Sourdough Starter

Sourdough bread has become my favorite hobby every since Covid lockdowns. I make it every Sunday for breakfast. It is a process that begins Friday night when I do the feeding. By early Saturday morning after 8 hrs, the starter is ready to be used to make my homemade bread. It goes in the fridge overnight and Sunday morning into the oven. Below is the simple way to create your very own starter!

Ingridients and tools you'll need:

• A medium size glass jar with a lid
• A scale (it's always better to weight these ingredients to the exact gram for optimal result)
• Long spoon/thin spatula for mixing
• Flour (I find best results with bread flour, but any works!)
• Filtered water

Method

Day 1

Mix 50 grams of flour plus 50 grams of water and mix thoroughly. From this point on whenever you feed your starter, it will always be the same amount of flour and water. Always. if you're measuring in cups, the same applies.

Cover it slightly so there is oxygen going in and leave it out at room temperature for 24 hours.

Day 2

Discard half of the mixture and repeat the same as day 1; 50g of flour and 50g of water and mix well.

Cover slightly and leave it out again for 24 hours. 

Day 3

Repeat instructions from Day 2 for days 3, 4 and 5.

Day 6

Repeat the same as prior days 3, 4 and 5 but now instead of 24 hours, only leave it out for 12 hours.

Day 7

By day 7 the starter should have bubbles on the surface, a sweet / vinegar scent and has at least doubled in size. All these three elements must occur for a starter ready to be used!

If it's not ready, feed it after the 12 hours once more.

Float test

If the starter has met the three elements, it should pass the float test.

Fill a cup or small bowl with water and add 1tsp or so of the starter. If the starter floats, the starter is alive and ready! If it doesn't float, feed it once more and keep an eye close until you have the three elements checked.

 

I took these pictures right before i mixed the ingredients to make my sourdough bread. It passed the float test; it tripled in size, it had the sweet smell and the bubbles are alive and well! Yay! 

From this point on you can store it in the fridge and stop feeding it daily unless of course you bake daily. I feed my starter once a week because I bake a loaf once a week. If you leave it in the fridge for longer than 2 weeks, it will develop a dark liquid called hooch but you can remove it and use what's underneath! It just means your starter is starving. So feed it normally and it will be just fine. Don't go for more than 2 weeks without feeding it though.

I also never discard any starter. From the pictures above for example; I use most of it (98g) to make my sourdough bread and I leave about 20-30 grams left in the jar which goes back in the fridge until next week. So you don't need much at all to bring it back to life. The next time I bake for example, I'll add 65g of bread flour and 65gr of water to cover the recipe requirements and leave a little for the following week.

If you have any questions, leave them down in the comment section.