Getting Started with Your New Sourdough Starter

You have your starter!  Now what? How often do you feed it? How much? How can you tell if it’s healthy and ready? The truth is there are no prescriptive answers to these questions, but I will attempt to help steer you down a tried and true path.

The thing about this whole sourdough situation is that it’s a relationship. If you truly want to know what your starter needs then you have to pay attention to it. You have to use all of your senses to observe. In short, actively listen to it.  The first step is finding a fun name.  After that there are options and things to look out for along the way.  But no one right answer.

You can store your starter on the counter, or in the fridge, depending on your intended use.  If you want to be ready to bake (anything but ‘discard recipes’), it needs to have been on the counter, well fed for a few days.

1. Counter Feeding

   1. The first rule I was given is to discard half and feed 1:1 flour:water (all purpose unbleached).

   2. After more research, the answer becomes more complicated to get right. Generally done in ratios of starter:flour:water in a number form (1:1:1, 1:2:2) and amounts are measured in grams (cups or other volumetric measurements are tough).  Once you get the feel of it down, you’ll probably stop measuring so carefully. But it is good practice to start.  Consistency should be like pancake batter (or thicker, if trying to bring back to health as directed in #4 below).

   3. Keep covered with a solid lid, untightened.  Cloth and other options tend to breed mold.

2. Using your starter

   1. To use active starter, you want to capture it right at the ‘peak’ of its rise.  This will vary depending on your ratios and temperature of your starter.  1:1:1 generally takes 4-6 hours to reach peak.  Play around in your own space to start to understand the timing of your starter and feeding schedules/cycles.

3. Fridge Maintenance

   1. If you don’t plan to be actively using your starter, and the discard is building, it’s completely acceptable to toss it into the fridge after a feeding. Make sure the lid is screwed on hand tight, or it will dry out!

   2. You can theoretically leave an unfed starter in the fridge for months and activate it again, but I’ve found a weekly feeding to be good rhythm for me when not in use.

   3. You will want to relieve pressure to the container here and there (this depends on how active your discard is).  Every few days is what I start with.  If it’s very pressurized, up the cadence and wait longer in between your feeding cycles.

4. Smells like nail polish, help?!

   1. This is normal, just means she’s hungry!

   2. You can skim off the cloudly liquid that forms at the top, or leave if you prefer a more sour taste to the bread.

   3. Feed a higher ratio, peak-to-peak; meaning that right when the rise stops you dose her again with a thick feed.

   4. You can also add in rye flour.  I do this sparingly; mostly due to cost and familiarity with standard flour.

Play around with ratios.  A lot of learning this skill is hands on trial and error.  1:3:2 is a favorite for me to get the starter active quickly.  It takes around 12-14 hours to peak in 72 degrees.

1. Unsafe starters

   1. Mold can be somewhat difficult to spot, as it can look a lot like Kham Yeast (which is totally safe) and build slowly.  This is why I like to use unbleached all purpose flour, discoloration indicative to mold is easier to spot.  It will appear like pink dots.

   2. Darker areas are usually just air bubbles living underneath the surface.  My general rule if I’m unsure is to stir and feed.  If it’s mold, it’ll continue to grow and become glarily obvious and it feeds on

Kham yeast forms on the top of a healthy starter and appears like tons of white dots.  Skim off and continue along as normal.