Easy Sourdough Starter
Learn how to easily make a sourdough starter from scratch in your own kitchen using just a mixture of flour and water. No fancy equipment like a kitchen scale is needed.
Equipment
- 1 pint jar
- 1 stirring utensil
Ingredients
- ½ cup All Purpose Flour
- ⅓ cup Warm Water
Instructions
- 1. In a pint jar, place ½ cup all-purpose flour and ⅓ cup warm tap water.
- 2. Stir well. Cover with cloth and rubber band and place in a warm location on your counter. Do not place it in your oven as there is not enough wild yeasts present in that closed environment.
- 3. Leave it sit for 24 hours. The next day, discard all but about 3 Tablespoons of the starter.
- 4. Add another ½ cup flour and ⅓ cup water to the pint jar with the starter.
- 5. Cover with cloth again and let set out at room temperature for another 12 hours approximately
- 6. Discard all but 3 Tablespoons again and feed with another ½ cup flour and ⅓ cup warm water.
- 7. Repeat twice a day until you are seeing it consistently double in size. It will probably take about 6-7 days.
Video
Notes
After the first couple of days, you can start saving your discard from each daily feeding in a quart jar covered with a lid or plastic wrap and putting it in the refrigerator to be used in discard recipes like pancakes, waffles and pasta.
Once your sourdough starter is strong and active, you can either put it in your fridge to store it, or you can keep it out on the counter and continue feeding it at least once a day. I like to keep my starter in the fridge and use it in discard recipes until I’m ready to make a loaf of bread.
The day before I want to make bread I take out 2-3 Tablespoons of discard and put it into a clean jar that is at least as big as a quart. Feed it 2 cups of flour and 1 ⅓ cups warm water (same ratio as when we made the starter). Once it has fully risen, I use it to mix up my bread recipe. In the meantime, my discard jar remains in the refrigerator waiting for me to want to bake muffins or cookies or sourdough discard pizza on a whim.
