Feeding and Maintaining Your Sourdough Starter (2024)

FAQs

Feeding and Maintaining Your Sourdough Starter? ›

Maintaining A Sourdough Starter:

A starter stored in the fridge will only require feeding once a week to maintain it. If you use your sourdough starter every day, keep it at room temperature. Follow the feeding instructions above and then leave it at room temperature. You will need to 'feed' it every day (at the same time, if possible).

Experts recommend feeding a starter twice daily. And at each feeding, you hold onto 1/2 cup of your original starter, discard the rest, and then add its same weight in water and flour. With this schedule, you'd discard almost a cup of sourdough starter every day.

Do I have to discard my sourdough starter? It would be best if you discarded some portion of your starter each time you feed it unless you want to continue to let it grow. Eventually, you need to discard the used “food” (flour and water) that's been used to sustain your starter during the last fermentation period.

It is important that you stir the sourdough starter every day in the morning and in the evening. Feed the starter. Add 60 g flour and 60 g lukewarm water, stir well to combine, and let sit out for 24 hours.

All-Purpose Flour: All-purpose flour, which is a blend of hard and soft wheat, is a popular choice for feeding sourdough starter. It provides a good balance of protein and starch, which promotes a healthy fermentation process.

Cover with either a tea towel or a glass lid. I like using a glass lid, because a towel tends to get really messy. Allow to sit of for 4-12 hours before using in a recipe, once it has about doubled in volume. If not using for baking, feed about 12-24 hours after last feeding or place in the fridge.

If your starter gets completely covered on top with bubbles but does not rise, it is healthy but may just be a wet mix. Try reducing the water in your next feeding and see if you have different results. Also, the type of flour you are using can impede the rise of your starter.

In order to allow your starter to grow and flourish, you need to "refresh" it with fresh flour and water. Discarding some first allows you to add this fresh food, whilst maintaining your starter at a manageable size.

Can you leave sourdough starter out without feeding? ›

Mature sourdough starter aged more than 6 months old should be able to survive unfed on the counter for around 3-4 days without any risk of mold. The caveat here is if the temperature is very hot, this timeframe would be reduced. A mature sourdough starter will survive unfed in the fridge for months.

If you didn't discard a portion of your starter each time you feed it, two things would happen: Your starter would grow to an enormous, unmanageable size. Your starter would likely become more and more inhospitable to the bacteria and yeast we want as the mixture would become ever more acidic.

Can I leave my starter out overnight after feeding it? Yes, if you have just fed it. Since the night is rather long, feed it in a 1:4:4 ratio so that's not over fermented by the morning. If for example you use a 1:1:1 ratio, the starter would have peaked in the middle of the night, and collapse by the morning.

Premature discarding and overfeeding will weaken your starter and elongate the process. Don't discard and re-feed a weak starter before it shows increasing bubble activity or height from the previous feeding. If you don't see more bubbles or a faster rise each day, skip a feeding, and give it more time.

Active starter and discard both come from the same sourdough starter. However, they are in different phases. Active starter has been fed flour and water within the last 12 hours or so and is growing until it hits its peak. Once it begins to fall it is considered discard.

To Store Your Sourdough Starter

If you are not baking regularly, store your starter in the fridge. My preferred storage vessel is a deli quart container.

A starter stored in the fridge can be fed once a week. If you plan to use it often, you can store it for up to two months without feeding. When you want to use the starter again, remove it from the fridge for a few hours, then feed it every 12 hours for 36 hours before you make bread with it.

I keep my starter jar very clean by scraping down the sides and wiping the rim every time I feed it, so I transfer it to a clean jar once every few weeks. If you keep a very messy starter jar you may want to transfer it to a clean jar more frequently. The only thing that can really kill your starter is mold.