Chefs Binge · Artisan Baking · Serves 2 x 100 g of active starter
Simple Sourdough Starter Recipe: Your Key to Perfect Bread
A wild yeast starter built from nothing but flour and water over about a week. Fed twice a day once it wakes up, then kept in the fridge and refreshed weekly, it will raise bread for years.
Prep
50 min
Total
4 days
Serves
2 x 100 g of active starter
Per serving
172 kcal
Ingredients
50 g Rye flour - wholemeal or dark rye, organic if you can get it. Wholemeal wheat or malted country grain will also work
50 g Room-temperature water - (filtered, or left standing overnight, if your tap water is heavily chlorinated)
50 g Bread flour or wholemeal flour
50 g Room-temperature water
Equipment
1 litre glass jar · Kitchen Scale · Spoon or Spatula · Clean Dishcloth or Loose-Fitting Lid
Method
1
Begin the Starter. In a clean 1 litre glass jar, mix 50g of wholemeal rye flour with 50g of water. Cover loosely and place in a warm spot in your house (20 to 26°C / 70 to 80°F). Fill the jar no more than a third: an active starter can triple after a feed.
2
First Feeding. Add 50g of plain flour and 50g of water to the jar. Stir well and cover.
3
Activity Begins. Morning: Feed the starter with 50g of plain flour and 50g of water.Evening: Discard 100g of starter. Feed with 50g of plain flour and 50g of water.
4
Building Momentum. Morning: Discard 100g of starter. Feed with 50g of plain flour and 50g of water.Evening: Repeat the same process as in the morning.
5
The Growth Test. By now, your starter should double in size a few hours after feeding. If it doesn’t, repeat the Day 4 routine until it does. For some, this can take up to 7 days, so patience is key!
6
How to Store and Use Your Starter. Once your starter is active and doubling consistently, it’s ready to use. Store it in the fridge with a loose cover, allowing it to breathe. Feed it weekly or whenever you take some for a recipe (Add in weight what you take out in 1:1 ratio)
7
To Reactivate a Cold Starter for baking. Take 100g of starter and mix it with 50g of warm water and 50g of plain flour.Leave at room temperature for at least 3 hours, or overnight if possible. The starter will wake-up and will be ready to use in your recipe giving you amazing bread!
Chef’s notes
- Cover loosely, never sealed. A fermenting jar produces gas and needs somewhere to put it.
- Use a jar of about a litre and fill it no more than a third. A fed starter can triple and will climb out of a full jar.
- Mark the level with an elastic band after each feed. The rise is the only honest measure of whether it is ready; smell is not, because the sourness comes from bacteria that arrive first and are never in short supply.
- Consistency should be thick porridge. Flours drink different amounts of water, so adjust by 5 to 10 g if yours is stiff or runny, then keep it the same from feed to feed.
- Warm helps, hot does not. 20 to 26 C is the window. Hotter favours the bacteria over the yeasts and gives a sour starter that still will not rise.
- Sluggish and smelling of alcohol? Feed it heavier rather than warmer: 25 g of starter to 75 g of flour and 75 g of water, once or twice a day for a few days.
- Fuzzy mould, or any pink or orange, means bin the whole jar and start again. A flat white film with no fuzz is kahm yeast, which is harmless: scrape it off, discard most of the starter and feed as normal.
- About the nutrition panel. It is the flour and the water as fed, per 100 g of starter, and it does not account for what the yeasts and bacteria eat while it ferments. Nobody eats a starter neat in any case: most of it is discarded as you go and the rest disappears into a loaf.
Per serving Calories 172 kcal · Protein 7 g · Carbs 35.3 g · Fat 1 g · Saturates 0.1 g · Fibre 6.5 g · Sugar 0.7 g · Sodium 3 mg
Recipe © Chef Łukasz Babral · chefsbinge.com · for personal use only
chefsbinge.com/simple-sourdough-starter-recipe-your-key-to-perfect-bread
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