While I personally use Freshly Milled Flour for my baking I realize that not everyone has that option or desire. For this reason I want to include instructions for sourdough starter made with store bought flour as well. Everyone deserves to have the option to make healthy bread at home! Follow along below for instructions on making your own sourdough starter at home.
What is a Sourdough Starter
A sourdough starter is a fermented mixture of flour and water that captures wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria from the environment. Unlike commercial yeast, which is a single strain, a starter is a diverse ecosystem that naturally leavens bread and imparts complex, tangy flavors. Once established, a healthy starter can last for years with regular feedings.
I have made both a freshly milled starter and a store bought flour starter. While making the actual bread is a bit different, the starter itself is mostly made the same way. You may notice that the starter with freshly milled flour is a bit thicker. This is because the freshly milled flour absorbs a bit more water and depends on the grain you use. You can check out my blog on baking sourdough with freshly milled flour coming soon. For maintaining a starter, I don’t bother adjusting the hydration and instead worry about that when making bread.
Regardless of if you are using store bought or freshly milled, you can follow these instructions to create and maintain a strong healthy Sourdough Starter!
What you will need.
- Pint sized jar with a lid
- Flour (See below for flour and grain suggestions.)
- Water; either bottled or tap as long as it is not heavily chlorinated
- Food Scale
Flour:
- Store bought: When I started out with sourdough, I was not milling my own flour. I was able to maintain a healthy starter that baked beautiful loaves with walmart brand flour. You really don’t need to spend a fortune. Does a good flour make great bread? Absolutely! But affordable flour can make amazing loaves as well. Choose something in your budget and have fun! The biggest recommendation I have is to choose an unbleached flour. This will help keep your starter healthy.
- Freshly Milled: I currently use Hard Red Wheat. I use it mostly because my family doesn’t love the flavor as much as other grains and I have 25 pounds of it. You can use any grain to feed your starter but higher protein grains create stronger starters although grains like rye can be successfully used. It really depends on what you have on hand. While you can mix it up, I do recommend sticking with one or two grains as starters seem to do well with consistency.
Scale:
Overall, you do not need any special equipment to do sourdough. I strongly believe that sourdough has been over complicated to sell courses and recipes that promise to give you “the best” results. The truth is, sourdough can easily be adapted to your lifestyle, skill level and tools available. You should never feel like you need to put off trying a recipe because you don’t have the same banneton or special ingredient.
That being said… I do recommend if you are going to bake almost anything, a scale is my biggest recommendation. Baking, unlike cooking, is a science. You need to understand bakers percentages, how ingredients react to each other, ratios of fats to flour, ect. Baking is not something you can just wing. Cooking on the other hand is typically a lot more forgiving and many “cook to taste”.
I would say, the food scale is the tool that I use the most in my kitchen. When measuring ingredients using volume measurements, like cups, there is a lot of variables. On humid days, flour will pack more densely into a cup measure. On cold winter days, with low humidity, the same cup measurement can hold less flour. Using a food scale you will be able to achieve consistent results every time. I rarely have to add extra flour or water to my bread dough because the food scale will always give me the correct hydration every time.
How to Make a Sourdough Starter
Step 1: Mix Flour and Water
- In a clean glass jar, combine equal parts (by weight) of flour and room temperature water.
- For example: 30 grams flour + 30 grams water. to make 60 grams of starter.
- Stir until a thick, smooth paste forms.
- Cover the container loosely with a lid or cloth to allow airflow, and let it sit at room temperature for 24 hours.
Step 2: Feed Daily Until Active
- Each day, discard two thirds of the starter and feed the remainder with equal parts fresh flour and water (by weight).
- Example: If you have 60g starter, discard 40g so that you have 20g remaining, then add 20g flour + 20g water.
- Stir, cover loosely, and let sit at room temperature.
- Repeat this process daily for about 14 days, until the starter is bubbly, at least doubles in size, and smells pleasantly sour. When active, your starter is ready to use for baking.
- Starter needs to at least double to be considered strong. A good strong starter may as much as triple!
- Continue the daily feedings for about a month to ensure the starter is sufficiently strong and then choose a feeding schedule.
Basic Rules to Remember
- Feeding is done in three parts. For daily feeding you will use equal parts of Starter, Water and Flour. This is a 1.1.1 ratio, meaning equal parts.
- To determine how much to feed it, divide the total weight by three. For example. If you have 60g starter in your jar, You will remove all but 20g of starter (discard). Feed the remaining 20g of starter with 20 grams of water and 20g of flour.
- Do not bake with your starter until at least day 10 and you see consistent doubling and falling. You can now use the discard in recipes but the starter will not be strong enough for bread until around day 14.
- Around Day 10, you should be seeing consistent doubling (or even tripling) and falling. At this time you can save the discard from each feeding. Place it into a separate container and store it in the fridge. You can now bake with it using sourdough discard recipes.
- Do not put the discard down your drain! This can harden like cement and clog the pipes. Instead throw it in the trash or outside.
- You may notice a black watery layer form on top of your starter. This is called hooch and just means its hungry. You can pour it off or stir it in. It will make your starter more sour if you stir it in.
How to Feed your Starter
Now that you have established your starter what now?
First, confirm that your starter is established. After feeding, do you see consistent doubling or tripling of the starter before it falls back down? Has it been AT LEAST 14 days? If you can answer yes to these questions then lets move on to maintenance feeds and a baking schedule!
Schedules
Daily
If you are planning to bake with your starter every day you will need to feed it to daily to replenish it. Keep the starter on the counter, feeding it ever 24 hours.
Weekly
If you only bake once a week or less you can use a weekly feeding schedule. Store the starter in the fridge. Once a week or the day before you want to bake, remove it from the fridge and feed. Leave on the counter to double.
Feeding your starter is basically the same steps as when you established the starter. You will discard then stir in equal parts starter, flour and water. The only difference is taking into account how much you need to bake with.
If you are not baking with it I suggest keeping only 60 gram at a time. This will help prevent too much waste.
Maintenance Feeding
Choose your feeding schedule and when it is time to feed follow these steps:
- Discard 40g starter. You can save it in the fridge to use in Discard Recipes.
- To the remaining 20g of starter in your jar, add 20g flour and 20g water.
- Place a rubber band around the jar at the starter level to track how much the starter has risen.
- Stir thoroughly and leave in a warm spot to double.
- If you are doing a weekly feed you can put it back into the fridge after its doubled.
Feeding Before baking
When you are ready to bake, first you need to determine how much starter you will need for the recipe. Generally, feed the Starter the night before to mix the dough in the morning or feed it in the morning to mix the dough in the evening. (Check your recipe to know when you need to mix the dough)
Lets say the recipe calls for 50g of starter. We will need to make sure we have 20g left for feeding and replenishing the starter. Add 20g to the 50g needed for the recipe to get 70g. Now divide 70 by three to find out how much starter, water and flour to feed in order to have enough for the recipe.
- 70/3=23.3 lets round to 24 just to make it easier. I always round up because its better to have more.
- From your starter, discard all but 24g. Now stir in 24g water and 24g flour. Leave loosely covered until doubled. I like to leave it overnight.
- After the starter has doubled, remove the 50g needed for the recipe and mix your dough according to the recipe.
- Now we need to replenish the starter so we are ready for next time. To the remaining 20g of starter in the jar, add 20g flour and 20g water. Stir and leave in a warm spot to double or triple.
How to Understand Feeding Ratios
Sourdough starter feeding ratios describe how much starter you keep and how much fresh flour and water you add during feeding. They are expressed as starter:water:flour by weight. Common ratios include 1:1:1, 1:2:2, 1:3:3, 1:4:4, and higher.
Common Feeding Ratios and What They Mean
| 1.1.1 | Equal parts starter, water, and flour | Starter has less fresh food, so it peaks faster (usually within 4–6 hours). |
| 1.2.2 | Starter plus twice the water and flour | Starter peaks more slowly than 1:1:1, allowing a longer window before peak (6–8 hours). |
| 1.3.3 | Starter plus three times the water and flour | Slower fermentation, starter peaks in 8–12 hours. |
| 1.4.4 | Starter plus four times the water and flour | Even slower fermentation, starter peaks in 12–16 hours. Balances acidity and mildness well. Useful if you want to delay peak or reduce discard. |
| 1.8.8 or 1.10.10 | Starter plus 8–10 times the water and flour | Very slow fermentation, starter can last 24 hours or more before peaking. Good for when refrigerated for longer periods of time and needs to ‘wake up” |
Choosing A Ratio
To keep it simple, I like to maintain my starter with a 1.1.1 ratio.
When baking, check your recipe. Sourdough recipes will typically give the ratio that your starter needs to be fed. Use this ratio when you feed the starter prior to baking with it. This is important because the ratio the starter is fed will affect the timing in the recipe.
Feel free to change up the ratio of feeding. You are not stuck with a single ratio and can change it up as needed. Just be sure to allow the starter sufficient time to double based on the chart above.
feeding ratios can be useful if you need to feed the starter and won’t be able to bake for an amount of time (like with a work schedule.) Simply figure out how many hours you will be gone for and feed the starter with the ratio that matches that time frame.
Sourdough Starter Warning Signs.
The one thing everyone dreads when it comes to sourdough starter is mold… Keep a lookout and if you see any of these signs, discard your starter and do not consume it. Unfortunately you will need to either start over and find some from a friend or bakery.
- Mold: Any visible fuzzy mold (white, green, blue, gray, or even pink/orange) on the surface or sides of the container means the starter is unsafe and must be thrown out. Mold can appear as spots, streaks, or fuzz, and it can blend in with the beige starter, so inspect carefully.
- Unusual Color Changes: A healthy starter is typically off-white, beige, or light tan. If you notice pink, orange, or green discoloration or streaks, this is a clear sign of contamination and the starter should be discarded immediately. (Note. Rye has a greenish hue which is normal)
- Foul or Rotten Smell: While a sourdough starter should smell pleasantly tangy, yeasty, or mildly sour, a strong putrid, rotten, or otherwise foul odor (distinctly different from sour or alcoholic) indicates spoilage.
- Lack of Activity: If your starter remains flat and lifeless, showing no bubbles or rise after regular feedings, it may have lost its wild yeast and bacterial activity and is no longer viable. You can continue feeding and try to bring it back, but do not consume the discard until you see consistent doubling resume.
Let’s Get Baking!
Now that you have an active, thriving starter Head over to my Sourdough and Discard Recipes to get started!