The Sourdough Starter/ Masa Madre/ Saurteig/ Maia is the foundation of any sourdough baking produce.
So what is a sourdough starter? Simply put it is a fermented mix of flour and water.
This beautiful and so simple combination is used as a leavening agent to make baked goods rise.
But how does it work?
Mixing liquids with flour, activates the friendly bacteria and wild yeast living in the flour, your surrounding environment and even on your skin (so it is a good thing to touch your sourdough starter, that may be your personal signature). Once activated, it usually takes around 7 days of constant feeding, the microorganisms produce carbon dioxide bubbles, which make your baked goods rise.
Why do I need to feed my sourdough starter?
If you want these microbes (natural bacteria & yeast) to thrive you need to provide food. This food is nothing else that flour (sugar & starch) and water. This is why a very good and active sourdough starter is fed once or twice a day.
What If I don’t want to feed my sourdough starter so often?
It is totally fine and understandable. Not everyone has time to do it, or maybe you bake just once a week or less.
Your sourdough starter will survive in a cold environment, so you can keep it in the fridge. Now, I recommend to feed it once a week if you don’t plan to bake any time soon, or even dehydrate it.
Your starter will accumulate a lot of acid in the fridge, and if kept too long will start to have an acetone like smell and even form some dark liquid on top. This dark liquid, known as hooch, is perfectly normal and can be easily fixed.
Hooch is caused by the fermentation process, which results in alcohol being produced by bacteria living in your starter. As these bacteria feed on the flour and water mixture they produce alcohol.
If you want to revive your starter after it produced this hooch, you can take it out of the fridge, either discard the liquid or stir it in, and feed with flour and water. This process can take a while, especially if you kept the starter for a long time in the fridge. Just keep on feeding it constantly, and watch the microorganism activity. If after a week-two of everyday feeding, there is little to no activity, then I suggest you start a new one.
How to create a sourdough starter from scratch?
| Ingredients | |
| Flour (white bread flour, rye flour, whole wheat flour, stone ground flour) | Water (room temperature/ cold/ warm water, depending on you room temperature) |
Tools:
- Jar
- Spatula/ Spoon/ Wood Stick
| Schedule | ||
| Day 1 | Mix 20g water with 20g of flour | |
| Day 2 | Discard 20g and feed the remaining 20g with 40g of water and 40g of flour | |
| Day 3 | Discard 80g and feed the remaining 20g with 40g of water and 40g of flour | |
| Day 4 | Discard 80g and feed the remaining 20g with 40g of water and 40g of flour | |
| Day 5 | Discard 80g and feed the remaining 20g with 40g of water and 40g of flour | |
| Day 6 | Discard 80g and feed the remaining 20g with 40g of water and 40g of flour | |
| Day 7 | Discard 80g and feed the remaining 20g with 40g of water and 40g of flour | |
The feeding ratios used for my starter are 1:2:2 (meaning for 1 part sourdough starter, I use 2 parts water and two part flour)
Feel free to use whatever quantities you prefer if you do not want to discard to much flour.
I also recommend that once in a while, especially if you are noticing you sourdough starter being to acidic, to use a higher feeding ratio (anything above 1:4:4).
Once you create your sourdough starter, and you bake your first bread, feel free to experiment with feeding ratios as you wish. There are no limitations on what your little microculture can do in terms of fermentation.
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