Sourdough Starter

Ingredients

• 50 g Wheat or rye flour
• 80 g Water

Method

wild-yeast and bacterial-fermentation are slow to establish; you need consistent feeding and warmth to accelerate colonisation. Start with equal parts flour and water by weight — 50 g flour to 80 g water gives you a 160% hydration, which is loose enough for the microbes to move through but not so thin that separation becomes a problem. Mix them thoroughly in a jar or container and leave it at room temperature (ideally 20–24°C; cold kitchens will take twice as long). Cover loosely — a cloth or plate sitting unclipped on top — so gas can escape and new air reaches the culture.

Day 2 is when you'll see the first sign of activity: small bubbles threaded through the mixture, often with a faintly sweet or wheaty smell. This is early fermentation, mostly yeast waking up. Discard roughly half the starter (about 65 g) and feed with another 50 g flour and 80 g water. Stir well. If nothing visible has happened, don't panic — cold rooms or very dry flour can delay this by a day. Cover loosely again.

Repeat the discard-and-feed on Days 3 and 4. By Day 4, you should see vigorous bubbling within a few hours of feeding, and the smell shifts to something yeasty and slightly tangy. This is your cue that the culture is strong enough to leaven bread. The starter is now active and ready to use.

starter-maintenance depends on how often you bake. If you're baking weekly, keep the starter on the counter at room temperature and feed it once daily. Always retain at least 20 g before mixing into dough — you cannot use all of it without losing the culture. For longer intervals, refrigerate the starter in a sealed jar. It will develop a grey-brown liquid layer on top — this is hooch, a concentration of alcohol and acids that actually protects against contamination. You can pour it off or stir it back in; both work.

When you've stored the starter cold for more than a week, it needs reactivation before baking. Feed it once, leave it at room temperature for 4–8 hours, then feed again. If bubbles form within a few hours of the second feed, the culture is ready. A quicker test: drop a small spoonful into cold water. An active starter will float within seconds because the gas pockets give it buoyancy. If it sinks, feed it again and wait.