How to Make a Sourdough Starter

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I love sourdough bread.

Actually, I love just about anything made with a sourdough starter. There’s more flavor and depth to the food and it layers in a bit of healthy fermentation that isn’t bad either.

The challenge with sourdough isn’t the baking or cooking process, it’s the starter.

Most people are afraid to make a starter.  

But you shouldn’t be. A sourdough starter isn’t as hard as people make it out to be.

A traditional starter has 2 ingredients.

• Water
• Flour

That’s it.

Some people put a piece of fruit in their starters to attract wild yeasts but I don’t think that’s necessary and can cause more problems with your starter than it adds in benefit.

How a starter “works”:

Here’s a little bit of history.

The earliest archaeological evidence for leavened bread comes from Egyptian remains of around 4000 BCE. Yeast spores found in the air and on the surface of the grains produced the first raised doughs.

In Greece and Rome, the wheat used in bread wasn’t grown until about 400 BCE. From that time forward as innovations in milling and farming were developed, bread making became a professional skill.

Fast forward to the 20th century and you’ll find that bread-making became industrialized. It was this industrialization that began the downfall of artisan bread. What took hours or days to produce was minimized and commoditized by the commercial bakery and true artisan bread fell out of the mainstream.

[If you are a food history geek like me, grab the book “On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen” by Harold McGee. ]

What’s going on in sourdough?

Sourdough bread gets its name from the fact that the dough and the bread are acidic.

Think of the starter as a concentration of the acids that create great tasting bread and baked items.

The “sourdough flavor” is produced by the growth of beneficial bacteria and yeast in the dough that are created during the proofing (bulk fermentation) process.

You might be familiar with the bacteria if you eat yogurt or drink buttermilk. Many of the same bacteria are found in sourdough bread.

When you combine water and flour together in the right proportions and let it sit, the natural yeasts and the ambient yeast in the air begin to multiply. As the yeast begin to digest the sugars in the flour, bacteria and other alcohols are produced.

These bacteria, digested yeast and alcohols are what create “sour” dough.

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The Terms

It can be confusing. Leaven, Levain, Starter, Mother, Sponge, Biga, Poolish, Preferment.

Whatever you call it, it’s all the same — water and flour and yeast. The yeast can be from wild, natural yeast or activated packaged yeast.

And they are all “Preferments”.

We’ll use the term “starter” to indicate the combination of flour, water and yeast that will be used to make “sourdough” recipes.

Back in the day, starters were passed down from our grandmothers like the family china.

We don’t have that benefit today, so we’ll be making our own.

I’m a purist when it comes to my starters.

Flour and water.

The type of flour you use will depend on the flavor you want to create with your starter.

Common flours are All-Purpose Flour, Whole Wheat Flour, and Rye Flour.

This recipe is going to use All-Purpose Flour.

Ingredients and Equipment Needed

ο All Purpose Flour

ο Filtered Water

ο Thermometer

ο Digital Scale (I like this one)

ο Measuring cups if you don’t use a scale

ο Spatula or wood spoon for mixing

ο Cheese cloth

ο 2 Wide Mouth 1-Quart jars (these mason jars work great)

*You’ll need 2 jars because you want to keep your jars clean when letting rest after feeding and the mixing can create a crust on the sides that you don’t want to mix back in.

The way I do it is this:

After the first day, when I go to do my 2nd day of feeding, I’ll remove a portion of my starter (discard) and add the additional water and flour to the jar.

I’ll mix it all together then pour the new mixture into the clean jar carefully as to not get too much on the sides of the jar. Then I let that jar rest until the next feeding and start the process again.

I’ll wash the old jar to be used the next feeding.

Tools to help you make a starter…

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