Magic in a mason jar: make a sourdough starter from scratch

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The internet is a wonderful thing; all human knowledge is available at your fingertips. It's like magic or sorcery and I shake my head in wonder all the time. But for every true and real thing you can find in the wilds of the world wide web, there seem to be ten things that are thinly disguised sales pitches or other forms of deceit.

An area that's rife with misinformation are any results from a Google search on sourdough. If the web pages in the search results aren't trying to sell you stuff you don't need, they're making this process far more complicated or worst of all, making absurd claims about the health benefits of this kind of baking.

In my mind, it's enough that sourdough baking is a traditional food way and that it tastes good. But you do you and don't be mislead.

There are websites galore that will sell you expensive sourdough starters and you're certainly free to buy a $15 starter with an amazing pedigree. What those sellers won't tell you is that within a month of that starter's arrival in your home, and after repeated handlings and feedings, that starter you bought will have changed so much that its microbial make up will no longer be what you bought.

The microorganisms in a starter come from the flour you use, the air in your kitchen and the surface of your skin.

An easier and more sensible approach is to just make a starter yourself and all you need is flour and water.

If you're new to baking and new to sourdough, don't make this complicated unnecessarily. Use all purpose flour and hold off on getting cute with different grains until you've practiced with simplicity for awhile.

Taking on this project properly will require you to buy a kitchen scale and there's really no way around that. If you want to bake bread you have to weigh your ingredients and that's so true I'd stake my life on it. Buy a scale.

Once you have your scale, pretend you don't know anything about conventional, imperial weights and measures and get used to the metric system. Grams are a smaller unit of measure than ounces and measuring in grams is a lot more precise. I'll get into the metric system in more detail in a later post but a familiarity with grams and milliliters will open up a world of baking possibilities for you, trust me.

OK, now for the starter. This will take a week or two to do and instead of sticking to a rigid time frame and recipe, this will be a great experience in letting what you're making tell you when it's ready for the next step.

Sourdough Starter from scratch

Ingredients

All-purpose flour
Filtered water

Equipment

2-quart glass or plastic container (not metal)
Scale
Cling wrap

Instructions

Making sourdough starter takes between five and 15 days. Each day you feed the starter with equal amounts of fresh flour and water. As the starter culture grows stronger, the starter will become more frothy and sour-smelling. On average, this process takes about seven days, but it can take longer depending on the temperature in your kitchen. So long as you see bubbles and signs of yeast activity, continue feeding it regularly.

Process

Day 1: Make the Initial Starter

• 125 grams all-purpose flour 
• 125 ml water

Weigh the flour and measure the water, and combine them in your container. Stir vigorously until combined into a smooth batter. It will look like a sticky, thick dough. Scrape down the sides and cover the container with cling wrap.

Put the container somewhere with a consistent room temperature of 70°F to 75°F and let sit for 24 hours.

Day 2: Feed the Starter

• 125 grams all-purpose flour 
• 125 ml water

Take down your starter and give it a look. You may see a few small bubbles here and there. This is good! The bubbles mean that wild yeast has started making itself at home in your starter. They will eat the sugars in the the flour and release carbon dioxide (the bubbles) and alcohol. They will also increase the acidity of the mixture, which helps fend off any bad bacteria and encourage good bacteria. At this point, the starter should smell fresh, mildly sweet, and yeasty.

If you don't see any bubbles yet, don't panic — depending on the conditions in your kitchen, the average room temperature, and other factors, your starter might just be slow to get going.

Weigh the flour and water for today, and combine them in the container. Stir vigorously until combined into a smooth batter. Scrape down the sides and cover the container with cling wrap. Put the container somewhere with a consistent room temperature of 70°F to 75°F and let sit for 24 hours.

Day 3 or so: Feed the Starter

• 125 grams all-purpose flour 
• 125 ml water

Check your starter. By now, the surface of your starter should look dotted with bubbles and your starter should look visibly larger in volume. If you stir the starter, it will still feel thick and batter-like, but you'll hear bubbles popping. It should also start smelling a little sour and musty.

Again, if your starter doesn't look quite right, don't worry. Give it a few more days and continue to feed it every day.

Discard half of your starter. Weigh the flour and water for today, and combine them in the container. Stir vigorously until combined into a smooth batter. Scrape down the sides and loosely cover the container with cling wrap. Put the container somewhere with a consistent room temperature of 70°F to 75°F and let sit for 24 hours. Continue repeating this step every day until you notice that your starter has become really bubbly and pungent between feedings. This can take up to five days depending on the temperature in your kitchen.

Day 4 or so: Feed the Starter

• 125 grams all-purpose flour 
• 125 ml water

Check your starter. By now, the starter should be looking very bubbly with large and small bubbles, and it will have doubled in volume. If you stir the starter, it will feel looser than before and will be honeycombed with bubbles. It should also be smelling quite sour and pungent. You can taste a little too. It should taste sour and somewhat vinegary.

Discard half your starter. Weigh the flour and water for today, and combine them in the container. Stir vigorously until combined into a smooth batter. Scrape down the sides and loosely cover the container with cling wrap. Put the container somewhere with a consistent room temperature of 70°F to 75°F and let sit for 24 hours.

Day 5 or so: Starter is Ready to Use

Check your starter. It should have doubled in bulk since yesterday and collapsed once. You should notice by now that after a feeding, the starter bulks up and expands and then it collapses. This is how it's supposed to work. By now too, the starter should also be looking very bubbly — even frothy. If you stir the starter, it will feel looser than yesterday and be completely webbed with bubbles. It should also be smelling quite sour and pungent. It’s OK to taste it. It should taste even more sour and vinegary.

When your starter doubles in size within eight hours of a feeding, it's a proper, ripe starter you can use to bake.

When you're ready to use your new starter, feed it and wait four hours or so to use it. You want to use a starter when it's actively growing, not when it's collapsing.

Once you have a ripe starter move it into the fridge and feed it once a week. Before feeding, set the starter on the counter and let it come to temperature for about four hours before you feed it. Let it sit at room temperature for two to four hours and then move it back to the fridge.

When you use your starter to bake, remember to use it when it's at room temperature and recently fed.

Starters aren't like pets. So don't worry if you forget to feed it for a couple of weeks or if you go on vacation. They can be resurrected even after months of neglect. Just start over from the day two instruction above and you'll be ready to bake again in less than a week.

Please see my other sourdough posts, Sourdough is a philosophy more than a recipe and Sourdough baking with training wheels: a sourdough bread with added yeast.