Simple Sourdough Starter Recipe

How to make a sourdough starter from scratch, without having to weigh your ingredients. Use this starter to make bread, cookies, waffles, tortillas – whatever your heart desires.

When I started my sourdough journey, I did not make my own starter. I got some from my mother-in-law. She had been making her own sourdough for awhile, so she had a nice, robust starter as well as some decent experience. Meanwhile, I had attempted making yeast bread and was just not getting it. So I thought sourdough might be easier for me.

Despite everyone (and by everyone, I mean the internet) saying sourdough is harder, I found that it was actually a lot easier for me to get an edible loaf. I think it was because you’re supposed to leave sourdough alone and not fiddle with it. As a perfectionist, anxiety-ridden second-guesser, I found it easier to follow instructions that said, “Mix until incorporated. Do not knead.”

After some time making sourdough bread, I felt like I’d gotten to the point where I could try making my own starter. I also accidentally left my mother-in-laws starter out for so long that no matter how many times I fed and babied it, I couldn’t get it to bubble or stop smelling like nail polish. So I decided to take the next step and make my own.

After looking at pages and pages of blog posts and articles, I found that a lot of recipes and how-tos suggest weighing ingredients. I quickly found out that this method was a little too “precise” for me. I would get hung up on making sure it was perfect, instead of just doing the thing. So, for me, and my perfectionist, anxiety-ridden brain, it’s better to find something that requires less precision.

So, without further ado, here’s my recipe on how to make a sourdough starter without the fuss of measuring things out.

What You’ll Need

Flour

You do not have to have a certain type of flour. Some people say that whole wheat is the best choice when making a sourdough starter, but when I started mine, I used unbleached all-purpose flour.

There is one caveat, however. Do NOT use bleached flour. When flour is bleached, it makes it whiter, but it also sterilizes it. Sourdough uses bacteria to ferment the flour and water mixture, and if the flour is bleached, that can’t occur.

Water

When I made my sourdough starter, I used bottled spring water. I had read from multiple sources that using chlorinated water was bad for sourdough starters, and since I have city water – which usually has chlorine in it – I went ahead and grabbed a gallon of spring water at the store.

Some people say that if you don’t have any bottled water, you can take a glass of tap water and leave it out overnight, and that will get rid of the chlorine. Honestly, I didn’t have the patience to wait, so I just used the spring water we already had.

I’ve also heard that using distilled water isn’t helpful because it doesn’t have any minerals in it to help kickstart the bacterial growth of the starter.

My advice is, if you are going through the effort of making your own sourdough starter, you might want to eliminate the variables that might hinder the progress of your starter, and just go grab a bottle of spring water.

Jar

If you have some kind of glass jar around, I recommend using that to keep your starter in. When I made my first sourdough starter, I put it in an old glass mayonnaise jar that I’d saved (because I was raised that you save those kinds of things).

Since then, I’ve upgraded to a half-gallon Ball jar. At this point, most of the breaded items we eat use sourdough, so I felt that this jar size was appropriate for us. It was not necessary in the beginning, and may never be necessary for your sourdough needs.

If you don’t have a glass jar, I recommend trying to stick with something glass or ceramic. You could put it in a glass cup, or a big coffee mug. Transparency is a nice perk of glass, because you can easily watch the magic happen.

If all you have is a plastic container, use it, then go out and get a glass container when you’re out on your next grocery run. But do not use metal. The fermentation process of sourdough will corrode the metal.

Patience

Making a sourdough starter from scratch will not happen overnight. It takes around a week to a week and a half to get a robust sourdough starter, so if you are on day three and you still haven’t seen any bubbles, keep at it.

The first starter I tried didn’t take. I think I may have accidentally used distilled water, so there wasn’t a lot for it to feed on. I waited for 2 weeks to see nothing happen.

But I was determined to make it happen, so I tried again, and made sure I got everything right. And by day 5, I noticed things were happening.

I will also say that making a sourdough starter from scratch is easier to do when the weather is warmer. I’ve made a few starters from scratch since that initial one, and the starters I make in the winter take much longer to get going than the ones in the summer.

How to Make Your Sourdough Starter

Day One

Mix ½ cup flour and ½ cup water. Make sure the flour and the water are well incorporated.

Cover with a tea towel, coffee filter, or set a loose lid on top. You want to create a screen so that bugs don’t get in it, but you still want there to be air flow. If you use a coffee filter, I find it helps to put a rubber band around the top to make sure the filter doesn’t fall off.

Let your starter sit for 24 hours.

Day Two

Discard half of the mixture from yesterday, then add another ½ cup flour and ¼-½ cup water. Mix so the ingredients are well incorporated.

Your new mixture should be about the consistency of waffle batter (thick but still runny). Add ¼ cup of water to begin with and then increase the amount to reach that waffle batter consistency.

Let your starter sit for another 24 hours.

Day Three

Repeat the same instructions for day two. You might see some tiny bubbles forming, but if you don’t see anything, don’t get discouraged! Remember that this process requires a good deal of time and patience!

Days Four-Five

Repeat those day two instructions on these days.

You should notice your bubbles becoming a bit bigger.

When your starter begins to double within 4-6 hours of feeding, move on to the Days Six-Seven instructions. This may happen on day four, or it might not happen until day five. For some people, it may not happen until day six or 7.

Days Six(ish)-Seven

Once your starter begins to double within 4-6 hours of feeding, start feeding it every 12 hours instead of 24.

You should notice some pretty big bubbles at this point. That’s when you know that your starter is ready to be used!

Sourdough Starter Maintenance

If you plan to use your starter daily, you can keep it on the counter and feed it once every 12 hours or so to keep it bubbly and happy. Just make sure you are ready to eat a LOT of sourdough!

If you are like me, and you only use your starter a couple of times a week, you can tuck your active starter in the fridge between uses. About 12 hours before you plan to use it, bring it out of the fridge and feed it. When I make bread, I usually get it out in the morning and feed it, so the starter is super bubbly by the evening so I can make my bread dough. If I’m planning to use it as part of breakfast, I’ll get it out before bed and feed it.

What if I only need to use my starter once a week?

Starter left in the fridge for about a week usually only needs one or two feedings to get it back in tip-top shape.

If I’ve left mine in for this long, I usually take it out of the fridge two days before I plan on using it. I pull it out of the fridge in the morning, discard half, then feed it about one cup of flour and ¾-1 cup of water to get that thick waffle batter consistency. If it has doubled before bed, I’ll discard half and feed it again. If not, I’ll wait and feed it in the morning.

The next morning, I make sure to discard and feed it again with about one cup of flour and ¾-1 cup of water. By the early afternoon, it’s usually doubled, and if I’m home, I’ll feed it again so that my starter has doubled, or peaked, right before I use it.

I usually start this process on Friday morning, when I know I’ll be making bread on Sunday.

What if I’ve left my starter in the fridge for too long and the bubbles are gone?

Many people assume that if you have left your starter in the fridge for longer than you’ve intended to (like, over a month or three and forgot to feed it because life happened), it’s no longer active and you have to make a new one. This isn’t the case!

You CAN revive a neglected, back of the fridge starter, even if it’s been in there for who-knows-how-long. You just need a little more time to nurse it back to its old, bubbly self.

Start by discarding half and feeding it about one cup of flour and ¾-1 cup of water. Let it sit for 24 hours. You should notice it begin to bubble back up. Then, feed it and check to see if it has doubled within 12 hours. If so, give it another feed. Feed every 12 hours until it doubles in size at the 4-6 hour mark.

Sourdough Resources

Here are some links to a few of my favorite sourdough bread recipes:

• Here’s a beginner sourdough bread recipe from Jill Winger of The Prairie Homestead.
• I love this waffle recipe from Lisa Bass of Farmhouse on Boone.
• These sourdough discard biscuits from Amy of Little Spoon Farm are delicious!

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