough starter and bake with it. You just have to be willing to try.
What is a Sourdough Starter?
Sourdough is an ancient way of making homemade bread rise. It uses two simple ingredients, flour and water to ferment and grow good healthy, gut friendly bacteria. This was the was the way bread was baked when there was no dry-active yeast at the store. Not that I don’t enjoys using the dry-active yeast for bread baking. It is often more convenient and less tedious to handle. However, the health benefits of homemade sourdough bread are what is making it so attractive to everyone these days.
Sourdough starters have been handed down from generation to generation. How cool is that? You can even dehydrate a sourdough starter to keep in storage if you wanted.
One thing to know about sourdough starter and how it differs from store bought bread is that it is lower in phytic acid which makes it easier to digest.
So, if you’ve ever noticed grains don’t spoil when you leave them out. Examples of grains are cornmeal, oatmeal, whole wheat flour, etc. The reason they don’t spoil is because the grain is covered in this phytic acid. This is what is so hard for our bodies to breakdown and digest. Phytic acid is something that covers the grain made into flour. During the fermentation process of your sourdough starter the phytic acid is broken down for you making sourdough bread easier to digest.
Essentially, you’re using good bacteria from your environment to capture wild yeast and through the fermentation process. This is when the starter will expand and make the bread rise. You can use a sourdough starter in place of yeast in order to make your bread rise.
How to Make Your Own Sourdough Starter
Step 1: Grab a clean jar and some unbleached, bread flour or all-purpose. You want to have some measuring cups and access to non-chlorinated water. Clorine in the water will kill the starter making it no good.
Step 2: Add flour and water into the jar you’ve chosen. A good rule is to try and do a 1:1 ratio of flour, water and starter each time you feed. Mine ends up being a little more flour than water most times.
–> Day 1: Add 25 g or about 4 tsp of flour (unbleached) to a glass jar and 25 g of warm (not hot) water to the jar. Mix well until you don’t see any more flour. Cover loosely with a towel or lid and let it sit for 24 + hours on your countertop. You’re going for a thick pancake consistency.
**NOTE: Don’t be discouraged if the baby starter doesn’t have the bubbles after 24 hours. Let it sit longer and revisit before feeding again.
–> Day 2: Check on starter after the 24-hour mark. If you see small bubbles in the top, this is a good sign! You want to go ahead and feed it again using the same measurements as before. 25 g of flour and 25 g (non-chlorinated) water. Cover loosely with towel or lid and let sit for another 24 hours on the countertop.
Feeding Schedule For Established Starter
–> Day 3: You should see some bubbles by this point and that means a good starter is forming. Now, if you feed it like you did before you’d have too much starter to handle (especially since it isn’t ready to bake with yet). So, what you’ll do at this point is discard half of the starter in your jar. Discarding half of the starter every time you feed is important, so you don’t acquire an overabundance of sourdough starter and helps keep the starter happy, healthy and strong. You’ll continue to discard half of the starter any time you are ready to feed it from this point on.
–> Days 4-7: continue on discarding and feeding starter until it rises and doubles in size. When you see it consistently rising and falling and it floats in water, then your starter is ready to bake with!
*For best results feed at or around the same time every day to better understand your starter and help promote healthy growth for the sourdough starter.
*If you aren’t using to bake a good idea is to discard half, feed it, put an airtight lid on and place in the fridge until ready to use.
*If your sourdough starter seems sluggish, you’ll need to change up the feeding ratio to a 1:2:2 (starter:flour:water) to give it a boost. Every once in a while, you could even do a 1:4:4 ratio but not as often as the other two ratios.
Notes On Adjusting Feedings
Some use more or less of flour and water and what is most important is the ratio is about even. If you didn’t want to use so much flour and water to start adjust it to your needs! What is listed above is a normal feeding schedule for a healthy starter.
Understanding Sourdough Discard
Why do we need to worry about discarding and when to discard the sourdough starter? The reason you discard the starter is do when it is active and is rising up the sides of the jar it won’t overflow and make a huge mess. Think about it this way if you aren’t continuously baking with your sourdough starter but you are continuing to feed it regularly, you’ll be overfilling your jar of sourdough starter.
A good way to make good use of sourdough discard is to use it in recipes. Pancakes, homemade crackers, sourdough discard brownies, sourdough discard biscuits, etc.
How Long Until My Sourdough Starter Is Ready?
This is such a simple and easy process but most of the time people are intimidated by sourdough and end up never even trying. Well, I’m here to tell you and through my own experiences you will have failures learning and trying recipes out with your new sourdough starter but what matters is how you carry on through the failures and what you learn from it. Don’t be discouraged, pick back up and try again. You can totally do this!
To know when the sourdough starter is strong enough to bake with is seeing it rise or double a few hours after feeding it (about 4-5 hours after feeding). Keep in mind the warmer your house the quicker it will rise and the cooler the slower it will rise. You can also do the water float test. Add a small amount of starter to a clear glass of water. If it floats on the top, then that’s a good indication that it is strong enough to make the bread rise. If the starter sinks to the bottom of the glass, then it isn’t ready. I have heard mixed reviews on this, but it is worth a try. Doubling in size and lots of bubbles is a sure way to know when it’s strong enough to bake with.
Make sure you have fed your starter for a consistent 7 days at least before trying to bake with it. I know it will be hard to do because you are so anxious to bake with your new sourdough starter. Let it build that good bacteria over time and you’ll have some beautiful loaves in your kitchen soon. Trust me it is well worth the wait!
One way to tell if the sourdough starter is ready is if it smells sour. Not like a sour egg smell but like sourdough bread smell.
Choosing Flour for Your Sourdough Starter
There is something to understand about different “all purpose” flours. Flours have different amount of protein, and the amount of protein is important for the gluten structures, which gives baked goods their structure and texture.
For a bread like sourdough, you want a flour with more protein. This is going to be bread flour. It is from a harder wheat berry than all-purpose flour. Bread flour is a great choice for baked goods like bagels, sourdough, anything you have to knead. Kneading helps build gluten structure in bread. A bread flour wouldn’t be a good choice for things that are considered “light and fluffy” like pancakes.
I tried to use all-purpose flour for my sourdough bread it just wouldn’t hold my structure as well as I would like. Now, don’t freak out if you’ve started your sourdough starter with all-purpose flour. You can intermix flour and it should be just fine and before long you can transition completely to a bread flour of your choice.
Tips and Tricks for Easy & Simple Sourdough Starter
Some tips I’d like to share from my sourdough starter journey are these:
As a beginner it can be frustrating to see nothing happening with the flour and water you’ve put together. I recommend using a rubber band around the jar to see if the starter rises in the jar. Place the rubber band around the top of the starter and come back in a few hours and look to see if it has grown above the band, you placed there. You can also use a dry erase marker I find to be helpful and mark with time stamps (as shown below) to see if there has been any rise to your starter.
Sometimes to give this easy and simple sourdough starter recipe a boost you can feed it twice a day about 12 hours apart.
Another way to boost the growth and activity within the sourdough starter is to feed it with whole wheat flour. Others have had good success with this and for the starter I have the all-purpose flour has worked just fine.
For a quicker rise and a more active starter. Place your freshly fed sourdough starter in the oven with JUST the oven light on. It will warm then inside of the oven to get the yeast going. This is what you want before bread baking.
NOTE: If you aren’t baking with it or don’t want to continue feedings regularly place the sourdough starter in the refrigerator to slow the fermentation process. You will take it out of the fridge about 12 hours before baking and feed it.
If a grey/dark liquid forms on top of your sourdough starter it is completely normal. It’s called hooch and means your sourdough starter is just hungry and needs to be fed. Before feeding, pour the hooch off the top and continue on with feeding.
Your Sourdough Starter Journey
Everyone’s journey with sourdough is different and it can be hard when we compare ourselves to others. Do what will suit you and our family. This is a great thing to start and add to your little homestead. Knowing how to bake bread is a true-life skill that everyone should know how to master.
You can turn it into a full time hobby or just as you and your family need it kind of thing. Totally up to you.
Happy Baking!
Trying to start a sourdough starter and you were recommended. I am pretty sure I remember when you were born and I have known your mom and dad my whole life. Thanks
That’s awesome! I wish you all the luck with your sourdough starter and I am here for any questions. Thanks for visiting and supporting my page! So sweet 🙂
I am still on starter. I’m at day 6 but it smells almost like an alcohol smell but is doubling in size after feeding. It doesn’t smell bad or sour just a different smell.
An alcohol smell is normal and nothing to be concerned about just at different stages in the fermentation you’ll have this smell. It won’t smell like that once the starter is mature. Sometimes that can be a sign it is hungry and may need a little more flour too. Be sure you are using non-chlorinated water. 🙂