How to care for your sourdough starter

You are now the proud parent of a sourdough starter!

Congratulations!

Many of you asked us “how do I keep this alive?” Caring for a sourdough starter is much like caring for a pet. It thrives on routine. We recommend taking your starter home and refrigerating it overnight so you can start a new routine for your starter and yourself the next day.

This little pint container is home to healthy yeast bacteria and its essential needs: flour, water, and oxygen. The yeast bacteria consumes the available sugar in the flour and convert the sugar into carbon dioxide and ethanol. There is a lot more detail to what is happening with the happy yeast but the basic thing we need to know to keep our starter alive is give it food and water, at the same time each day. Just like our beloved pets, the behavior of our starter will easy to observe if we have a set routine.

When to Feed: MAINTENANCE FEEDING versus BAKE FEEDING

Most of us do not bake at home everyday. While we would never skip a feeding for our pet it is convenient and economical to only feed our starters once or twice a week. If the starter is kept in the fridge between feedings it will still be healthy and happy with a minimal amount of feedings. This will save you time and flour when you are not baking on a bi-weekly basis.

We recommend purchasing a scale. Amazon has them available here. A scale helps with consistency and consistency with our starter helps us problem solve if it’s misbehaving or if we want to start to stretch our creativity with new schedules and flours.

MAINTENANCE FEEDING:

Grams Cups/Teaspoon

Flour 100 2/3 cup

Water 100 1/2 cup

MB sourdough starter 10 1 teaspoon

I recommend feeding your starter in the morning and then letting it ferment at room temperature for 2 hours before refrigerating it. This will give the yeast time to start to consume the flour before you slow down there fermentation in the cold refrigerator. Do this once a week to keep you starter alive. Discard the extra starter after you feed it. I like to finish combining my flour, water and starter and safely tuck it away in fridge before getting rid of the rest of the older feeding just in case I spill it or mess up my measurements etc.

When you are feeling inspired to bake bread or if you think you might want to incorporate your sourdough starter into other baking projects like crepes, tortillas, waffles or crackers start to feed your starter more frequently. The volume listed below is larger but the ratios are the same listed above. Plan ahead. Look up a recipe online or in your favorite bread book and see how much starter it calls for. Many basic bread recipes call for little more than 200 grams of starter to make one nice sized loaf so even with the smaller measurements above you will have enough to make bread and still have starter leftover to keep feeding.

BAKE FEEDING:

Grams Cups/Tablespoon

Flour 200 1 1/2 cups

Water 200 1 cup

MB sourdough starter 20 2 teaspoons

For the Maintenance Feeding we were only feeding once a week. For the bake feed we are going to increase our feed to twice a day and we are going to keep our starter at room temperature. I like to bake in the morning so I feed my starter at 1 pm the day before I am going to bake, then I feed it at night before I go to bed. The early afternoon feed is refreshing the starter and waking it up from the fridge. The evening feed I am building the volume so I have enough for my baking project the next morning. The starter should be bubble but still seem thick not watery.

How do I know when it is ready to use?

Check back soon for more photos of a happy and active starter.

What can I do with the starter?

I will be adding some simple Manresa Bread recipes soon but here are a few of recipes to get you started!

How to Make Sourdough Bread NEW YORK TIMES

Beginner’s Sourdough Bread THE PERFECT LOAF

Rustic Sourdough Bread KING ARTHUR FLOUR