How To Make, Maintain and Use Your Own Sourdough Starter
UPDATED 2018.10.18 - Refined Method, Revised Ratios and New Photo
After watching the Netflix 4-part series "Cooked", based on the book by Michael Pollan of the same name, I got the itch to try making long-fermented sourdough bread to provide my girls with a healthier option for their school sandwiches (here's a good article that lays out the basics of why long-fermented sourdough is healthier, and here's another talking a bit about artisan breads, bakeries and sourdough benefits as well). The only ingredients in the bread I make now are water, flour, and salt.
Anyway, long story short, after playing around with a couple of different sets of instructions on how to get your own starter going, I settled on this method for starting and maintaining the starter (also known as "levain"), and have successfully done this for a couple of years now.
One key point - make sure your flour is fresh/new! If it's been sitting in your cupboard for any length of time, go buy a fresh bag of unbleached white flour. The first batch of starter I tried to make didn't seem to work (the bread didn't rise). After I "fixed" it with fresh flour, it worked no problem only a day and a half later. :)
While you can go with just unbleached white flour, you're better off with both whole wheat flour and unbleached white flour, and using a 1/3 whole wheat & 2/3 white blend to maintain the starter. The whole wheat flour seems to give the starter a microbe boost vs. just white flour, and has definitely made my breads rise better. I don't recommend using much more whole wheat flour than that, however, because the resulting breads tend to be too dense, moist and gummy. In my bread recipes, aside from what's in the starter, I only use unbleached white flour.
Also, get a scale, and go by weight with your flour. Water is 1g per ml, so it translates straight across (though how accurate your measuring cup and eye may be can vary), but the volume of flour vs. the weight can vary wildly. I will only give weight measures for flour below, and strongly recommend using weight measures for the water as well.
The method below produces what's know as a 100% Hydration Starter, I.E. equal parts flour and water. I find working with this half and half mix simpler, both in the mixing/feeding stage, and when using it in recipes.
Building Your Starter
NOTE: Makes 500 g of Sourdough Starter, and takes a week to 10 days!
Equipment:
A 4-cup / 1 litre glass liquid measuring cup for building the starter, and then for mixing up the starter portion of your bread recipes down the road. I just cover this with a clean tea towel when the starter is growing.
A glass or ceramic container that can hold at least 1 litre volume, with a very wide mouth for easy mixing, and a tight-fitting lid for storage later. You can go even bigger if you like, and may have to if you're going to be baking in larger quantities.
A digital scale that measures in grams
Optional: A 250 ml liquid measuring cup
A dinner fork, or if you want to get fancy, a Danish dough whisk
A rubber or silicone spatula
To start your starter:
50 g water (same thing if your volume measure is accurate)
50 g of whole wheat flour
Mix the water and flour together in your 1-liter measuring cup with a fork or chopstick, trying to incorporate as much air as possible, and let sit, loosely covered with a tea towel, at room temperature for 12 hours.
First, Second and Third Feedings, 12 hours apart:
50 g water
16 g of whole wheat flour
33 g of unbleached white flour
Mix the water into your starter first, again, trying to incorporate as much air as possible. Make it frothy! Afterwards, add the flour and mix well. Scrape down the sides of the container with a spatula. Let sit, loosely covered, for 12 hours between feedings. After your third feeding, you should have about 400 g of starter - but you're not ready to make bread with it yet!
Note that the starter may not be super active at this point - that's OK.
Subsequent Feedings, Every 12 Hours for days 3-7 (or more):
250g starter
125 g water
45 g whole wheat flour
80 g of unbleached white flour
From this point forward, you will discard all but 250g of starter before feeding. Until day 5 or so, it's not active or sour enough yet to be useful - after that, you can use what you remove in sourdough biscuits or flatbreads where you just want the sour flavour, not a "rise" from the sourdough. It's not ready for bread-making until at least 7-8 days or more.
As before, add the water to your starter first and whip it to a froth, then add the flour and mix well. Scrape down the sides of your container, then let it sit for 12 hours between feedings, covered with a damp tea towel.
By about day 4 or 5, the starter should be getting pretty active, and should start to smell sour and/or yeasty. Try making biscuits - they're yummy, and super easy (recipe link to follow).
By day 7 (or maybe slightly longer - mine took 9 or 10 days to be really active), the starter should be getting VERY active and bubbly. It should rise to double its volume 6-9 hours after a feeding, then collapse back down. Once you get a good rise out of your starter by itself, it's ready to make bread.
The loaf on the left was made before my starter was really ready. The one on the right, only a day and a half later. The ONLY differences were giving the starter more time to develop, and using some fresh flour to feed it. What a difference!
While it tasted quite good, the loaf on the left could have been used as a weight plate in the gym, it was so dense...
Maintaining Your Starter - Until Day 30
For the first 30 days, you should keep your starter on the counter at room temperature, covered with a tea towel, and keep up the twice-daily feeding schedule. This will seem like a LOT of wasted water & flour (unless you are baking bread daily), but is a necessary step to ensure your starter is really robust and can stand up to refrigeration.
Less frequent feedings (I tried once per day) will result in a very sour, vinegary-smelling starter, and it didn't work as well for my breads when I let it get to that point.
NOTE: the ratio of starter to water/flour has changed. Where before it was equal parts reserved starter and new material, now we’re using only half the amount of starter to new material.
If your starter is out at room temperature, it needs to be fed twice-daily!
Subsequent Feedings, Every 12 Hours:
100 g starter (discard the rest)
100 g water
34 g whole wheat flour
66 g of unbleached white flour
From this point forward, you will discard all but 100g of starter before feeding, which means you’ll have 200g of starter to use or discard.
As before, add the water to your starter first and whip it to a froth, then add the flour and mix well. Scrape down the sides of your container, then let it sit for 12 hours between feedings, covered with a damp tea towel.
Maintaining and Using Your Starter - After 30 Days
Keeping Your Starter In The Fridge
My starter seems to work best keeping it refrigerated, so that’s the way I’m going to suggest doing it here. If you’re going to be baking bread (and therefore feeding your starter) daily, you can keep it out at room temperature.
After your starter has matured for at least 30 days, it can safely be refrigerated for up to a week to ten days without feeding. It’s best to let it sit at room temperature for an hour or so before feeding, and to refrigerate it right after it peaks following the feeding.
How much you decide to reserve can depend on how much you need for your recipes when you feed it. From here on out, you’ll use a 1:2:2 ratio of starter to water to flour for feeding.
Basically, whatever amount of active starter you need for your recipe, start with 1/4 of that amount of your stored starter, and feed it appropriately. Here are a few examples:
If you regularly make a boule that requires 400g of starter, for example, you’ll start with 100g of your stored starter every time, then feed it with 200g water, 67g whole wheat flour & 133g white flour, totalling 500g of active starter after feeding. You’d then take out the 400g you need for your recipe and reserve the remaining 100g for storage.
For sandwich buns that require 300g of starter, you’ll start with 75g of your stored starter every time, then feed it with 150g water, 50g whole wheat flour & 100g white flour, totalling 375g of active starter after feeding. You’d then use 300g and reserve 75g for storage.
For a sandwich loaf that requires 200g or less, you’ll start with 50g of your stored starter every time, then feed it with 100g water, 34g whole wheat flour & 134g white flour, totalling 250g of active starter after feeding. You’d then use 200g and reserve 50g for storage.
I generally keep 100g of starter in storage, so I have the flexibility to do any of the above. If I only use 50g, then the 50g after my build for the recipe goes back in the storage container to bring it back up to 100g.
Whatever amount you decide to work with, as before, add the water to your starter first and whip it to a froth, then add the flour and mix well. Scrape down the sides of your container, then cover it with a tea towel and leave it out at room temperature for 6-9 hours to ferment, until it doubles in volume. Use what you need for your recipe and immediately refrigerate the remainder.
Resources
On The Web
I read a LOT of different websites / pages / articles on how to build a starter and work with sourdough in general. The two most useful for me were:
Sourdough Home - an excellent resource for all things sourdough! Here's a very good recipe for San Francisco-Style Sourdough that I've used to make sandwich loaves and buns. I'm still working on getting a nice golden crust (mine's still a bit pale), but great overall.
My Sister's Kitchen - another good resource for sourdough, including the basis for my favourite, no-knead sourdough bread recipe. The original recipe itself is posted on Instructables - here's the link. The recipe does use some yeast, though, while my "pure" sourdough version doesn't (link to follow once I get the page up :) )
Books
Both of these books are by Ken Forkish of Ken's Artisan Bakery in Portland, Oregon, and they really elevated my knowledge of the dough-making process. I own and highly-recommend both books. Note that most of his recipes are hybrids, using some small amounts of commercial yeast in addition to the levain / starter, but he does have some pure levain recipes in both.