Make Your Own Sourdough Starter at Home

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A couple of years ago my baking reached a new level when I began using sourdough. Sourdough encourages the natural yeast spores in the air and flour, encouraging them to multiply in any kind of batter.

Once you have made a sourdough starter from flour and water, you can use it in two different ways:

• Make different types of sourdough bread.
• Add to batter for flavor, like pizza dough, muffins, pancakes, and even chocolate cake.

As with any kind of bread (or cooking) there is  a bit of a learning curve. If you are used to making bread with commercial yeast, you will notice a few differences. First of all, you need to allow more time for rising. But the timing is more flexible and an extra hour often doesn’t make a noticeable difference. If you are not going to be home when the dough needs attention, you can slow down the process by keeping it in the refrigerator.

Sourdough breads can have different degrees of tanginess, and as you experiment you will figure out what you prefer and how long a rising time is required.

Before starting to work with sourdough, you need to prepare the sourdough starter itself. It can take three days to a week or more. If you live in a warm climate or if you generally do a lot of baking, the environment in your kitchen will be more favorable.

While you are making the starter you will need to give it attention every day. After it’s ready, you should try to use and refresh it at least once a week. If it sits for a few weeks it can usually still be revived.

Sourdough Starter Stages with Pictures

Sourdough Starter Recipe:

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 cup flour. Whole-wheat flour is fine, but since you are going to be disposing of a large part of the starter at first, you may prefer to start with the cheapest flour available. You can always add wholemeal later on.
• Additional flour and water.

Instructions

1. Mix the flour and water in a glass, plastic, or ceramic jar or container. Cover with a cloth to keep out dirt and bugs, but allow air and yeast spores to get in.
2. Stir the starter at least once a day.
3. After a few days, depending on conditions, you will see bubbles forming inside the mixture. This means the yeast spores are starting to eat the natural sugar in the mixture. (No need to add sugar at any point.)
4. Now it’s time to feed the starter. Pour off any liquid on the top and along with half of the starter mixture. Then add another half-cup each of water and flour.*
5. Repeat step 4 once a day until the starter is ready. It is ready when quite bubbly. You may see a layer of foamy liquid, which eventually settles into an alcoholic-smelling layer of liquid that some people call hooch.
6. Now your starter is ready to use in any sourdough recipe! Remember that when you take some off, always add more flour and water in equal amounts, to the original. Switch to a clean container every few weeks.

*At CookingManager we don’t like to throw away anything, but we want a high proportion of fresh flour compared to the original starter. If we kept all the starter it would need so much additional food and water that it would eventually take over the kitchen. So throw out part of the starter and  feed the rest properly.

Update: Sourdough Starter Stages with Pictures

If you have more questions, ask in the comments or check out the Facebook Page for CookingManager.Com. There’s a discussion entitled,  Sourdough Starter Party. You can also join via the widget on the right sidebar of the blog. That particular discussion has died down but feel free to start it up again.

Thanks to Mimi for comments and corrections on this post.

Related posts:

How to Convert Yeast Recipes to Sourdough

Sourdough Pancakes

Sourdough Muffins

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