Starter

Sourdough starter is also referred to as the mother, for good reason. It gives your bread life. It sustains your bread making for years to come so show it some respect. I was told to give my starter a name. This website's name is taken from my grandfather and my starter is named after both of my grandmothers. It's name is Edrid, a combination of Edith and Mildred, my paternal and maternal grandmothers.

Food

I like to use an organic all purpose flour when feeding my starter. If you're going to all this trouble you might as well get the best food you can for your baby. I mean, your starter.

Water

This one is a little less obvious but really important. Usually when baking you just use tap water. Well, you can't do that with your sourdough starter. Since the starter contains very fragile organisms (natural yeasts), the chlorine in tap water will, at best keep it from thriving; at worst it will kill it.

Oxygen

As you can see from the photo above my starter lives in a mason jar with a coffee filter in place of the solid lid. This allows your starter to breathe and grow.

A thriving sourdough will go through phases. Shortly (within a few hours) after feeding the organisms will do their thing and the volume will almost triple. Take a look at this time lapse video of my starter. The video begins right after the feeding and compresses 8 hours into about 30 seconds. The evolution is pretty dramatic.

It wasn't until I started sharing my starter and talking to other sourdough bread makers, particularly those starting out, that I realized timing is pretty critical. With traditional bread you have a packet of yeast that is ready and waiting for you to activate it. It's simple and doesn't need much. Just give it some warm water and maybe some sugar and within about 10 minutes it's ready to go to work. With sourdough you're working with more of a diva. You have to be patient, you have to give it what it needs and you have to use it when it is ready, not when you're ready. I've learned that Edrid is ready to go to work about 8 to 10 hours after I feed it. If I try and use it too soon it won't be active enough. If I wait too long it will have used up all its energy just sitting there.

So how do we handle and feed this starter so that it will perform for you? It's pretty simple. I encourage you to really get comfortable with your starter before you start baking. What you have to understand though is that at the beginning you have starter, water and flour. 8 hours later you have just starter. Since you work with equal parts of each (by weight) you're essentially tripling the amount of starter through the feeding process. This leads us to starter discard. If you didn't discard some at the beginning your starter amount would continue to triple each time you fed it. This is why you find so many starter discard recipes on the internet. Ultimately you need to control the process enough so that you keep your starter alive while maintaining a manageable amount. What you do with the discard is up to you. Mine either goes in the trash or I share it with others who want to try making sourdough themselves.

Feeding your starter

Ok, so let's get to the feeding process. I've created this graphic to help show you the process because I can get a bit wordy. I'm going to jump right into the process used for a thriving starter. If you start from scratch you'll need to follow the instructions on the packet, like I did, or find some guidance on the internet. But if you get some starter from an existing, thriving sources (e.g. if I share some with you) you can jump right in here.

With this 3-step process you can be very exact, or like me, you can be a little more relaxed based on your familiarity with your starter. The 3 colors indicate the 3 components. Technically, they should be equal parts, by weight.

Step 1 - Remove your starter from wherever it is being kept. I like to keep mine in the refrigerator because I don't want to be constantly feeding my starter. Storing it in the refrigerator allows me to go up to 8 to 10 days between feedings if necessary. Transfer about 1/4 cup of starter (60-70g) to a clean, dry mason jar (24 oz size).

Step 2 - To that new jar add 1/3 cup water and 1/2 cup flour. You may ask why I just said to use a 1/2 cup of flour when I only have a 1/4 cup of starter and I said above that they should be equal parts. Well, loose flour is about half as dense as the starter so 1/2 cup of flour should weigh about the same as 1/4 cup of starter. If you weigh out your starter, then add equal weights of water and flour. I know it's confusing and the fact that I used 1/3 cup of water makes it even more confusing, right? Let me explain that too. My experience has taught me that leaving the starter in the refrigerator for several days dries it out a bit so I add just a little more water at this step. It's the only time I do this. Anyway, mix it really well. You want to incorporate all three parts and mix in lots of oxygen too. It should be the consistency of a thick pancake batter.

Put a coffee filter on top of the mason jar and secure it with the metal ring. Set this in a warm place for about 8 hours.

Step 3 - At the end of the 8 hours you now have a jar of 100% sourdough starter. You can either continue on and feed it again or you can put it in the refrigerator for later (up to 8 to 10 days).

That wasn't so hard, was it? When you get comfortable with the process this should only take about 5 minutes to complete step 2 and then you just go about your business during step 3. Make sure your container is big enough. One time I had the starter break through the coffee filter because it grew so much and I hadn't anticipated it.

But what if I want to make some bread?

Good question. In order to make your sourdough you have to use the starter in place of yeast. But you also want to make sure you don't use all of it or you may be charged with matricide... killing your mother, get it? Ok let's just move on. This is where we take advantage of the feeding process where you start with equal parts starter, flour and water and end up with all starter.

In my process I create two jars of starter. One to be used for baking and the other to be kept as the "mother." Take a look at the following graphic. Essentially it is following the same steps as above but on a different scale.

The first 3 steps achieve the goal of feeding the starter to maintain the starter. We want to pick up from the end of step 3, after the start has completed its cycle. You should have about 200 g of start at this point. At this point we have a nice wet, thriving starter so I do everything by weight.

Step 4 - Take about 65-70 g of starter from the jar and put it into another clean jar. Take another 120-130g of starter and put it in its own jar. Now you have two jars with starter.

Step 5 - In each jar add equal quantities (by weight) of water and flour. So the one jar is going to get 65g of water and 65g of flour. The other jar will get 120g of water and 120g of flour. Stir up the contents in both jars so that you incorporate everything. Both jars should end up with the same consistency. Put both jars in a warm space for about 8 hours.

Step 6 - The jar with the smaller amount of starter can go into the refrigerator. That's your mother. That's the one that will be kept alive for future baking. Don't forget to feed it in a few days. The jar with the larger amount can be used for baking. If you're following along it should have about 360g of starter at the end of the 8 hour period.

At this point pick this up with the bread recipe.

Big Picture Timeline

Everything above, on this page, is done on day 1 as shown on the timeline. Hopefully this helps. If at any point you think your starter isn't doing well, just go through a feeding process (steps 1-3) at least once, maybe even two or three times. When you create your starter you basically do that over and over for a week or two. Just remember the naturally occurring organisms need food, water and oxygen. When they're thriving you'll know it.