Sourdough Starter
Yes, you can make your own sourdough starter from scratch! It’s very easy, and you will love making traditional sourdough bread with it. If you have flour and water on hand, you can make your own starter. I used whole wheat flour for mine.
The first week you will be building up the starter. Use a 1 to 1 ratio of water and flour. I used 1/2 a cup of both to start out. Put the flour and water in a glass jar ( i used a mason jar), and stir with a wooden spoon. If you are on city water use filtered water because the chemicals in city water like chlorine will kill the starter. After you are done stirring cover the jar with a coffee filter, cloth, or paper towel. This will keep bugs out and the starter can collect yeasts in the air. If you are like me and have kombucha brewing too, use half plain kombucha with the water to kick start your starter.
Stir and feed your starter every day for 5-7 days twice a day. The liquid on top can be drained off and used in your pancakes (or cookies too). You will see bubbles form after a few days, and smell the sweet sour smell of sourdough!
You can store your starter in the fridge just make sure to feed it every week. And if you want to use refrigerated starter set it out 4-6 hours before you use it so it will be room temperature.
Comments
I feel silly asking this but…. what do you “feed” the starter every day? More flour? If yes, how much more approximately? Thank you!
You feed the starter flour. You do equal parts water and flour everyday. For example 1/2 Cup water 1/2 Cup Flour. Hope that helps!
Do you drain the liquid every day as well?
Yes you can use it in pancakes and such. It won’t hurt it if you don’t drain it (like i sometimes forgot) but just scoop it off the top and dispose of it.
How will a mason jar hold 1/2 cup water and 1/2 cup flour added everyday?
I used a large Mason Jar and eventually transferred to a large glass bowl that i covered with a paper towel.
how much do I need to make a loaf is my question, plus my bug intially had water on top, I scooped it out, then it had water underneath, which I stirred in, now it’s got a bubbling lot on top a layer of water and more bug/starter underneath that water layer, my bug is only 3 days old it bubbled all the way up to the top of the jar
For a loaf of bread depends on the recipe. I normally put around 1/4 cup of starter for bread machine bread. If it’s bubbling that’s good! As long as you stir it every day it should be fine. Mine was very watery at first also.
I started out with half a cup of whole wheat flour, and half a cup of water, and was very thick, not watery at all. Am I supposed to use a different kind of flour?
Whole wheat flour should work well. Maybe add 2 Tablespoons of water to thin it out a little bit.