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To bake Classic Sourdough Bread, you need to have a healthy starter. Caring for your starter does not need to be a full-time job!
A starter can stay in the refrigerator (not the freezer) for a week or more.
Contents
Maintaining the Starter
Once a week, remove the starter from the fridge and feed it. You can save the discard for other uses, then return the starter to the refrigerator. Done.
How to Re-Activate the Starter
The day before you plan to bake with the starter, take the jar out of the refrigerator and let it reach room temperature. Feed it before you go to bed, and in the morning, you will be ready to bake. Here is what my starter looks like the next day. It’s okay if it has started to recede from its highest point; this starter is ready to use.
Ratios
Feeding Your Starter
Caring for your starter is super-simple and takes 5 minutes; cleaning up takes a little longer because the dishes are pasty and need a lot of hot water, but still, 15 minutes total time.
Ingredients
Flour, equal parts whole wheat flour and all-purpose flour. You can blend in advance and keep it in a container, ready to use. Try a high-quality flour like King Arthur.
Water, filtered, room-temperature
Starter, the original stays alive to bake another day
Instructions
- Remove any solid coating on the top. Then give it a quick whisk to blend any liquid that has separated and risen to the top.
- Put a mixing bowl on a digital scale and reset the weight to zero grams
- Pour about half of the starter into the mixing bowl. Let’s say that it is 100 grams.
- Reset the scale to zero again and add 100 grams of the flour blend
- Reset the scale to zero again and add 100 grams of filtered water
- Whisk the mixture thoroughly
- Pour into a clean jar and mark the top of the mixture with a rubber band
- For Baking: Cover with a breathable cloth, such as a napkin or paper towel, and leave in a warm place, like the range top with the light on, for 6-8 hours. For Storage: Cover with an airtight lid and refrigerate immediately for a week or more
Notes
At first, I used wide-mouth ball jars to store the starter, which worked great, but they were too hard to clean. Now I use cylindrical jars with rubber tops, which are much easier to get your hands into. When I store the starter in the fridge, I use the glass tops and mark them with the date. Before baking, I cover them with a clean napkin.
