It takes time and lots of love, BUT it's totally worth every ounce of flour, water & time. It may seem overwhelming but if you can keep yourself alive, you can keep a sourdough starter alive too.
Where to even begin. Sourdough starters are actually living creatures & like any living creature, you have to make sure it's fed. If you're wondering what to feed your sourdough starter, look no further! A simple 1/1 ratio of all purpose flour to water and you're good to go! Take a look at how we like to do it- -
Starting The Starter
First step is to add 100g of bread flour to a jar with 100g of water. Stir with fork.
You'll need to leave this out on the counter and cover the jar with cheese cloth or a coffee filter. You can use the jar lid (if your lid comes in 2 pieces) or a rubber band to help keep the jar covered.
The yeast from the air will start to seep into the flour/ water mixture, creating the starter! You'll see air bubbles form, that's how you know it's working!
Feeding Time
You'll want to feed your starter 2x daily at the beginning. I know, I know, it's a lot. If you stick with it, I promise you'll be happy you did!! After your starter is ready, you can keep it in the fridge and feed it 1x a week too!
2x daily-
Feed your starter 1/1 ratio of all purpose flour to water. We use 60g water, 60g flour each feeding.
~Each feeding, you'll need to remove 1/2 of your starter before you add the water and flour mixture. You can use the discarded starter to make sourdough pancakes! *recipe below, this is one of the tastiest things I've ever eaten!!!*
~When your starter needs to eat, a pool of liquid will form on the top of the starter. This liquid is alcohol, discard it before feeding!
What We Saw-
So, this is our first starter so we are in no means pros at this. We noticed that after a few days of feeding is 2x daily, the starter started to smell sour and there were bubbles forming. We almost gave up after our starter didn't really change after 5 days. We think that the altitude (6,800 ft) and the climate had something to do with that. BUT! We didn't give up and now we have a sour, tasty starter that we use daily!
When is it ready?!
Float test! If you're wondering if your starter is ready to become bread, grab a little piece and drop it in a bowl of water. If your starter floats, you're good to go!!
If your start sinks, keep feeding it 2x daily, you got it!
We also gave up after our start sunk day after day, we are SO happy that we kept on feeding the monster. Now we eat sourdough pancakes at least 1x a day!
SOURDOUGH PANCAKES Y'ALL!!
With the current state of the world, we are trying extra hard to use every aspect of the food we have available. So when we read that you're suppose to throw away half of the starter, we researched ways to use the discard. Sourdough pancakes are the way to gooo!! It's a super easy and tasty way to save that discard.
Grab a pan and your favorite spices! All you have to do is throw the discard on the pan, spice it up and cook both sides! We love Jamaican curry powder, cumin seeds & dried cilantro on our pancakes. We add pickled red onion and fermented pepper paste on top & done!!! A super tasty, healthy & useful way to use the excess starter!
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