Easy Sourdough Starter and Bread Recipe (2024)

FAQs

How long after making a sourdough starter can you make bread? ›

It takes about 5 days to get activity that isn't caused by the wrong bacteria and another 5 to 10 before you actually have a working starter with decent flavor. When can one begin using a starter when baking sourdough bread? I usually give a new starter a full ten days to become active before baking with it.

So, a sourdough feeding ratio is the relative amount (referring to weight) of old sourdough compared to fresh flour and water. Typical feeding ratios are 1:2:2 or 1:3:3 (old sourdough: fresh flour: water). However, even extreme ratios like 1:50:50 would still work.

While buying a sourdough starter is very easy online, it's a very easy process to do at home! Plus, creating your own starter exposes you to the signs of fermentation, what steps you need to perform to maintain your starter, and gives you a chance to get to know the feeding (refreshment) process.

It is important that you stir the sourdough starter every day in the morning and in the evening. Feed the starter. Add 60 g flour and 60 g lukewarm water, stir well to combine, and let sit out for 24 hours.

The best flour blend for creating a new sourdough starter is 50% whole-meal flour (whole wheat or whole rye) and 50% bread flour or all-purpose flour. I recommend a 50/50 mix of whole wheat flour and bread flour. Why do you need to use these two types of flour?

As with any sourdough recipe, before you start baking bread, you want to make sure that your sourdough starter is as strong as possible. My basic sourdough recipe uses just 50g of starter for 500g of flour (so just 10% of starter).

If you have too much starter compared to the additional flour and water you're adding, your hungry starter consumes all the nutrients and then it's not as bubbly.

But all purpose, bread flour, whole wheat flour or rye flour are all suitable for feeding a regular sourdough starter successfully. Many people like to feed their sourdough starter a cheaper flour, particularly when in the establishment phase and going through quite a bit of it.

Do I have to discard my sourdough starter? It would be best if you discarded some portion of your starter each time you feed it unless you want to continue to let it grow. Eventually, you need to discard the used “food” (flour and water) that's been used to sustain your starter during the last fermentation period.

So if you look solely at the ingredients, it is cheaper to make your own sourdough. But if you bring other factors into it - it might not be as cheap.

When should you not use sourdough starter? ›

After a few days, your daily 1/4 cup flour and water won't be enough to sustain your entire jar of starter, and your starter will be slow and sluggish, not much better than discard itself. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, depending on what you want to bake with it.

How do I know if my sourdough starter is ready to use? When your starter is reliably rising to double or triple its size and falling in the jar anywhere between 4-8 hours after you feed it (dependent on your ambient conditions and the flour you feed with) it is ready to bake with.

A mature sourdough starter can last for several weeks kept in a refrigerator without being fed. If your sourdough starter has been in the fridge for a while and you want to give it a refresh, follow the steps below. Discard all but 25 grams and add 100 grams of filtered water and 100 grams of flour.

No, milk should not be added to a sourdough starter. Sourdough starter needs only flour and water to colonise wild yeast.

Take your starter from the fridge and let it come up to room temperature. Feed it with 30g of strong white flour + 30g of water, stir it well, and allow it to become fully active and ready to use, this can take 2-6 hours depending on the room temperature.

The longer you leave your dough in the refrigerator, the more sour and complex flavors it will develop. You can easily leave a loaf in the refrigerator for 3 days before baking. I've gone as long as 5 days, but you will see some deterioration of the loaf after Day 3.

This is the first resting period right after you mix the dough. It jumpstarts gluten development without kneading. Strong gluten = good bread. For timing, autolyse can range anywhere from 15 minutes to 1 hour or more depending on the type of bread you're making and your own personal baking schedule.