Maintaining your Sourdough Starter

I am a lazy baker. Really. I feed my starter a couple of days before the day I plan on actually baking the bread. The rest of the time it lives on the back of a shelf in my fridge. I have neglected my starter for a couple of months in the past and have had no problems getting it back to its bubbly self. It is a resilient little thing and I am so thankful for that.

More recently, the bread baking in our house has increased in frequency so I am finding myself feeding and maintaining my starter about every week to two weeks. We have had guests staying with us almost every two weeks for the past couple of months, and fresh sourdough bread is a must.

You can definitely feed your starter as much as you need to if you are baking a ton and/or leave it at room temperature for easy access. But if you are only going to occasionally make a loaf or two, you will still need to feed it with some sort of frequency but store it in the fridge as this slows down the fermentation process. I do let my starter come to room temperature before feeding, but having the starter jar on the counter is also a visual reminder to feed it (don’t judge).

I use a kitchen scale when I feed my starter, but you could just as easily use volume measurements if that is more your style.

Yield

• About 350g (~1.5 cups) starter

Ingredients

• 115g (½ cup) sourdough starter
• 115g (½ cup)flour
• 115g (½ cup) slightly warm water

Instructions

1. Stir your starter thoroughly. You want any liquid sitting on top to mixed in.
2. Add 115g of the starter to a clean bowl. If you have remaining starter, use it in another recipe or just discard it.
3. Add the flour and the water to the starter. Mix well. You do not want any clumps. The consistency should be smooth and reminiscent to a slightly thinned pancake batter.
4. Return the newly fed starter to it’s jar and cover it.
5. Leave it at room temperature until it has at least doubled in size. This is now your “active” starter.

Notes

• There are so many discard recipes out there, don’t waste it by throwing it out! If you don’t have enough discard for a given recipe, you can store the discard in another container and keep adding your future discarded sourdough starter to it until you have enough to use.
• I like to put a rubber band around the jar at the line of the starter right when I feed it. This way I can watch how active it is and know exactly when it has doubled in size and is ready to either use or put back into the fridge.
• The liquid that forms on the starter when it is in the fridge is just a byproduct of the fermenting yeast. It can look kind of nasty, and you can drain it off if it freaks you out to just mix it back in.
• You can use whatever container you like to store your starter. A glass crock or jar is nice so you have a visual on the activity, but not totally necessary.
• There is no right or wrong way to feed a starter. I have seen many different methods. Try a few until you find a method that works for you and your lifestyle.
• I mostly use an all-purpose flour to feed my starter, but have occasionally used a whole wheat with no ill effects on the starter.