Welcome to our guide on sourdough starter maintenance! In this post, we’ll cover the essentials of keeping your sourdough starter healthy and active. We’ll go over how to feed, store, and troubleshoot your starter, as well as tips for using it in bread recipes. Whether you’re a seasoned sourdough baker or just starting out, this guide will provide you with the knowledge and tools to create delicious, homemade sourdough bread. Let’s dive in!
What is sourdough?
Sourdough is a bread leavened with natural Lactobacillus bacteria and wild yeasts. This bread is easier to digest. Sourdough bread acts as a prebiotic, which means that the fiber in the bread helps feed the “good” bacteria in your intestines. This bacteria is essential for keeping and maintaining a healthy and happy digestive system. So instead of taking probiotic pills, all you have to do is eat sourdough bread daily. Ever sourdough taste different, it all depends on where you live, the temperature in your house, and the bacteria in the air. This healthy fungi is a dream to grow and bake with. It’s more nutritious than “normal” yeast bread. Sourdough is also known to be less likely to spike blood sugar as opposed to other breads. Sourdough is not only for bread! You can make pizza dough, brownies, pancakes, and much more. Plus you can play around with some sourdough art, I love seeing other peoples beautiful homemade loafs of healthy bread. It’s fun to make bread. My sourdough has been alive for 1.5 years. I love fermented foods like sourdough bread, sauerkraut, and fermented veggies.
Sourdough starter maintenance.
If you want to make bread using your sourdough starter, take your sourdough starter out of the fridge and feed it.
How do you feed your starter.
- Rye Starter: Feed it by adding 1/2 cup King Arthurs White Flour and 1/2 cup Bobs Red Mill Rye Flour to the starter out of the fridge. Add either 1/2 cup of water or less. **I like to make my started not runny but more thicker like sour cream consistency, this way when I am making my dough it doesn’t become too runny.
- White Starter: Feed your starter with 1 cup King Arthurs White Flour and 3/4 cup of water (or less). Make it more like sour cream consistency, less runny.
- Stir vigorously until combined into a smooth thick batter.
- Cover with a paper towel and a rubber band. Place a rubber band where the sourdough is so you can see how much it has risen.
- Place in your oven with your light on.
- Once it has doubled or even tripled, then started to slowly fall down usually around 6 hours later, it is ready to be used.
****Awesome way to check if starter is ready is the FLOAT TEST. If it floats in water, it’s ready to be used.
*****I never discard. Every time I feed it, I use about 200 g for two loaves and I have some left over about 50 g to feed again and use again or store in the fridge.
Storing the starter.
Starter can be stored in the fridge for up to a week without feeding.
**When you see a brownish water form on top of the starter, that means its hungry and needs to be fed!
Ok so let’s say you fed the starter in the morning, waited for the rise and fall, used some for making dough, and fed the rest again. Once you have fed your starter, place it on top of your fridge or on top of your oven or in the oven with the light on for a few hours to give time for the yeast to recuperate before going INTO the fridge. Cover tightly and place in the back of your fridge until the next time you need to use it.
What kind of flour to feed your starter with?
I have been feeding my starter with King Arthurs White Flour and Bobs Red Mill Rye Flour. Once you have the starter, you can feed it any flour. If you want to make rye bread, I would feed the starter rye flour and then make the bread with white and rye (only 50 g) flour. If you want to make white bread, feed the starter white flour. You can keep switching back and forth or you can make two separate starters.
Times Example
9-11 AM Feed your starter and put in oven with light on.
2-4 PM Use it for bread dough and feed again. Then place in fridge or out on the counter if you plan to use it.
4 PM When you made the dough, in 30 mins to 1 hour you have to do the first stretch and fold. The rest of the directions you can find here.
Similar posts you might like:
- Sourdough Bread Recipe
- Sourdough pizza dough recipe
- Easy Sourdough Cinnamon Rolls Eggless Recipe
- Benefits of Sourdough Bread
SOURDOUGH STARTER MAINTENANCE
Ingredients
White Sourdough Starter
- 1 cup King Arthur Unbleached Flour
- 3/4 cup water
- 50 grams Leftover sourdough starter
Rye Sourdough Starter
- 1/2 cup King Arthur Unbleached Flour
- 1/2 cup Bob Red Mill Rye Flour
- 3/4 cup water
- 50 grams Leftover sourdough starter
Instructions
- Combine flour, water, starter.
- Stir vigorously until combined into a smooth thick batter.
- Cover with plastic wrap. Place a rubber band where the sourdough is so you can see how much it has risen.
- Place in your oven with your light on.
- Once it has doubled or even tripled, then started to slowly fall down usually around 6 hours later, it is ready to be used.
- Place in the fridge if not using.
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Thank you for all the tips!!! It is so helpful for a beginner sourdough maker like me 😉