Anyone can care for a sourdough starter!
If you are here, you are probably just starting or thinking about starting your sourdough journey! I remember feeling pretty intimidated by it before starting— but fear not! It really isn’t difficult at all. The biggest hurdle you have to jump through is actually making the starter, but even that is pretty straightforward.
If you are like me and you are feeling even slightly overwhelmed about the idea of caring for a starter, let me assure you, you can do it and you won’t regret it!
If you need an in-depth refresher on what exactly a sourdough starter is, feel free to check out my post about the history and science of sourdough and come back to learn how to care for your new starter.
Why do you need to feed your sourdough starter?
Your sourdough starter is a living thing, and like all living things, it needs to be to carry on being alive. The sourdough starter is made up of dozens of species of bacteria and yeast that live off the flour in the dough. If you don’t feed them, they will die (note: it takes a LOT to actually kill off a starter— these little guys are about as resilient as it gets).
Do you really need to “discard”?
Yes and no.
Whenever you feed your starter, you are adding ingredients that consequently increase its size. If you never discarded anything, your starter would become an absolutely massive beast.
But isn’t the discard process wasteful? Yes, yes it most certainly is. That is why I recommend an alternative method: saving it.
There are two ways that I go about this:
- Pour the discard into a separate “discard” jar to use in other recipes.
- Plan to bake enough at a time that you use at least half of your starter before it needs to be fed again.
There are so many delicious ways to use your discard — DON’T THROW IT AWAY!
How do you know when it is time to feed your starter?
Sourdough starters are VERY good at letting you know when they are hungry. When your starter is fed, it will be bubbly and have doubled or even tripled in size over the course of a few hours. The rise is due to the fact that the bacteria and yeasts are consuming the food you gave them and turning that food into little happy carbon dioxide bubbles. This is also what makes the bread you make with it rise!
Once it reaches its peak and the microorganisms have run out of new food, the starter will slowly start to sink back to its original size. There will be fewer bubbles and it will look much thinner than it was when you first made it. At this point, it is definitely ready to be fed!
How often should you feed your sourdough starter?
This entire cycle last only about a day or less when the starter is left at room temperature, so if you are planning to keep your starter on the counter you will need to feed it daily!
If you aren’t baking with sourdough daily, it is best to keep it in the fridge after feeding it to slow the bacteria down and prolong the period when the starter is fed and happy. This will save you time, and money while also preventing waste! Wins all around. If you are keeping it in the fridge, feed it once a week for the best results.
Items you’ll need
Alright, let’s get down to business. As I said, this is a very straightforward and easy-to-remember process. Before you know it you will be teaching others the art of feeding your starter!
- Hungry starter
- The first thing you’ll need is a hungry starter. If you don’t have one, I will be posting instructions for how to make your own later this week. If you aren’t looking to make your own, there are tons of ways to get an already establiched one! There are shops on Etsy that sell dehydrated starters. All you would need to do is revive it and start baking!
- A jar or container
- Next, you are going to need a home for your new friend. You can use pretty much any container you’d like, but glass jars are my personal favorite. I’ll link my favorite jar down below!
- Water
- I’ve seen plenty of starters that are happy and healthy being fed with tap water. If that’s all you have, go ahead and give it a try. In my experience, I’ve found that my starter responds best with filtered water, so I always use that. No worries if you don’t have that though!
- Flour
- You can use any type of flour that you want. I’ve used bread flour and all-purpose in mine, but I stick to all-purpose most of the time since it's cheaper. I love to bake with bread flour, so I keep that on hand, but I save it for baking. Additionally, I’ve added a bit of wheat flour or rye in the past to give my starter a boost when it was underactive.
- A kitchen scale
- Of course, this is optional, but highly recommended especially when you are just starting out and learning the ratios. You can certainly feed your sourdough starter without a scale! You just might have a less consistent rise after feeding. Not the end of the world by any means!
Best jars for sourdough starters
When picking a jar, one important thing to consider is ventilation. As mentioned earlier, the microorganisms in the starter release carbon dioxide after being fed, so it is recommended that you keep it in a loosely covered jar. Some choose to do this with a piece of cloth and a rubber band around the lip, others use mason jars with the lid ajar.
I personally love my Weck jars (pictured) because of their versatility as well as the fact that their glass lids are made with a removable seal which, when removed, creates a perfect loose-fitting lid to cover your sourdough starter.
Recipe for feeding
When feeding your starter, it is best to feed it at a 1:1:1 weight ratio. This is where the kitchen scale comes in handy. You can eyeball it if you want, but you will get the best results from weighing your ingredients out. The weights I’ve listed below are just recommendations based on what I’ve used in the past and what works for the jar I have. I typically stick within the 125-150g ratio. if you are feeding it on a weekly basis, this will make an adequate amount of starter for a loaf of bread as well as another treat or two each week.
- 125g of warm water
- Warm is ideal for bacterial growth, but I have used room temp or cold water in the past and it turned out just fine. As I said, sourdough starters are resilient little guys.
- 125g of hungry sourdough starter
- 125g of all-purpose flour
How should I feed it?
You can either feed and mix your starter in the same jar you will be keeping it in, or you could mix your starter in a separate bowl and transfer it to its jar afterward. There are benefits to either way, but I do recommend the latter for those who are just starting to bake with sourdough.
My reasoning is that mixing your starter in a separate container and then transferring it allows for a much clearer end result which makes it easier to see how much it has risen after feeding. If nothing else, it also just looks a lot nicer this way too.
I fed my starter this way for a while, but now I just eyeball my ingredients and mix it directly in the jar to save a little time and also avoid dirtying any extra dishes. Feeding it this way has worked out fine, but I’m sure it would be doing even better if I was more precise with my measuring!
Steps
All that to say, do whatever works best for you! Now onto the feeding process:
- Pour 125g of unfed starter into a clean jar (or bowl if mixing separately)
- Add 125g of warm filtered water to the starter
- Mix together
- I prefer to mix the starter and the water together first to ensure that there is an equal amount of bacteria and yeast distributed throughout the newly fed starter.
- I Highly recommend that you use a fork for this process! Things will get sticky and a fork does a better job of breaking up flour clumps than a spoon would.
- Add 125g of all-purpose flour
- Mix into a thick, sticky batter. It will resemble a thick pancake batter.
- Don’t worry about lumps! Mine is almost always lumpy and my starter always rises beautifully.
- Let rise for 6-12 hours before baking, or once it has doubled in size.
Troubleshooting your sourdough starter
Taking care of your starter is relatively simple, but there are some things that you might run into that could throw you for a loop!
Hooch
if you wake up one day and find that there is a layer of clear, brownish liquid on the top of your starter, this is what has been lovingly termed “hooch”. Hooch is the alcohol that is a result of the wild yeasts fermentation process and it typically appears if your starter hasn’t been fed in a while.
Hooch definitely looks alarming at first, but there isn’t anything to worry about. You can either pour it off the top or mix it in with the rest of the unfed starter and carry on with your feeding schedule. If you choose to mix the hooch in with the rest of your starter, it will make it a little tangier. I prefer to pour mine off the top, but I know plenty of people who like to mix in the hooch.
Another thing to keep in mind if you ever notice hooch on your starter is that it will likely need a couple of feedings before it is ready to be used. The wild yeast and bacteria will be a little sluggish after going an extended period of time without being fed. In my experience, the starter is usually good to go after 2 sometimes 3 feedings.
It's not doubling in size
If you feed your sourdough starter and you notice that it isn’t rising quickly, two things might be causing it:
- You aren’t feeding it enough. In this case, I would revert back to feeding daily at a 1:1:1 ratio until you are seeing quick and consistent rises.
- . Your home is a little too cold. Starters thrive in a room temp-to-warm environment and anything under 68 degrees F will make it a bit sluggish. In this situation, I would suggest regular feedings and trying to find the warmest place in your home to keep your starter after it’s fed. In the winter I oftentimes keep my starter in the living room because it is much warmer there than in my kitchen and it makes a world of a difference!
Mold
With most sourdough starter issues, there is an easy fix to any problems you might run into. However, I’m going to cut to the chase with this one. If you see mold on your starter, you 100% need to throw it out. There is no coming back from that and you will need to make a new one. Additionally, if you see pink or orange hooch on your starter, it’s gone bad and you’ll need to toss it.
While that sounds like a major bummer, it really doesn’t happen often, so I wouldn’t worry too much about it. I’ve only had this happen once and that was because our home was without AC during a heat wave one year and I accidentally left one of my starters on the counter. It looked and smelled horrible, so trust me you will WANT to throw it away if this should happen to you.
Recap
Caring for a sourdough starter is an easy and rewarding process that I highly recommend everyone take part in. I hope this post was helpful to you and please be sure to come back for more helpful tips and recipes! Talk soon!
