Starting a Starter

An obvious first question when it comes to Sourdough is, "So how do you start a sourdough culture?". Interestingly, many members of our community have never had to do it since we've shared some of our existing starter with them. Even those who have started their own have only ever had to do it once since a sourdough culture is a perpetual living microbial ecosystem. As long as it has sufficient feeding (with flour) it will continue to live (and even outlive its baker).

A comforting thought is that sourdough cultures have been around longer than humans and have found their way into all sorts of wet grains fermenting them and sending out spores that travel and find new grains to ferment. Make no mistake, if you have wet flour and wait long enough, you will have microorganisms fermenting it. The trick is to have the patience to enable the "right" organisms the time to establish themselves and acidify the wet flour (the dough) so that they exclude other competing micro-organisms. This generally takes 1 week.

How We've Done it...

Below is an example of a technique Keziah (a member of our community) used to start a sourdough culture:

We used Eureka white bread flour.

Day 1:

• Mix 50g flour + 50g water

Day 2:

• ADD 50g flour + 50g water (do not discard any)

Day 3:

• Discard 100g of starter
• ADD 100g flour + 100g water

Day 4:

• Discard 150g of starter
• ADD 100g flour + 100g water

Day 5:

• Discard 200g of starter
• ADD 150g flour + 150g water

Day 6:

• Discard 250g of starter
• ADD 200g flour + 200g water

Day 7:

• Starter should be ready (bubbling vigorously and doubling in size after 12 hrs)

Useful Notes

• Once your starter is ready: you can discard or use as much as you want or need. However much starter you have left in grams you must add at least the same weight in water and flour every time you refeed the starter. (ratio = 1+1+1).

See also the page on Starter Care for additional tips on feeding times/ ratios

• Weigh your jar before you begin so that you know how much starter you have inside
• Do not leave it in direct sunlight where it's too hot, as our starter developed extremely quickly and started getting an acetone smell