How to Make a Sourdough Starter
This sourdough starter recipe will help you create your own sourdough starter from scratch at home in seven easy steps. Your starter is the cornerstone of great bread – once you have it showing consistent signs of fermentation each day, which takes on average 5 to 7 days, you will be ready to start baking sourdough bread.
Ingredients
Instructions
Day One:
- If you need to add a little more water to incorporate the flour, that is OK, but be precise with the flour.
- If you are not sure how warm it is, use a kitchen thermometer and check it a few hours later (see notes on temperature).
Day Two:
- After the first 24 hours, you may or may not see a bit of bubbling; let it rest until you see a tiny bit of activity (bubbles) and sometimes this takes 36 or up to 48 hours.
- So start “day 2”, when you see a little bit of bubbing.
- Discard all but 1/2 cup of the starter (see notes for discard).
- Add to the remainder, 1 cup of white bread flour, spooned and leveled, and 1/2 cup filtered water, mixing well with a fork.
- Place the lid on loosely again and allow the mixture to sit at room temperature (70°F – 80°F) for another 24 hours.
Day Three:
- By the third day, you should definitely see some bubbling and, if not, let it go a bit longer; depending on how warm your house is and how active your starter, you may need to begin feeding more often, or even move to two feedings a day roughly 12 hours apart, like in the morning and at night.
- In a nutshell, you want to feed the starter only after it has peaked (metabolized all the flour from the last feeding) and has started sinking down or gets liquidy- this is when it is hungry; this might be 12 hours, it might be 14, it might be 18, or 24, depending on the temperature in your house. In very warm climates it may only be 8 hours.
- It is better to underfeed rather than overfeed here; for each feeding, like before, discard all but 1/2 cup of the starter (keeping roughly ½-cup of starter in the jar (~ 4 ounces).
- Add 1 cup bread flour, spooned and leveled, and 1/2 cup water to the 1/2 cup starter and let this rest at room temperature for 12 – 24 hours or until the starter looks “hungry” again before repeating.
Day Four:
- Feed 1 – 2 times, discarding all but 1/2 cup of starter each time.
- Feed 1 cup bread flour, 1/2 cup water; look for the hunger signs; hopefully, you’ll begin to see some rising and falling.
- It’s helpful to put the starter in a clean jar and mark the beginning level (with sharpie, string or rubber band) so you can easily see this.
- If for some reason your starter looks like it is still rising at the time of second feeding (at night) and there is no evidence it has fallen or no slide marks, it is still “eating” so skip this feeding and feed first thing in the morning.
- Again, Feeding it when it is “not hungry” will basically dilute all the growing yeast and make it lethargic; better to starve than overfeed.
Day Five:
- Feed again, 1 – 2 times, roughly 12 hours apart, or when hungry, discarding all but a 1/2 cup the starter each time. 1 cup bread flour, 1/2 cup lukewarm water.
- The starter should look active, bubbling, rising, sliding down, hopefully, close to doubling in size; if not, repeat this day until starter doubles in size within 8 – 12 hours of feeding.
Day Six:
- Give it one last feeding; discard all but a 1/3 cup; add 1 cup flour and 1/2 cup water; place in a clean jar so you can see the action clearly.
- You can use a sharpie or place a rubber band around the jar to mark the beginning level.
- The starter should hopefully double in volume within 6 hours of feeding; when it peaks, do the float test.
How to conduct the float test:
- To test the starter, place a teaspoon of starter (just from the top, while it is peaking, don’t stir it down) in a glass full of water, it should hopefully float; if it does, you are almost ready to make sourdough bread.
Resting and refrigerating the starter:
- You want to make dough with slightly hungry starter.
- If you want to wait to make bread until later in the week place starter in the refrigerator; be sure to feed it in 7 days.
- This batch of starter will make two loaves of bread with enough left over to feed for the following week.
Notes
Temperatue: The colder your home, the longer it will take for the starter to grow and become active (bubbles); find a warm spot (70°F – 80°F) for the best results; on the stovetop, with the light turned on, or on top of the refrigerator; or in the oven with the light on; you can still make the starter in a colder home, it will just take longer – even up to 2 weeks.
Discarding: Do you really have to discard the starter? Basically yes and I know it seems wasteful – but while you are building the starter, during the first week, it is the simplest, easiest, fastest, and most economical way to create a healthy starter; this is because you always have to feed it 2 times its volume in flour; for example-if you kept all the 1-1/2 cups of starter, you would have to feed it 3 cups of flour (instead of keeping just a 1/2 cup and only feeding it one cup); doing this will shorten the fermentation process, require less flour in the long run, and creates a stronger starter; once your starter is “established” after the first week – then you can give it away to friends, use it in pizza dough, banana bread, waffles, pancakes, buns, etc.).
