Make Your Own Sourdough Starter
Prep time: 5 mins
Total time: 7 days
Ingredients
1/4 cup organic, unbleached, all-purpose flour or bread flour
1/4 filtered water
A clean, 4 cup or 1 liter wide mouthed jar
A paper towel and a rubber band large enough to fit over the glass jar
Directions:
Combine equal parts flour and water together in the glass jar until a slurry forms. Cover with a paper towel and secure with the rubber band. Leave the jar out on the kitchen counter, in the open, (so you don’t forget about it) away from sun, intense heat or cold for 24 hours. Temperature should maintain between 70-80 degrees.
Return the next day and add another 1/4 cup of flour and 1/4 cup water. Stir to combine and cover with the paper towel/rubber band. Repeat this every day for 7 days before using it to bake.
After 7 days you will have a useable sourdough starter. Over that 7 days, your starter has pulled yeast and bacteria from the air, which has fed off the flour, assisted by the moisture provided from the water. This has “fermented” the flour.
To continue to have a strong starter, ready for use, feed your started with equal parts flour and water every day. After using some of your starter for baking bread, replenish your starter with more flour and water before covering. Equal parts flour and water is referred to in recipes as (100% hydration).
Eventually, if you’re only feeding it but not baking with it, your starter will begin to outgrow its jar. It is common practice to “discard” the excess starter (sourdough discard), or use it in other recipes calling for “sourdough discard”. There are countless recipes online for this. I personally would NEVER through my precious starter in the trash. I most often will make biscuits, or dumplings with sourdough discard or other quick bread recipes that do not require a rise. The easiest way to use discard is to pour it out onto a hot griddle and make a pancake/flatbread with it.
Tips on building and baking with a strong starter:
-Do not suffocate your starter by keeping a lid on it. Cover with a thin towel or paper towel. Some of the yeast and bacteria comes from the flour itself, but most of it comes from the air in your living environment.
-Only refrigerate your starter if you are unable to feed it due to travel or illness. In this case, it should be covered with a lid or it will dry out and pick up odors from the fridge.
-If your starter smells like alcohol, it has over fermented or fermented too fast and needs to be fed more often. You can also add slightly less water to slow this fermentation process down.
-Your starter should be fed 4-12 hours BEFORE you bake with it. With practice you will be able to identify when it’s ready or not ready to bake with.
-Add different kinds of organic wheat flour to your starter to introduce new strains of yeast and bacteria as well as different types and amounts of amino acids (protein). This will diversify the microbiome of your starter, creating more flavor complexity and also will make it more resilient from bad bacteria/mold overgrowth.
-Consider adding whey from yogurt or cheese making. It adds protein, and a plethora of additional bacteria strains that will boost the digestive properties sourdough is known for. Many cultures, such as the Amish, do this and will even add raw milk (Friendship Bread). The additional sugar will make any starter go crazy (in a good way).
-Avoid arguing, or playing obnoxious TV or music near your starter. However, singing, joyful music, and using tuning forks near your starter is highly encouraged :)
-Consider adding a bit of the starter a friend/family member, whom you love, has created in their own space. This builds the bio-diversity of your starters microbiome.