Sourdough starter recipes are perfect for anyone interested in baking their own bread on the homestead. This tutorial showsyou how to get started making your own.Not all of us are lucky enough to have the best sourdough starter passed down to us from our grandmas. If you're feeling a bit adventurous you can actually make (or grow) your own sourdough starterwith this recipe!
Beginner'sSourdough Starter Recipe
What is a Sourdough Starter?
A sourdough starter is made from two simple ingredients — flour and water. It attracts wild yeast which lives everywhere in the environment. In a way, sourdough starter is how we cultivate the wild yeast in a form which can be useful for baking. This culture of microorganisms is what will leaven your bread and make it taste so darn good!
Making your own sourdough starter may take up a little time, but you'll surely enjoy the process. Have kids in the house? Do this little project with them and cultivate their scientific minds while cultivating your food.
Making a sourdough starter involvesmixing flour and water together, then leaving it alonefor a little while. However, if you want the feisty critters tomake your bread rise, it can be more extensive. Growing asourdough starter takes about 5 days on average, andit can take longer depending on the conditions of the environment. We have compiled a simple step-by-step guideto makingyour own starter and what to expect on a daily basis. You can find the original article here.
Make Your Own Sourdough Starter!
What you'll need:
Day 1: Make the Initial Starter
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Weigh4 ounces or 3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons of flour andcombine with4 ounces of water.Stir vigorously until combined into asticky, thickbatter. Cover the container with plastic wrap, and leave it on your kitchen counter or somewhere with a consistent room temperature of 70°F to 75°F. Do not refrigerate.
Day 2: Stir theParty in Your Bottle
Afterthe first 24 hours, you will alreadyfind afewtiny bubbles. This means that the yeast has already started a party in your jar! Stir the bottleevery once in a while to attract more yeast and to ‘move' the little critters towards their food. After all, yeasts don't run around the jar. They're floating and eating whatever is nearby so a little stirring here and there is just as important as feeding the sourdough starter. By the end of the day, you'll find more bubbles in your jar.
Day 3: Feed the Starter
Take a good look at your starter. You may find that more bubbles have started to appear and that's agood thing! This means that the yeast has also started making themselves at home in your starter. It's now time to feed the starter with more flour and water! Measure another4 ounces of flour and 4 ounces of water, stir vigorously until combined into a smooth batter.
Day 4: More Feeding and More Stirring
By now,your starter should look extremely bubbly and the volume should have doubled. Also, the aroma should be noticeably sour. Feed your starter with the same amount of flour and water. Stir vigorously or whisk if you prefer.Stirring will makeit easier for the yeast to get oxygen, an important factor if you want your yeast culture to reproduce.
Day 5:Time for Your First Harvest
Give your starter a good, long look. Before harvesting, make sure that your starter is already ‘ripe.' One way you can find this out istofill a glass with water and drop a teaspoon of starter into the glass. If it floats, it’s ready to use. If it sinks, don't despair. Give it an additional day andmorefeeding.
Day 6 and beyond: Maintain Your Starter
If you'll be using your starter often, discard half of it and keep feeding it with the same amount of flour and water daily.But if it will be a while before you use the starter again,cover your container tightly and place it in the fridge. Take it out of the fridge and feed it at least once a week to keep your starter going.
Watch this video by Allrecipes for another helpful guide in making a sourdough starter:
Growing and making your own fooddefinitely makes iteasier and tastier!Now that you have yourstarter ready, you can now use it in your bread recipes. Watch out for our delicious sourdough recipes!
What do you think of this sourdough starter recipe? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below!
Up Next:Sourdough Bread Recipe
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on March 19, 2017, and has been updated for quality and relevancy.
FAQs
As with any sourdough recipe, before you start baking bread, you want to make sure that your sourdough starter is as strong as possible. My basic sourdough recipe uses just 50g of starter for 500g of flour (so just 10% of starter).
How do you make enough sourdough starter? ›
There is no single best ratio, but I've found a ratio of 1:5:5 fed twice daily at 12-hour intervals to produce a sourdough starter that's strong and healthy. This ratio corresponds to 20% ripe starter carryover, 100% water, and 100% flour (a mix of whole grain rye and white flour) at each feeding.
What is the best flour for sourdough starter? ›
The best flour blend for creating a new sourdough starter is 50% whole-meal flour (whole wheat or whole rye) and 50% bread flour or all-purpose flour. I recommend a 50/50 mix of whole wheat flour and bread flour. Why do you need to use these two types of flour?
What is the ratio of sourdough starter to flour and water for bread? ›
So, a sourdough feeding ratio is the relative amount (referring to weight) of old sourdough compared to fresh flour and water. Typical feeding ratios are 1:2:2 or 1:3:3 (old sourdough: fresh flour: water). However, even extreme ratios like 1:50:50 would still work.
What happens if you use too much starter in sourdough bread? ›
If you have too much starter compared to the additional flour and water you're adding, your hungry starter consumes all the nutrients and then it's not as bubbly.
How long should sourdough starter sit before baking? ›
How do I know if my sourdough starter is ready to use? When your starter is reliably rising to double or triple its size and falling in the jar anywhere between 4-8 hours after you feed it (dependent on your ambient conditions and the flour you feed with) it is ready to bake with.
What are three top tips when making sourdough starter? ›
Top 10 Sourdough Starter Tips for Success
- Maintain a Schedule to Feed your Sourdough Starter. ...
- Know How to Store a Sourdough Starter. ...
- Maintain a Small Sourdough Starter.
- Use Sourdough Discard for Less Waste.
- Know How to Revive a Sourdough Starter. ...
- Measure your Ingredients by Weight.
All you need to do is take 20g of the starter you already have and then feed it with 20g of flour and 20g of water (so 1:1:1). Then you'll have a 60g starter, which is considered a smaller amount. You can of course reduce these amounts even further if you wish, but this is a reasonable size to keep waste to a minimum.
What size jar is best for sourdough starter? ›
What Size Jar is Best For a Sourdough Starter? No single-sized jar is best for every baker because it depends on how much sourdough starter they regularly need for baking. However, for most people, a 3/4 liter (28.7 fluid ounces) jar is perfect as it can store both a small sourdough starter or a large one.
Can I use tap water for sourdough starter? ›
Myth 2: Sourdough starter requires fancy water
The key to sourdough starter success is using water without chlorine, which can cause the starter to die. While bottled water is chlorine-free, you can also use filtered tap water for our sourdough starter recipe.
What Flour Should I Be Feeding My Sourdough Starter With? You can feed your sourdough starter with any flour you like, as long as it provides the starches the wild yeast in your sourdough starter need to convert to Co2 to rise your dough. The flour you choose should always be unbleached flour.
Is distilled water good for sourdough? ›
Two that you want to avoid when it comes to your sourdough starter is distilled or reverse osmosis water. This type of water lacks the beneficial minerals and bacteria that your sourdough starter will thrive on. Instead, use filtered tap water or bottled spring water.
How much sourdough starter is needed for a loaf of bread? ›
Ingredients for one sourdough bread loaf
- 500 grams of bread flour.
- 330 grams of lukewarm water.
- 50 grams of active starter (fed)
- 9 grams of salt.
Using too much water for the amount of flour you're using will result in a wet dough that's really hard to handle. Similarly, if your sourdough starter is too runny you may also end up with a super wet dough.
What is the best hydration for sourdough bread? ›
Bakers usually experiment with sourdough hydration levels between 65-90% but the percentage that is best for you depends on factors such as your experience level, the ingredients you use, and climate (e.g. humidity, temperature, and altitude).
What is the ratio to feed sourdough starter before baking? ›
Remove and discard half of your sourdough starter from the jar. Feed what's left in the jar with equal parts flour and water by weight (1:1:1 feeding ratio). You need a digital kitchen scale for this. Because we all work with different quantities of starters, this 1:1:1 feeding ratio is best understood by example.
How much sourdough starter to use instead of yeast? ›
How much sourdough starter equals a packet of yeast? As a general rule, 100g of sourdough starter can be used to replace one packet of yeast (a packet usually contains 5-7g of commercial yeast).
How much dry sourdough starter to use? ›
It's as simple as feeding with flour and water. In the video I use just 15 grams of dried starter to get a new starter active and bubbling in less than 48 hours. Here's the feeding schedule I used. Step 1: Add 15 grams of dried starter, 15 grams of flour, and 30 grams of water to a jar.
How to calculate starter ratio? ›
It's usually given as starter:water:flour, so a 1:1:1 ratio means 1 part starter, 1 part water, and 1 part flour. 1:2:2 means 1 part starter, 2 parts water, and 2 parts flour, and so on.
