Who wants to make a blob of guck that turns into bread?! I know. Everyone does. I mean, it's the year of Coronavirus where the two most popular things in the world are baking sourdough bread and thinking about baking sourdough bread. To do it, you need to know how to make sourdough starter.
If you already have sourdough starter and want to dry it (to preserve it) I have full instructions on how to dry sourdough starter here.
Sourdough starter hit its stride in the year ohhhhh 1500 BC or so. The Egyptians were all over it. For thousands of years it was the only way to make bread. Then something horrifying happened - progress.
With the invention of instant commercial yeast by Louis Pasteur in the 1800s, sourdough starter was abandoned by bakers.
Commercial yeast gave predictable results, was easier to use and a lot faster than the homemade levain people had been using for centuries. All but the most discriminating of bakers (the French) switched to using the commercial yeast.
What breads made with commercial yeast didn't have was the flavour of bread made with the traditional sourdough starter. But bakers were willing to give that taste up in exchange for convenience.
100 years after the invention of commercial yeast, around the 1980s, the popularity of sourdough starters began to rise again before levelling out in the 1990s.
Nobody (except every infectious disease expert around the world, plus that guy who made the movie Pandemic) could have predicted what would happen in the spring of 2020.
The entire world would shut down. And together we were alone.
Collectively, without prompting, the world knew what to do. We would bake bread.
The word "bread" spiked to an all time high in Google searches. This was partly because everyone locked inside their homes wanted to do and eat something that was comforting. What's more comforting than the smell of freshly baked bread and a warm hunk of it slathered in butter.
Even more explosive were the results for sourdough starter a week later when everyone started to realize yeast was suddenly sold out everywhere.
Overnight, sourdough starter and bread became the "it" thing. Nothing like this had happened since the Cabbage Patch doll riots of 1983.
Winter is coming again, the virus is in its second wave almost everywhere and even though you might not be in lock down, the safest place for you to be is at home.
So.
Who wants to make sourdough starter?
If you were alive and coherent in the 1980's you might remember the fad with people passing around a gross glop of dirty looking glue. You were supposed to take a bit out and pass along the rest to a bunch of unsuspecting friends. It was like a chain letter but with if someone accidentally sneezed on it, you were going to eat it. Blech.
THAT was sourdough starter.
Sourdough starters have been known to be passed on from generation to generation.
It's a mixture of flour and water that's been left to ferment and turn into liquid yeast. It does this by "catching" wild yeast that's in the air.
Sourdough starter, which makes bread rise, tastes different than regular yeast because it contains different yeasts and bacterias. It's fermented and has a slight sour taste to because of that. It's what gives sourdough the unique flavour it has.
O.K. NOW do you want to know how to make this miracle of nature that has you catching wild yeast from the air known as sourdough starter?
I thought you might.
By the way, catching wild yeast is a bit of a romanticism. You are in fact catching wild yeast, but yeast is pretty much in abundance everywhere. You know when grapes have that white haze on them? YEAST! Yup. The white haze on grapes is yeast.
Yeast is in the air, on your hands, and possibly on the spoon you use to stir your concoction. Which is lucky for we sourdough starter makers.
Before I get to the sourdough starter recipe I know you're going to have this question:
Table of Contents
What flour is best for sourdough starter.
What kind of flour? Most people like rye and feel it ferments more quickly than other flours. BUT you can use whatever flour you want or have; rye, whole wheat, white ...
I use rye to start my starter. Then for subsequent feedings I may switch over to white.
How to make it
A bit about hydration.
This is for a 100% hydration starter. That means it has 1 part flour to 1 part water. Different hydrations of starter and breads create different results. A lower hydration (more flour than water) will give you a more sour taste and needs to be fed less often. A higher hydration (more water than flour) will be milder tasting and need feeding more often.
There's a LOT more to it than that, but if you're a beginner I think this 1:1 starter is a good place to start for you.
- Mix ¼ cup clean room temperature (filtered or bottled) water with ¼ flour.
Stir everything together until all the flour and water have mixed well.
2. Cover it with a cloth and let it sit for a couple of days in a room that's approximately 23C (75F).
I'm using a bowl but you can also use a glass or mason jar.
After just 8 hours you can see tiny bubbles starting to form.
3. Once you notice bubbles and a yeasty smell (after 2 or 3 days) you can get rid of half of your mixture. Just scoop it out and throw it down the drain. It may have dried out a bit. That's O.K. Add ¼ cup of water and ¼ cup of flour to the remaining starter, mix and cover up again. This is called feeding the starter.
Continue feeding the starter in this exact way every 8-12 hours for the next 2 weeks or so.
Remove half the starter, then add ¼ cup water and ¼ cup of flour. Wait 8 - 12 hours and do it again.
After several days of doing this you'll notice the bubbles are starting to get bigger.
Starter not rising?
If you don't think your starter is doing much you can:
- Put the starter close to an open window so it has more access to wild yeast. (no idea if this is a fable or not, but I did it and it worked)
- Put the starter in a warmer part of the room, or warmer room in general.
- Increase the amount of flour and water you add from ¼ cup of each to ½ cup of each.
By day 12-15 you'll notice your starter will start to double in size after you feed it. It won't just get a bit bubbly, it will literally double in size!
Once your starter reliably doubles in size for several days, you can break out the cigars because you are the proud parent of glop. Some people suggest you keep feeding it on the counter like this for up to a month to really get the sour taste.
Those people must not have a life. Because just feeding this starter twice a day for two weeks is enough to make a person crazy. Trust me. By the end of two weeks you'll be as sick of feeding this starter as you are of feeding your family every night.
Once you have a successful starter you can stick it in the refrigerator until the day before you're going to make bread.
Reviving it
The day before you make bread the starter should be removed from the refrigerator and brought up to room temperature. Once it's warm, add ¼ cup of bottled water and a ¼ cup of flour. This will help activate the starter and get it bubbly again. 8-12 hours later, do it again. Your starter should now be ready to use.
Ingredients
- Bag of flour
- Filtered tap water or bottled water
Instructions
- Day 1 - Mix together ¼ cup flour and ¼ cup lukewarm water. Let sit for 2-3 days until bubbles form and it smells of yeast. During this time, stir the mixture whenever you think of it.
- Day 4 - Remove half the starter mixture and dump it down the drain. Feed the remaining mixture with ¼ cup flour and ¼ cup water. Mix.
- Continue to dump and feed exactly the same way every 8-12 hours for 2 weeks or until the mixture reliably doubles in size after feeding.
- Store the sourdough starter in the refrigerator until the day before you're ready to make bread. The day before, remove the starter, let it get to room temperature and then feed it. (add ¼ cup flour and ¼ cup water) 8-12 hours later, feed it again. It is now ready to use in the sourdough bread recipe of your choice.
So there you have it. Sourdough starter glop. Pass it on.
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Love all of your post. You've given me permission to try new things.... and if by chance they fail, I don't feel bad because at least I tried.
Just a question about blog metrics... I receive your email notice when you have a new post. I always click the button that takes me to your web site. I've recently discovered these "clicks" are counted??? If I click more than once.... so I open your new post several times from the same email, does it help the percentage numbers? Or, do they know I'm clicking from the same email? Just wondering if clicking more than once helps the metrics? I've been doing this for a few of my favorite blogs to "help out" (I don't want these blogs to call it quits) but if it doesn't help I guess I won't bother any more.
Hi Emie! Thanks for thinking of me and my metrics. :) There's no need to go clicking like crazy. Every time you visit a blog and look at a post it gets counted and I get paid from the advertisers. The longer you're on the page, the further down you go on the page, the more I make. When you click from an email I sent out, those clicks just tell my email server whether or not you opened the email and clicked on the link. But if you don't look at the bloggers actual post and scroll it, it doesn't really make an impact. Thank you for thinking of us and recognizing that without readers and advertisers we couldn't do what we do. ~ karen!
Thanks you for the information.... it's important to me to support the writers behind my favorite blogs. Right now we can all use a little extra dose of positivity and I definitely get that here! Cheers, Emie
Hello, I will try the recipe soon as i want to get back into my sourdough baking. The reason for the post was to say you do have blokes that read and post :-)
Excellent, lol. Thanks for letting me know. ~ karen!
Don’t dump the starter down the drain! It makes fantastic pancakes. Or at the very least put it in your compost. No sense wasting all that hard work!
I am an avid bread baker and sadly have come to the realization that I dislike the taste of sourdough. Am I alone? I have raised and used a homemade starter with great success but just can't love that tang.
My mother Betty doesn't like it at ALL either. So it's definitely not just you. :) ~ karen!
Oh my! This after the vanilla extract recipe (2 ingredients and then do nothing for 4 weeks)! I've got my vanilla extracting, but will skip sour dough feeding. Kudos to all who actually do it! Especially you with the almost kitchen.
BTW- a friend gave me sour dough starter in the 80s. My roommate and I stared at it on the counter for a few days and it magically disappeared. I hope the sour dough fairy took it because we were warned not to let it die.
When decided I didn't want to continue the feedings all summer when I did little or no bread baking, I dried mine for storage. Worked great! (You can also go small--20g starter/20g water20g flour to keep a very small batch going. Takes a few days to get it back to baking volume.
Question: why do you say to throw half of the starter away? It seems like such a waste and I've never seen any other recipes for sourdough starter say this. Now for me to find somewhere that is 23C. The SO likes the house cool (I think it is the Scottish parental unit's fault).
Hi Kathryn. All starters require you to get rid of half or so. Because you're constantly adding to it to feed it to keep it strong and active, you have to keep the proportions right by discarding a portion, then adding to it again. Also if you didn't discard a big portion of it, by the time your it was ready you'd end up with a jar of starter the size of an oil barrel. ~ karen!
Karen,
Once you have the sourdough glop how much/how do you use it to make bread. I search your site and didn’t see a recipe. I plan on begging some starter from a microbiologist friend who I know will have grown it correctly. I really don’t want to go through all that work! Recipe please!
Marci,
I use the 1:1:1 ratio, i.e., 100g starter, 100g flour, 100g water, wait for it to get bubbly (usually around 12 hours in an unlit oven) and use it in place of yeast in whatever recipe. My go-to recipe uses 1 c sour cream, 3 tbsp butter, 1/2 c sugar, 1/2 tsp salt, a pinch baking powder, and enough flour to form a decent dough (maybe around 4 c flour). This gives me 12 dinner rolls.
Karen,
You are my hero!
I took the easy way to get starter-I asked a friend. She calls it zombie starter, cause she just can't kill it. What I need is an easy, yet killer bread recipe now.
Is "soft" water okay to use? From the tap.
Yes, so long as it’s not chlorinated. Chlorine is designed to kill bacteria. Your starter is bacteria - don’t murder it.
Hi Zofmui. People always say to you can't use tap water because it will kill the starter, but I use chlorinated tap water all the time to make my starter and it's fine. So if all you have is tap water, go ahead and use that. It could very well be perfectly fine. ~ karen!
So...yeah. I just went to the bakery this morning and bought a loaf of multigrain sour dough rye. It seemed like the easier option.
this sounds fun...and disgusting. right up my alley.
I thing the only challenge will be the 75degrees. I'll have to break out a space heater.
My starter liked sitting in my oven with the oven light on for heat... Since my house was too cold for her (her name is Bernice and she is fussy lol)
Great idea, Sigrid! Kudos to Bernice for finding a spot...and for her sacrifice, haha.
I was going to suggest a heating pad a la Alton Brown, but the oven light is probably a great idea (unless you forget it's in the oven and preheat!)
Try the top of your fridge...
Also a fabulous idea! And it can keep the dust company.
Ah, sourdough. As I read this post, I'm looking at my starter that my MIL gave me in 1986. Yep! still alive! After I feed it well then use some and it's healthy again, I put it back into the freezer to rest for a few months. Got "Herman" , as she called it out of the freezer last week and he's looking really good again. Although, at the time she gave it to me she called it Amish Friendship Bread dough starter. It's a little sweeter. I'm going to make a coffeecake before it goes for it's nap until the holidays. Love your posts. BTW thanks for the help on the luffas. They are little but very soft. I'm loving them. Keep up the good work. Lee
Seriously? You been freeze/thawing something for 35 years and a. it still works? b. it hasn't killed anyone yet?
Do you let it thaw on the countertop, in the fridge?
What sorcery is this??
Hahaha. Love your sense of humor. I let it thaw on the counter then feed it. It's really a Friendship Bread so it's fed: milk, sugar and flour. It takes a few days but it does come round. I must admit that I have given it live yeast a few times too. It makes the best coffee cakes!
Ah, the 80s references have me misty-eyed. I remember well getting my Cabbage Patch doll in 1983. My little grandmother was so sweet and tiny. As the preacher's wife, she was so cute up near the pulpit every Sunday morning translating the sermon into sign language for the deaf members we had at church. I wanted a doll SO bad, but (due to news of riots at the Toys R Us') began to despair ever obtaining one. Imagine my surprise when I unwrapped it under the tree that Christmas Eve, AND learning that my tiny, cute grandmother emerged victorious with not one, but TWO Cabbage Patch dolls (one for a friend)! From then on, I understood she was a badass.
Since we're renovating a 100 year old house into our forever home and just recently added a stove to our halfway functioning kitchen (still no sink), I think I'm going to try this soon! Thanks for the inspo, Karen.
That story really nearly got me – a 61 year-old, 6'4", 246 # Geezer – fairly misty! :D Thanks for the fond memory of yer little bitty Grandmother.
Oh Karen, I'm as fond of your writing style as I am of what you write about. At 0-dark-thirty this morning when I woke up and had to realize, once again, like a less optimistic version of Ground Hog Day, that I was relegated to hide away from friends and family in the middle of a pandemic, in a land far away from what was once my home (and where in 7 days an election is happening in a bizarre world that's gone completely crazy)...I get your post and find myself laughing through tears, wishing I had a functioning 1st-world oven so I could bake me some sourdough bread (and slather it with butter). Sometimes it's the little fantasies that save us, one smile at a time, from going completely nuts! Thanks for being the creative, talented and witty girl you are.👍🏻🤣
I was going to google search how to do sourdough.....I didn't have to go far. Saw your question whether I'd seen your sourdough posts. Hadnt. Lucky me! Great easy to follow instructions and pics! I decided to check out your other STUFF......and for neat!!!! There are several summer projects I planned on doing that you have the "how-to" already figured out! So.....much a thanks from a "sister" that lives in the middle of rolling wheat fields in the Pacific Northwest!
I got in the habit a few years ago and it just feels so natural now that I'll go out of my way to avoid bathrooms! But I suppose this is more feasible for those with apparatuses opposite most of the commenters here.
Thanks for the dough ideas, by the way. I have a whole table of experiments going with different permutations of tap vs distilled and whole wheat vs rye.
Good luck! ~ karen
I'll second the suggestion for better uses of the discard. It shouldn't be bad for the drain as long as it gets used regularly enough to rinse it through, but why burden the sewer system with something that will make perfectly good chicken feed or compost? Just tossing it into your yard is more eco-friendly. On that note, consider all the processing of sewage needed to make it into drinking water before flushing after ever toilet use (or again, pee in your yard).
For real, David? ~ karen
Hey, it's no so outside-the-box where I live, Colorado, where water conservation is a big deal.
LOL. Well, you had me until the peeing in the yard, lol. ~ karen!
King Arthur Baking has recipes for discard... your welcome. :)
Hi David, here is a recipe for sourdough crackers, that you can make with your sourdough discard. They’re soooo good that they’re the only thing I make with my starter, now.
https://www.bonappetit.com/story/sourdough-starter-crackers
Thanks, Karen!!! Guess what, my starter doubled. I'm so happy! I will keep doing it for a few days and hope it doubles consistently!
Glad to hear it! If it doubled once, it'll do it again. :) You've done it. Congratulations! ~ karen