4. Sourdough Starter Maintenance

No yeast no problem; learn how to start your own sourdough starter today! We talk about both the discard and the no-discard methods for how to feed a sourdough starter, as well as different methods for how to store your starter long-term when you’re not regularly baking.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Alyssa Warner: So before we start baking with one, let’s talk about how to make your own sourdough starter, how to feed your sourdough starter, and how to store your sourdough starter. There are many methods to making a sourdough starter, and while none of them is really wrong, I do find this to be the most reliable method.

[00:00:16] You wanna go ahead and start with clean hands and clean implements. I use a wide mouth glass jar so that I can see what’s going on inside and because my whole hand will fit inside of it. Your starter will need access to air and the yeast in the air as it’s growing, so don’t use an airtight lid. We made this thing, which is just kind of a little hat, a little cozy, out of two pieces of cotton, and it allows the air and the yeast to get in and keeps bugs out.

[00:00:47] If you don’t have one though, you can just use a cloth and a rubber band. To make your starter, mix equal parts flour and lukewarm water. If you have a thermometer, you can aim for about 100 degrees, but if you [00:01:00] touch it and it’s just a little bit warmer than your body temperature, that’s just fine. I like to measure by weight to reduce dishes, but you can measure by volume if that’s easier for you.

[00:01:09] I use 100 grams or one cup each of flour and water. So let’s go ahead and mix that together. We’re just gonna add one cup of water. Woo!

[00:01:25] So I’m gonna add a little bit less flour since I spilled everywhere. And

[00:01:37] The same in flour

[00:01:44] And it’s gonna get real goopy, but we’re just gonna go ahead and put our fingers in there And mix it together[00:02:00]

[00:02:06] This is how we get all of the good yeast that are on my hands mixed in with the flour Now, mix together the flour and water with your hands, and this is important. We’re capturing wild yeast from the environment and giving them a warm space full of nourishment where they can thrive and take over, and there’s a lot of that already on your hands.

[00:02:27] Mixing with clean hands gives your starter a jumpstart. Now, we’re gonna let this mixture sit for three days, and over those three days, those wild yeasts that are in the air, that are on your hands, that are on the skins of the fruit in your kitchen, they’re gonna make a home in the happy environment in your starter jar And you’re gonna see them start to eat the nutrition that is in the flour that you used, and they’re going to start creating the gas that lifts our bread, and if you let it sit long enough, it’ll also create alcohol.

[00:02:59] On day [00:03:00] three, you should be looking at something a little bit like this. If it’s not this active, don’t worry. You might just have to repeat feeds a little longer before it’s strong enough to use. Don’t give up hope, just discard, feed, and repeat. So on day three, we’re going to discard three quarters of this mixture, and we’re going to feed it 50 grams or half a cup each of flour and lukewarm water, and we’re gonna continue feeding this exact same way every single day until it rises and falls predictably.

[00:03:28] That means it’s gonna climb your jar and then fall back down. Um, it usually takes about seven days. I’ve built my sourdough feedings into my daily routine, and Frankenstarter 2, son of Frankenstarter, AKA Baby, gets fed with my pets and my chickens in the morning. It starts to become very easy to treat your sourdough starter like it’s a living thing, and that’s because it is.

[00:03:53] And if thinking of your starter like it’s a little pet helps you take consistent care of it, then by all means, [00:04:00] anthropomorphize away. Now, this isn’t the only way to obtain a starter. You might receive a division of a starter from a friend or neighbor, or purchase a piece of the starter from your favorite local bakery, or perhaps purchase a legacy starter from a famous location in California or Alaska.

[00:04:16] The Mother Earth News store actually sells a dehydrated starter. It’s really fun and simple to make your own starter at home, but sourdough starters invariably get more resilient and taste better with age. Plus, sharing an existing starter enables you to achieve more reliable bakes more quickly, and it connects you to a larger community and history of bakers.

[00:04:38] And now that you have your starter, let’s talk about how to feed it. Like I keep saying, your starter is alive, and like all living things, it needs the proper nutrition to grow and thrive. The best advice that I’ve heard from other bakers has been to feed your starter the same stuff that you bake with.

[00:04:52] My go-to sourdough recipe, the country bread recipe from the Tartine Bakery, uses a mixture of bread flour and whole wheat flour. So [00:05:00] I just mix up a big container of that so that it’s easy to do my feedings. The sourdough book featured in our store, which is written by John and Jessica Moody, is full of 100% whole wheat recipes, and unsurprisingly, their starter is fed with 100% whole wheat flour.

[00:05:15] It’s generally not recommended to feed all-purpose flour regularly because of the lower protein content, but if you’re out of bread flour and you’re out of whole wheat flour, it’s better to feed all-purpose than to not feed at all So let’s talk about how to feed your sourdough starter. There are basically two different ways to feed your starter, the discard method and the non-discard method.

[00:05:34] Let’s talk about the discard method first. In my experience, this is the method with the least variables that produces the most consistent results, which makes it ideal for new starters, like the one we just made, and new bakers who don’t know what a healthy starter should look like. The discard method involves removing and discarding most of your established starter, then adding back flour and water to feed the remaining yeast.

[00:05:59] The [00:06:00] reason we discard is to minimize the amount of new flour needed to feed the amount of yeast that we have. The larger your starter is when it needs to be fed, the more flour required to keep it from starving. So when you divide and discard a portion of your starter before feeding, you use less flour for that feeding I’m just gonna[00:07:00]

[00:07:26] Now, if you don’t bake a whole loaf of sourdough bread very often, this can seem like an extremely wasteful method, but there are a few ways to reduce the waste of discard. The first is probably the easiest, and that is to keep your sourdough starter small and feed it a large amount of flour to increase its size the night before you bake.

[00:07:43] I discard three-quarters of my starter and feed about two heaping tablespoons each of flour and water daily. This means I’m throwing away a small amount of flour and adding in a small amount of flour. The second way to reduce waste from sourdough discard is to cook with it. I use my sourdough discard in [00:08:00] slurries to thicken gravies and soups.

[00:08:01] I’ve added it to any number of quick bread recipes and muffins. I make sourdough crackers and overnight sourdough pancakes. You can collect your discard for a week in the refrigerator for larger recipes. Sourdough discard is also compostable or can be diluted with water and thrown directly under plants.

[00:08:20] The other sourdough feeding method is the no-discard method. A lot of folks call this the lazy sourdough method, and honestly, there is a lot less labor involved. However, this method kind of requires a knowledge of how sourdough starter behaves, how it looks when it needs to be fed, and how much you should feed a starter based on how big it is.

[00:08:39] That being said, this is all something that you get a feel of over time, and in addition to being less labor-intensive, this method can produce a more pronounced sour flavor that some folks really enjoy. The no-discard method is benefited by a larger jar because the starter will rise higher if there’s more in it, and basically, when feeding time comes, you mix in your flour and water, and that’s, [00:09:00] um, that’s the whole step.

[00:09:01] If you notice that your starter is consuming the flour too fast, that is, when you get to it the next day, there’s a layer of dark liquid at the top, or if your starter, um, it’s good to smell it every now and then. If it smells a little more hoochie than sour, then you know you should be feeding it more If you have a pretty solid experience of maintaining a sourdough starter and you bake fairly regularly, the no discard method will probably work very well for you.

[00:09:28] It’s possible to get a little out of control with how much starter you have on your hands, but then you can turn that discard into recipes from method number one. Now, how often should you feed your sourdough starter? For both methods, it’s best to feed every day. If you’re not going to be baking, it’s okay to feed your starter, cover it tightly, and set it in the fridge for a nap.

[00:09:50] In the summer when I’m very busy and baking less, my starter often lives in the fridge. I’ll take it out, feed it, and return it to the fridge once a week. A healthy starter can also survive [00:10:00] a few weeks in the fridge if you’re on vacation, but that’s just not the best practice for a standard routine. Um, and you can just take it with you on vacation.

[00:10:08] Sourdough starter travels well. I’ve put it over an ocean plane ride and it’s always fine. You can also store your sourdough starter in the same jar that you started it in. Your starter is going to like the same temperatures that you do as a human, so if it’s very hot, keep it somewhere sheltered and out of the light.

[00:10:25] It got very hot this summer, so I broke out my ceramic culture jar, and I kept it mostly in the cabinet with my potatoes and other root veggies. If it gets cold, you might keep it in a warmer spot in your house. You can put it on top of your fridge or maybe in your laundry room. Mine usually lives in my office in the winter because my desktop keeps that pretty warm.

[00:10:46] You can also continue to use the jar and cozy that you started it in, like this, but a regularly maintained starter will continue to thrive in a large enough screw top jar. For especially long-term storage, it’s best [00:11:00] to dehydrate your starter. Spread a thin layer of mature starter over parchment paper and let it dry out in your oven at the lowest possible temperature until it’s crispy.

[00:11:08] If you have a dehydrator, that’s even better. When you’re ready to use your starter again, simply crush it up, mix it with water, and feed it like normal. That’s basically what’s in one of these. And while all these methods are a good practice for maintaining a starter in the long term, the best way to make sure that there’s always a fed starter around is to divide it and share it with your friends and community.

[00:11:29] I made this starter last November, and there’s always someone in the building that I’ve given a division to who could replenish mine if it ever got sick and moldy, or if one of my cats knocks it off the counter. And now that we know how to start and feed our sourdough starters, I’ll see you in the next video with how to bake with it