Now that you’ve brought home your new starter, you have to feed it before it’s ready to make bread. Some supplies you may need are:
If you still need starter, you can get dehydrated “Toby” here:
To feed your starter, mix in a jar:
- 50g Starter
- 50g Flour
- 50g Filtered Water
“Toby” has been fed unbleached organic bread flour with a couple dashes of organic rye flour when needed. You don’t need rye flour unless you need to give your starter a little boost! Starters love rye flour! You don’t need very much at all.
We have to feed our starter before making bread because it is strongest after it has eaten a full meal! This is referred to its “peak.” After feeding your starter, it will rise up the jar, making bubbles along its way. As it rises, it will have a “dome” shape on the top. After it has eaten all the flour you fed it, it will start to deflate. The dome will disappear and it will be rough and bubbly on top. This is when it is ready to use for bread. The time this process takes will depend on how warm your house is, but usually 4-6 hours.
What do you with your starter If you are not ready to make bread yet
If you’re not ready to make bread just yet, you can feed your starter using the same ratios above. If you have received a starter of 100g, you will feed the starter 100g of flour and 100g of water. Put this in a bigger jar and mix. Wait for your starter to peak – this may take up to 12 hours depending on your environment, your flour, etc. You may now place the jar in the fridge until you are ready to bake.
This will only apply if you’ve have a ready to go starter that isn’t dehydrated.
What To Do When You’re Ready to Make Bread
When you would like to bake bread, you can take a small amount of starter from the fridge and place it in a new jar to feed. You only need 1/3 the amount that your recipe calls for, plus a little more if you would like to place some discard back in your jar in the fridge. Wait until it has risen, and reached peak. And it will be ready to use for your bread. Example:
Your Recipe Calls for 150g Starter:
- Take 75g of starter from the fridge
- In a new jar, mix it with 75g water and 75g flour
- Wait for it to reach peak, and use 150g for your recipe
- Dump the leftover back into your fridge’s discard jar for next time!
If You Want To Make Bread Later Than The Next Week
If you don’t plan on making bread for quite a while, rest assured your starter will be safe in the fridge. The longer it sits, the weirder it will start looking, and it may form a layer of black liquid “hooch” on top. This is totally fine.
However, it is best practice to feed it every couple weeks to keep it healthier. In order to do this, you can mix your starter with equal parts flour and water and put in back in the fridge.
How to keep your starter going
You may have heard the term “Sourdough Discard.” This is just a fancy term for starter that has already been fed and has eaten all of its flour. It essentially becomes inactive and takes a nap until it is fed again. Discard is whatever is leftover after we have taken the amount that we need for our recipe.
We want discard though, because we can turn it into more starter. This is how we keep the cycle of our starter going. So, with this thought, when you feed and make your starter, you will want to make sure you have some left to “seed the pot” if you will, and keep your culture going.
I will keep my discard in the fridge, and use it to make starter for my bread. As the discard jar gets low, I will either feed it, or make extra starter and put it back into the discard jar.
