Making your Sourdough Starter
I made our sourdough starter when I was on maternity leave with our daughter. I was honestly surprised by how much easier it was to make and ‘feed’ than I thought it would be. Homemade bread and pancakes are always good but I promise you that homemade sourdough bread and pancakes are even better! We call our starter Myrtle and she even comes on holiday with us!
My Sourdough Starter Recipe
- ½ Cup of bread flour (I used wholemeal)
- ½ Cup of warm water
I put mine in a kilner jar as you can see from the photo. You want a jar about 4 times bigger than your starting volume as the starter gets bigger as you feed it and it froths.
You want to give it a good whisk to incorporate lots of air, and thus yeast spores, from the surrounding area.
Then you want to leave it somewhere fairly warm (I took mine into the living room), but not near a radiator that is on.
First Feeding
Keep an eye on your starter and it will begin to ferment. The time this will take is based on many factors so everyone’s timings will be different. As I used wholemeal flour and it was a reasonably warm day for February mine only took around 10 hours.
Once you see the first sign of fermentation; small bubbles appearing on the surface of your starter, and probably a yeasty smell too, you then need to add:
- ½ Cup of bread flour (I used wholemeal)
- ½ Cup of warm water
Subsequent Feedings
You need to feed your starter whenever it is rapidly fermenting (lots of bubbles!). To do this you need to remove half of the starter and then mix in another ½ cup of flour and water. After the first 5 days of doing this, once it was nicely established I then started to cook with the half I was removing.
I keep my starter in the fridge and feed it twice a week. I make bread once a week and scones or naan breads on the other feeding day. I will post more sourdough starter recipes this month if anyone is looking for ideas.
NOTE: I was unwell and forgot to check on my starter for a while and it looked like it had split. I did a bit of research and people said to mix it back together, remove half and feed as normal and it will be fine – they were correct! I was very happy not to have lost my starter, definitely a trick worth knowing!!
We have now had many yummy sourdough pancakes, loaves and other treats using this starter and it is super handy to have in the fridge when needed. Now I have gotten my head around how to look after, feed and cook with the starter I am super glad I made it and hope this inspires you to have a go too.
Livvy
