Sourdough Starter

Create your own sourdough starter from scratch and use it to make delicious bread, crackers, pizza dough and more.

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Equipment

1 glass jar with loose fitting lid or cloth
1 food scale (measuring cups work too)
1 spatula or wooden spoon

Ingredients

10 grams flour organic, unbleached
10 grams water filtered or distilled

Instructions

In the morning, mix 10g flour and 10g filtered water in a glass jar. Cover loosely with a lid or a cloth and allow to sit at room temperature overnight. If you don't have a food scale, use your smallest measuring cup. Ex: 1/4c flour and 1/4c water.
The next day, you should have 20g of what is now your starter. Add 20g filtered water and 20g flour. Mix well and allow to sit at room temperature overnight.
The next day, you should begin to see some bubbles forming, though the starter won’t start “growing” much yet. Continue to feed your starter daily with a ratio of 1 part starter, 1 part filtered water, and 1 part flour, feeding it around the same time each day. At this point, you may want to discard some of the starter before feeding so you aren't exponentially growing your starter each day(see note below).
Continue to feed your starter every day for at least a week. Throughout the week, you should start to see more and more bubbles and your starter will start to “grow” after each feed. Your starter is ready to use when it is at least doubling in size between feedings. You can also test your starter to see if it is ready to use by dropping some into a bowl of water. If it floats, it's ready to use!

Notes

I like to do what I call "micro feedings" when establishing or building up my starter. Many recipes will ask you to use large quantities of flour such as 100 grams, 1 cup, etc. but that can become a huge waste. Building and maintaining a starter is all about ratios, so any amount works. You want to maintain a ratio of 1 part starter, 1 part water and 1 part flour, so this could be 10g of each, it could be 30g, it could be 1 cup - you get the picture. The measurement doesn't matter as long as the ratio stays 1:1:1. By using small amounts of flour, or "micro feeding," you can significantly cut down on the amount of waste. Then, when you go to bake, stop discarding and just gradually increase the amounts until you have enough to bake with.