How To Feed And Maintain A Sourdough Starter

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Learn how to feed and maintain a sourdough starter to keep it healthy and active.  Great sourdough bread and other sourdough recipes start with a healthy sourdough starter.  I get questions everyday about how to properly care for a sourdough starter, so I’m gathering them all here, and hoping this will be a helpful resource for you.

My Sourdough Journey

My sourdough journey began over 15 years ago when I first made a starter and began experimenting with how to care for it and bake with it.  I have learned a lot over the years, and I’m excited to share with you the tips needed for success.  

Simple Sourdough

One thing I will tell you upfront is that sourdough is very simple, and does not need to be nearly as complicated as some well-meaning people make it.  Sourdough is something that can fit around the edges of your life, and it doesn’t need to control your whole life.  It is also for much more than just sourdough bread.  

Sourdough For More Than Just Breadmaking

I think a lot of people assume that sourdough is just for breadmaking, but sourdough can be used with almost any recipe that uses flour, and adds important gut health benefits to lots of different recipes.  From sourdough waffles and pancakes, to stromboli and pasta, to donuts and bagels, sourdough will be a game changer in your kitchen.  It’s actually much easier to cook and bake with sourdough than without it, and once you start your sourdough journey you’ll never go back.  I like to have a lot of refrigerated sourdough starter on hand at all times, so I can easily mix up sourdough discard recipes anytime.  

Most sourdough recipes can be made ahead of time, and in fact the gut health benefits are much greater if you allow the sourdough to long ferment for a few hours, or even a few days in the refrigerator.  This makes baking with sourdough as easy as having Pillsbury dough in your refrigerator, because you can literally pull out the dough and make it into something in just a few minutes.  The upside is that it’s more nutritious, less expensive and easier than Pillsbury because you don’t have to leave your house and go to the store to buy it.  A win-win, especially for those with busy lives, which is basically all of us.

How To Maintain A Sourdough Starter Video

Be sure to watch the video below, where I show you all the tips and tricks you’ll need to keep a happy sourdough starter.

Find all of our favorite sourdough recipes here – there might be some that you never would have thought of.

Below you will find some Frequently Asked Questions that may help answer some of the questions you have, so be sure to check out that section of this post.  But first, let me tell you how to maintain a healthy sourdough starter.

Understanding The Concept Of How To Feed and Maintain A Sourdough Starter

​How Often Do You Need To Feed Your Starter?

These instructions are for a mature sourdough starter.  If you want to learn how to easily make your own sourdough starter without a scale, you can find the full tutorial here.

Sourdough is a living thing made up of flour, water and wild yeasts.  Any living thing has to be fed in order to stay happy and healthy.  It is a good idea to feed your starter at least once a week, but starter that is left in the refrigerator is usually still good even after months of neglect.  Sometimes it takes a couple of feedings before it’s super active again, but that’s okay (see video).

Basics Of Sourdough Feeding

To feed your sourdough starter, you’ll add flour and water to a small amount of starter.  The starter will slowly consume the food (flour and water) it has been given and as it does it will rise and become active (like kids after they’re fed sugar).  This is when it’s called active sourdough starter and this is typically when you will use it for making bread.  

You’ll know its active because it will more than double in size, and be bubbly.  After it uses up all of it’s energy from the food you fed it, it will fall back down to it’s original state and be thinner with fewer bubbles.  This is when it’s called inactive sourdough starter or discard. Sourdough discard is just the part of the starter that you discard into a separate container to be stored in the refrigerator before feeding your sourdough starter. (More info below). Sourdough starter and discard are basically the same thing, and the terms can be used interchangeably.

A Bit About Ratios

When you feed your sourdough starter, you want to make sure you’re feeding it more flour and water than there is sourdough starter in the jar.  So if you have a lot of sourdough starter in your jar, you need to either discard some to a separate container before feeding in the original jar, or take out a little bit and put it in a clean jar and feed it there.  You can do it either way.

You’ll here a lot of people talk about feeding their starter with a 1:1:1 ratio, meaning 1 part starter, 1 part water, and 1 part flour.  This only applies if you’re using a scale, because flour and water don’t weigh the same, and different flours will have different weights.  I do everything by measuring in cups, so a 1:1:1 ratio doesn’t apply.  Sidenote, even if you do measure using a scale, your starter will be happiest if you feed it more flour and water than you have starter because it will have plenty of food to consume.  I suggest a 1:5:5 ratio for best results, or 50 grams of starter, 250 grams of water and 250 grams of flour, for example.

Sourdough Starter And Discard Are The Same Thing

Sourdough starter and sourdough discard are essentially the same thing.  They are both flat sourdough starter.  Sourdough discard from an established starter should never be thrown away, only discarded into another container to be used in lots of discard recipes.

Why Do You Have To Discard Some Of Your Starter Before Feeding It?

The short answer is to keep it happy.

I like to think of sourdough starter like I think of our cows.  If you have a small number of cows, then you only need to feed them a small amount of hay each day.  But if you have a large herd of cows, then you must feed them a lot of hay or they will be hungry and unhappy (inactive).  It’s the same with sourdough starter.  Every time you feed your sourdough starter, the little bit of starter in the bottom of the jar turns the flour and water you feed it into more starter.  

You might say that it multiplies itself every time you feed it.  (Using the cattle herd analogy, its like the cattle herd gets bigger everytime it’s fed, so you have to feed more and more hay everyday unless you discard some before feeding).  So, if you never discard any starter, and just keep adding flour and water to the same jar, you’ll have to feed it more and more flour and water (food) every time you feed it in order to keep it happy until it’ll take a 5 gallon bucket to hold it all.  Or if you don’t discard, and keep adding just a small amount of flour and water everyday, your starter will eventually starve and choke itself out because it won’t ever get enough food to be happy (active).

Example Of Why You Need To Discard Before Feeding

For example, if I have 2 cups of starter, I would need to feed it several cups of flour and water because if I only fed it ½ cup of flour and water, it would be hungry and unhappy because it would be starving (in other words it wouldn’t rise well).  That would be like feeding cheese and crackers to an army of men, instead of meat and potatoes.  But if I only have a couple of Tablespoons of starter in my jar because I discarded some of it before feeding, then I can feed it a smaller amount of flour and water and it will be active and happy without me ending up with a ton of starter.

Don’t Starve Your Starter

One issue I see often, is that people are not discarding enough before feeding.  They discard some, but might keep ½ cup of starter in their jar, and then only feed it ½ cup of flour and ⅓ cup of water, and that’s not enough food for that amount of starter.  If you do that over several days, your starter will get less and less happy, and be starving.  Make sure you’re discarding enough!  Even if you only have 1 Tablespoon of starter or just a little bit left in your container, it will easily take over a lot of flour and water, so don’t be afraid to discard plenty.

What Are Sourdough Discard Recipes?

Sourdough discard recipes are recipes that either do not rely on the yeasts in the sourdough starter to raise them, or they are recipes that are intended to stay flat (unraised) like tortillas.  A lot of discard recipes call for baking powder and/or baking soda to raise them (like muffins).

What Are Recipes That Use Active Sourdough Starter?

Recipes that use active sourdough starter (starter that is at its peak rise) are recipes that rely on the sourdough starter to raise them, like bread.  Most sourdough bread recipes call for active sourdough starter.  When the sourdough starter is active, the wild yeasts in it are also most active and able to raise your bread to it’s highest point.

How to Care For Your Sourdough Starter

I keep my starter in the refrigerator whenever I’m not using it, and that slows down the fermentation so it doesn’t have to be fed as often.  If you leave your starter out on the countertop all the time, you’ll want to feed it every 24 hours or so for best results.  If you happen to forget it on the counter for 2 to 3 days, don’t worry, just discard some and feed it, and once it’s risen and fallen, just put it back in the refrigerator until you’re ready to bake again.  

Feeding A Sourdough Starter In The Refrigerator

When your sourdough starter/discard jar in the refrigerator is almost empty, take it out of the refrigerator and fill it half-full with flour.  Then add warm water (about 110 degrees) to it and stir until it’s a thick pancake batter consistency, and won’t fall off the back of the spoon.  I cover it with a loose-fitting lid and let it set out at room temperature for a few hours until it rises and falls.  Then I put it back into the refrigerator so it’s ready to use in any discard recipe.  

I never measure, but if you want to measure until you get the idea of the consistency, the ratios I use are the same as I use when starting a starter:  3 Tablespoons starter, ½ flour and ⅓ cup water.  You can increase the amount of flour and water as much as you’d like (until your container is half full) as long as you keep the ratios the same.  Note: If you find that you don’t have much starter left in your jar (even less than 3 Tablespoons), you can feed it several cups of flour and water if your container is big enough, and it will still turn it all into sourdough starter, it just might take it a little longer depending on the strength of your starter.

When I’m baking large amounts of sourdough bread for farmers market in the summertime, I often put a small bit of starter in a large bowl, and feed up 15 or 20 cups of flour and the corresponding amount of water so I’ll have plenty of starter for all the bread I have to bake.

Feed Your Sourdough Starter For Bread Making

When you want to make sourdough bread, or a recipe that calls for active sourdough starter, take your starter jar out of the refrigerator, put 3 Tablespoons approximately into a new jar (I use a wide mouth quart jar) and feed it 2 cups flour and 1 ⅓ cups warm water (same feeding ratio as above).  Keep in mind you don’t have to measure, but you want a thick consistency.  Stir it up and leave it covered with a loose-fitting lid in a warm place until it rises.  

How long this process takes will depend on the time of year, and the temperature of your house.  Usually it’s 6 to 8 hours for me on average.  When it’s at it’s peak rise, mix up your bread or other recipe.  If you miss the peak rise, don’t worry, mix up your recipe anyway.  The yeasts will be warm and active and when added to the flour and water in the recipe, will do their work of leavening and you’ll still end up with beautiful bread.  I usually feed my starter at night before going to bed, and then mix up bread in the morning.

After you take out the refrigerated starter and feed some in a separate jar for making active starter, you can just put the remaining starter in your discard jar back in the refrigerator.

And that’s it…it’s really that simple!  Just keep your jar of starter/discard in the refrigerator at least half full for discard recipes, and if you need active starter, take out a small bit and feed it in a new jar before you want to make bread.

Here are two of my favorite basic sourdough bread recipes:

Artisan Sourdough Bread

Soft Sourdough Sandwich Bread

Top Three Tips For Successfully Feeding And Maintaining A Sourdough Starter.

1.  Use warm water when feeding
2. Leave it out on your counter in a warm place when you want it to rise (if your house is really cold in the winter time, you can set your starter on a heat mat, get a bread proofing box, or even set it next to a warm crockpot or coffee pot.  The top of your refrigerator will be a warm place as well.
3. Make sure it’s the consistency of a thick pancake batter when you feed it

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Frequently Asked Questions

FAQ

What sourdough starter should look like?

In it’s active state, sourdough discard should look bubbly and be stretchy or almost stringy.  This is from the development of the gluten in the starter.  Sourdough discard will be flat with few if any bubbles.

Why Sourdough?

Health benefits 

Sourdough recipes can be made with long fermentation times which gives your body all the benefits of eating a fully fermented food.  This is important for gut health, which is directly related to the health of the rest of your body.  Sourdough bread has a low glycemic level of 54, making it much better for people that are diabetic.  More information on the glycemic level of sourdough bread here.

Unique taste

Foods made with sourdough have a unique taste.  There’s nothing like a fresh slice of traditional sourdough slathered with fresh butter.  You can make sourdough taste more “sour” by letting it ferment longer.  You can also make it taste sweet (so you don’t even know it’s sourdough) by adding sweetener.  

Sustainability and tradition

Commercial yeast wasn’t widely available until the twentieth century.  Prior to that, everyone made all of their baked goods with sourdough because it was all that was available.  In this modern age we have become far too dependent on ingredients in our food that we cannot produce ourselves like commercial yeast.  Sourdough is a sustainable way of baking.  As long as you have flour and water and know how to start a starter, you can have delicious bread without having to depend on the grocery store.   

Flexibility

When you bake with sourdough, you can almost always pause it wherever you are in the fermentation process by just putting the sourdough recipe in the refrigerator.  If I’m in the middle of baking bread and my husband calls me out to help on the ranch with cows or whatever else might be going on, all I have to do is just stick the whole project in the refrigerator.  If I am baking with yeast, I have to pay close attention to the bread to make sure I don’t over raise it or it will be ruined.  Sourdough is much easier once you understand the process.

Old Fashioned Skills

Learning these old fashioned skills of how to make things with fermented ingredients like sourdough starter is so valuable.  You won’t ever have to go to the grocery store to buy yeast or bread again. The same sourdough starter can be kept alive for years and handed down from generation to generation. Let’s bring back these valuable traditional skills that have been lost over time and be proactive in changing our health and our future.

Be sure to watch the full video tutorial below. If you have any questions or if there is anything I can do to help you, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Cheers to happy sourdough!

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