I recently had a couple of friends ask me for some sourdough starter and I was more than happy to share with them. If you regularly bake sourdough bread you know you always have plenty of starter to share with anyone that would like some. Heck, if you’re like me you’re regularly scouring Pinterest looking for recipes to use up all that extra starter so you don’t have to throw it away!
Sharing starter with family and friends always comes with a litany of questions on how to care for it. How do you feed it? How much do you feed it? How often does it need to be fed? How do you store it? Does it need to be refrigerated or can I leave it on the counter? How do I know when it’s ready to use for baking a loaf of bread?
Newbies to sourdough baking seem to think it’s really difficult and time consuming to care for a sourdough starter but it’s actually quite simple to do. Today’s post is just the basics of how to take care of your starter and knowing when it’s ready to use for baking up a fresh loaf of crusty sourdough bread. It includes everything you ever wanted to know about how to take care of a sourdough starter.
You will need a few basic supplies:
- Quart sized mason jar with a lid
- Digital food scale
- Wooden spoon or rubber spatula, avoid using a metal utensil
- Rubber band or piece of string
The starter is a living organism and needs oxygen to stay alive. You have a couple of options. You can leave the lid slightly askew to allow for some air flow or you can go out into the garage and drill a few holes in the lid.
Be sure to weigh the flour and water using a digital scale. This ensures you have the right amount of hydration in your starter. A very runny starter (high hydration) makes it challenging to work with the dough and form it into a loaf.
Feed starter 100 grams of flour and 100 grams of warm water.
GOOD TO KNOW: You don’t want more than about a third of a jar full of starter when you are feeding it. When it activates and bubbles up it will overflow the jar and create quite a mess. So if you have more than a third of a jar full of starter, pour off the excess. This excess starter is what is commonly referred to as sourdough discard.
Stir everything together well; the starter, water and flour.
When I was gifted my starter by my sweet sister-in-law Robyn, she told me to never use metal utensils to stir the starter, to use either a wooden spoon or rubber spatula.
GOOD TO KNOW: Modern stainless steel utensils are generally considered safe to use with sourdough starter, but you should avoid using reactive metals like copper or aluminum with your starter because the acid in the starter could react with the the metal and affect the starters activity.
Cover the jar with the lid.
I add a piece of paper towel to the top of the jar to keep gnats from getting into the jar. I seem to have them visit my kitchen during the hotter summer months. I love bringing the outdoors inside; leaving the French doors to the backyard open on warm summer evenings, but it results in some gnats in the house. If gnats are not an issue in your kitchen you can fore go the paper towel on the jar and just screw on the lid.
If you leave your starter out on your kitchen counter you will need to feed your starter everyday.
GOOD TO KNOW: The temperature in your kitchen will determine how quickly your starter bubbles up and is ready to use for baking. The warmer the temperature the faster the process, the colder your kitchen, the longer it will take. Placing the jar on a trivet, in a warm spot in your kitchen will speed up the fermentation process.
If you store your starter in the refrigerator you can get by feeding your starter every 7-10 days. In all honesty, my starter has gotten shoved to the back of the fridge and forgotten for several weeks at a time. I pull it out and start feeding it everyday and it comes back after just a few days. It’s actually pretty hard to kill a starter.
If a black liquid forms on the top, don’t toss it out! It just means your starter has been starved of nutrients and really needs to be fed. You can either pour off the black liquid (it’s called hootch) or stir it back into the starter. Stirring it back in will give you a more sour tasting starter than pouring it off, but it does look quite unappetizing. Just remember, the more sour the starter, the more sour your loaves of sour dough bread will taste. I typically pour off about half of the hootch and stir the rest back in.
When is the starter ready to use for baking?
Knowing when your starter is at its peak of fermentation and ready to use for baking is a little trickier. After you have fed your starter place a rubber band or tie a piece of string around the jar to mark the level of the starter.
I wish I could tell you an exact amount of time that it will take for your starter to be at it’s peak and ready to use but there are so many factors that can effect the speed of the fermentation process. Temperature will have the most impact on how quickly it ferments. The best thing to do is to keep a close eye on it so you will be able to see when it’s at its peak and ready to use for baking.
From the pictures above the starter was at its peak around the 5-ish hour mark. It was starting to come back down by the 6th hour. If you are planning to bake a loaf of bread the optimal time to use the starter would have been between the 5-6 hour mark.
A healthy, active starter will smell yeasty and should look swollen with lots of bubbles when it’s ready to be used. The starter below is ready to be used for baking a loaf of bread..
So what can you do with sourdough discard instead of tossing it out? Use it to make these Sourdough Starter Discard Pancakes. This is my personal favorite way to use up sourdough discard! This recipe produces the tastiest, soft, fluffy pancakes that will disappear as fast as they come off the skillet!
It’s easy to transform sourdough discard into a delicious, easy to make, tasty sourdough flatbread. This Sourdough Starter Discard Flat Bread is perfect with all your favorite Mediterranean meals. It’s great for Gyros!
Or use this tasty flatbread to scoop up hummus. Instead of buying store-bought hummus with chemical additives and preservatives learn how easy it is to make your own. Check out how to make Christina’s Heavenly Hummus. It’s the tastiest, healthy, easy to make, hummus you will ever eat. This sourdough flatbread makes the perfect scooper to shovel it into your mouth.
If you’re feeling really lazy and even the thought of cooking is too much, just pour discard into a jar with some water and use it to feed your houseplants. Your plants will love all those living microbes in the discard and thank you with loads of new growth.
Now that you have some starter on hand, are you ready to try your hand at baking up a homemade loaf of sour dough bread? Give Iesha’s Fabulous Sour Dough Bread recipe a try. Whether you’re an experienced bread baker or a newbie, this sourdough bread recipe consistently produces excellent results. The easy to follow step-by-step instructions makes it the perfect bread baking method for everyone, even beginners.
Don’t let the thought of taking care of a sourdough starter intimidate you. Just get in there and do it. You’ll get a feel for it in no time and if you mess it up? No worries! I’ll bet someone you know has some starter to share with you. We bread bakers love to share!!!
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