Get Started With Your Starter - Part 2: Sourdough Starter Basics

Simply mix flour and water together, wait long enough, and then presto! You have a sourdough starter. After that, it's all about maintaining the culture and giving it the resources to thrive.

Having a healthy starter is the first step in baking bread. Try not to get ahead of yourself... your starter needs to be fully active and healthy before you'll get a decent loaf of bread with it. Be patient!

For this article, I'm going to assume you're using some dried starter, as pictured above.

If you don't have any dried starter, that's OK! You don't actually need it. It just helps the process go a bit quicker.

What's going on?

As we discussed in Part 1, a sourdough starter is simply flour and water. This mixture acts as a cozy home made out of food for your culture.

The yeast and bacteria that grow in the culture live everywhere! In the air, on grown foods, in our digestive system... all around us. In fact, all you need to start a sourdough starter lives on the flour itself!

In this article, we're going to capture some of that natural yeast in our flour (maybe with some help from dried starter) and gently coax it into a thriving culture that's bursting with healthy yeast. This yeast will be what ferments our bread and makes it rise.

An unhealthy sourdough starter is one that doesn't have a lot of yeast cells, or the yeast is sluggish and not providing the chemical reactions we need for good bread.

All this means that a sourdough starter is a living thing. It has to be fed, and it can get grumpy if you don't pay attention to it. You can tell your starter's moods by sight, smell, and feel (texture). I'll explain what to look for in this article.

How do I know if my starter is ready to use for making bread?

There are a lot of opinions on the internet for how to tell if your starter is ready. Some people say to use the 'float test', some people look for a certain amount of bubbles, some people try to describe the correct smell.

In my opinion, that's all unnecessary (although it's good to be aware of them). All you really need to do is this:

8-12 hours after you refresh your starter (explained below), your starter should double in size

...that's it! I use a rubber band to mark the starting height of my starter after I feed it before going to sleep. When I wake up, I check to make sure my starter has at least doubled in size above the rubber band.

We're going to be building a 100% hydration starter here, which is the most common. That means there are equal parts water and flour. Once your starter is healthy, you can read my article on the pros and cons of adjusting that!

Our starter will also be a white starter, meaning that we feed it with just unbleached white flour. Most starters are white starters. Once your starter is healthy, you can read my article on the pros and cons of adjusting what you feed it!

Equipment

- Some kind of see-through jar with a lid (I use a quart-sized plastic takeout container)

- A rubber band that fits around the jar

- A digital kitchen scale (here's an inexpensive one that would work)

Ingredients

- Unbleached white flour (King Arthur Unbleached Bread Flour is great to start)

- Whole wheat flour or whole rye flour

- Water*

- (optional) dried starter

* Try not to use tap water since it often contains chlorine and fluoride, which can harm the yeast. Distilled water or mineral drinking water is best.

Setup

Put your rubber band around your jar and make sure to weigh it with the lid off. Write this number down! You'll need it for as long as you're using this jar to feed your starter.

Step One - Hail Hydrate

- Crumble up your dried starter and place it in your jar

- Put the jar on your scale, tare it, and then add 30 g of water

- Cover your jar and leave it to hydrate for an hour or two

If you don't have any dried starter, simply add 30 g of water and skip down to step two!

Step Two - Get Mixed Up

- Add equal portions whole wheat (or rye) flour and white flour to add up to the amount of water you added in the last step. For example if you added 30 g of water, add 15 g of whole wheat (or whole rye) flour and 15 g of white flour.

- Mix it up, cover it, and let it sit on your counter

This might sound weird, but take a smell of your mixture. It will probably smell slightly sweet and wheaty. Take note of that smell, because it'll change as your starter ferments.

We used a little bit of whole flour here for a few reasons. To be brief, there's a better chance of capturing some wild yeast living on the flour when it's whole. This is just to jump-start the culture, and then we'll switch to only white flour.

Step 3 - Take a Chill Pill

Wait at least 24 hours and check out your mixture. If things went well, you might see a few bubbles (or the crater from a popped one) on the surface. If you don't see any, try waiting another 24 hours.

Evidence of Bubblage (I made up that word just now)

As before, take a sniff of your baby starter. You'll notice that the smell has gotten a bit more vinegary, and maybe a little less pleasant. That's totally normal!

If after 48 hours your starter smells the same and you don't see any bubbles, try adding another 15 g of whole wheat flour and 15 g of water and mix it up, and start this step over.

Step 4 - Feed The Baby

What we're trying to do here is increase the number of yeast and bacteria cells in your mixture. The flour and water are food, and when the yeast eats the food it releases gas, (that's where the bubbles come from). From now on we'll only use white flour.

Now you'll get practice with something you'll eventually do once or twice a day: it's called refreshing your starter. Basically, you'll double the amount of flour and water in your starter, to give your culture more food and more room to grow.

To do this:

- Weigh your jar with the lid off

- Take that number, and subtract the tare of your jar and band that you took in the setup step

- Now take that number, and divide it in half. This is your feed amount

- Add the feed amount of white flour to the mixture

- Add the feed amount of water to the mixture

Take your rubber band (bet you were wondering what that's for) and put it at the level of the starter in your jar after it's been all fed and mixed up.

Step 5 - Patience, Patience

Wait another 24 hours. You want to get more bubbles than before.

This is what it looked like 12 hours after refreshment in step 4

And another 12 hours after that

As before, try to become familiar with your starter's smell, look, and texture. Give it a gently jiggle to see how it moves. You'll notice that these aspects will change as it becomes stronger.

The starter will not smell good, fair warning. That's OK, as long as you don't see any mold or reddish streaks. If you do, throw out the mixture, wash your container, and start over.

If there's a layer of liquid on top of your starter, don't worry - that just means your starter is hungry. Move on to step 6.

Step 6 - Refresh!

Refresh your starter with white flour and water again, and wait another 12 hours.

Not quite doubled yet!

Lots more bubbles on the surface. That's good!

Step 7 - The Routine of a Baker

Keep refreshing your starter every 8-12 hours for at least the first week. If you skip a feeding you starter won't die, but it will let you know that it's angry with you by smelling much more strongly, by generating liquid that pools on the surface (called 'hooch', which is alcohol produced by the hungry yeast), and with hundreds of small bubbles on the surface.

Step 8 - Saying Goodbye

You might have noticed at this point that if you keep doubling the amount of your starter, you'll soon run out of room. That brings us to an important concept for sourdough.... the discard.

It's very sad, but you have to dump your starter out every so often so that you and your home are not overrun by a giant starter blob. While you're building your starter to proper bread-baking health, it's also helpful to not use up all your flour.

Once you get to about 200g of starter total, dump out about 3/4 of it right before your next refreshment. You don't need to be precise.

It's best to discard your starter in a grass or dirt patch outside. The local wildlife will be very appreciative. If you don't have access to a grassy spot outside, don't dump it directly in the garbage or down the drain! If you discard into the garbage your house will stink. If you dump it down the drain, it can clog. Best to use a small compost bin or lidded stone crock lined with a plastic bag, and occasionally throw out the bag and replace it.

Step 8... And Beyond!

The cycle of refreshment and discarding doesn't end once your starter is healthy - this is the routine that you'll keep up for as long as you're baking. Over the next few weeks, the starter will get stronger and stronger, and will become increasingly and surprisingly hard to kill.

Don't worry - once your starter is healthy, there are ways to "pause" your starter if you're traveling, or just want to take a break from baking for a while. I discuss these strategies in my post Taking A Break.

Many home bakers refresh twice daily... once in the morning before work, and once at night before bed. This will lead to a much healthier and active starter, which is what you want for baking. However, you'll need to discard or bake a lot more often, and it takes a few extra minutes out of your day.

Congratulations!! You have a sourdough starter. Give it a name, and let me know it in the comments! My starter's name is Drake, he's a half white half pumpernickel rye starter that I've had for about 3 years as of the date of this post!

Drake, my firstborn

What's next?

In my next post, I'll go over some troubleshooting tips for getting your sourdough starter off the ground. I almost killed my starter a few times when I first got it, so don't feel bad if things don't go exactly as planned! Learning the rhythms of your starter is totally necessary before you start trying to bake.

I bet you're excited to get baking! Once you feel ready, head on over to the Beginner Sourdough recipe.