Make your own sourdough starter

What is a sourdough starter? It’s basically just fermented flour and water and it is the most gut-happy way to leaven your bread. If you can get through the first seven days of taking care of your gesticulating sourdough starter, and get down with feeding it regularly or semi-regularly if you keep it in the fridge, you’ll have a ball of magic yeast ready for all things bread and you’ll probably never go back to store-bought. It’s also just the cost of a few bags of flour to do it, so if you lose a batch or two, you can rest assured your compost pile will gladly take the scraps and that it’s all in good fun. That said, just be consistent with it and you’ll be set for as long as you can keep it alive!

DAY 1

Mix 100 grams of flour with 100 grams of clean, room temperature water and put in a container that is twice as big as the mixture. Stir well. Cover with a cloth. It’s good to keep in a warmer room.

DAY 2

You should see it start to ferment by now - you’ll see bubbles and there will be a sweet funky smell if the fermentation is working. If it is very cold in your house it might take a bit longer, wait until you see those fermentation signs, then do the following:

• Discard half the mixture.

• Add 100 grams of flour and 100 grams of clean, room temperature water.

• Mix well.

This process is called a “feeding cycle”.*

DAY 3

So long as everything is bubbling, you may now start your feeding cycles. You’ll want to feed the starter every 12 hours or so - you’ll know it’s ready for a feed because the starter will have doubled in size. With each feed, as you did on day 2, you’ll discard half the starter, and then “feed” the starter exactly 113 grams of flour, and 113 grams of water (that comes to about 1 cup of flour and a 1/2 cup of water).

DAYS 4-7 & ONWARDS

After many days of disciplined feeds, your starter will have fully doubled in size, and this means it is ready. Might take a little longer than 7 days. Ultimately, it’s a bit of an intuitive process. You now have a couple options. Make a lot of bread? If you keep it on the counter, be sure to feed it regularly. Want to keep it in the fridge? Keep it covered with a loosely fitted lid and feed it just once a week - and be sure to get it to room temperature before you use it.

HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU MESSED UP?

Fuzziness, mold, a bad funk.
*You don’t necessarily need to discard half of your starter, you can also give it to friends for them to begin their starter, use the discard in a recipe right away, or just use a much bigger container and keep growing it. You may also discard more than half of the mixture, should you like. You need just 2 tablespoons of your baby starter to keep the feeding cycle going. That said, as it will take 7 days or more for the fermentation to settle in, it’s best to wait until that has occurred to use it.