Once you've acquired some of our sourdough starter, you'll need to feed it regularly. If you bake a lot, you may want to keep it on your counter at room temperature. While this means feeding it roughly every 12 hours, it also means your starter will be ready to bake with whenever you are. If you're a more casual sourdough baker, store your starter in the refrigerator, feeding it just once a week.
Its pretty essential to have a digital scale when measuring out your ingredients. That way you know you have exactly the right amount of all your ingredients every time you feed your starter.
Ingredients
60g Sourdough starter
60g Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
60g lukewarm water
Instructions
When storing your starter at room temperature: Stir the starter well and weigh out 60 grams of your starter into a bowl. The remainder left in your jar is known as your “discard” and you can use this to make lots of wonderful things, including sourdough pretzels, bagels and cinnamon buns. Next add 60g of water, and 60g of flour to your bowl that you just weighed your sourdough starter into. Mix until smooth and cover, and repeat every 12 hours. You can use your starter to bake with when it doubles in size a few hours after feeding. Unless you bake sourdough very often, this can be quite labour intensive and easy to forget about and you may not feed it as regularly as it needs. If you only bake once a week or so consider the directions for storing your starter in the fridge. Note: The amount you keep and feed is up to you, just make sure you use equal amounts of starter, flour, and water when you feed.
When storing your starter in the refrigerator: Once a week take your starter out of the fridge. There may be a bit of light amber or clear liquid on top. That’s completely normal and you can drain this off or stir it in, your choice; it's simply a byproduct from the fermenting process. Weigh out 60g starter into a bowl. Add 60g flour, 60g lukewarm water to the starter. Mix until smooth, and put back into cleaned out jar. Allow the starter to rest at room temperature for at least 2 hours before putting back into the fridge; this gives the yeast a chance to warm up and get feeding. After about 2 hours, refrigerate for up to a week before repeating this process. Before you bake with your starter kept in the fridge: Take out your starter 24 hours before you want to actually bake and feed it as per the instructions for keeping it at room temperature. Your starter ideally will be fed at least twice before baking, or whenever it doubles in size a few hours after feeding.
Some tips:
Don’t close your sourdough container with a tight fitting lid, all those gases need to escape!
If you miss a feeding that’s okay, just be sure to feed it regularly as sourdough likes its routine.
If you're a visual learner like I am, here's a handy progress photo that shows when your starter is good to go for baking!
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