Sour Dough Starter Guide
The care and keeping of your sour dough starter!
If you are reading this, there is a good chance that I have gifted you a sour dough starter! If you are curious about starting one you of course can contact me, but I will also be starting a little sour dough series here.
This blog post will be all about helping you keep your very own yeast pet alive! These suckers are actually surprisingly strong, and they are also surprisingly easy to revive if you have made a mistake!
There are many benefits to making sour dough bread, some of which are obvious. When you are making your own bread, it is always going to be better for you. There is always going to be health benefits when you are avoiding overly processed ingredients. It will be easier on an already sensitive stomach. Carbs are not the enemy friends!!!
Tips:
Someone gave me a sourdough starter, what the heck do I do?
To keep it alive, all you have to do is feed it about every 24 hours. Feeding instructions will be listed below!
To bake with it, you are going to use it at its most active, which will be anywhere from 3-12 hours after your last feeding. Recipes for sour dough bread will be shared later!
How do I know how much to feed it?
To start, you should always be feeding the starter exactly double from what you started with. If you start with 100g, feed it 50g water and 50g flour. If it is at 50g, 25g water and 25g flour.
Most recepies require about 300g of starter to make a loaf. Always remember you have to leave about 50g of starter to be able to build it up again without starting over entirely!
What do I do if I don’t want to feed it daily?
You can put your starter in the fridge for about 2 weeks. The wild yeast eats the flour and water food that you give it at a much slower rate than when it is at a warmer temperature. After a while, a hungry starter develops something called ‘‘hooch,’’ which is essentially alcohol that has developed as a byproduct of a hungry starter.
If you don’t feed it daily, it can still develop hooch. It should smell strong, but not rancid. Basically, the only reason you ever need to restart from scratch is if mold develops. That is essentially the only problem that will be unsalvageable.
What materials do I need?
A clean jar! I recommend the Mason Jars with flat sides. Lipped jars are going to be much harder to stir, as well as significantly harder to keep clean. A clean jar will help you prevent mold!
A kitchen scale: Measuring mass with volume is a silly measurement system. To be the most accurate you are going to want to measure the ingredients in grams. Sour dough is forgiving, but being exact is important.
Flour: It is up to you whether you are going to use whole wheat, rye, or just unbleached flour!
How to feed!
Name your starter! This is an important tradition (mine is named Ferris).
Make sure to have a clean jar on hand, this will be an important step to making sure that you don’t let mold grow.
To start, place 100g of starter into your clean jar.
In a separate bowl, measure 50g of flour.
Pour the flour into your jar.
In a separate bowl, measure 50g of room temperature water. Ideally the water will be filtered for best results.
Stir the mixture together well, it should be thick and wet. If it is too watery, add more flour. If it is too dry and not combining, add a little water until it is the right consistency.
Lightly close the lid, the starter needs room to breathe, so don’t close it too tightly as the jar could break.
Leave the starter in a warm, dry place to rise for the desired amount of time. It will be ready to use when it has doubled in size.