Your starter is a mixture of flour and water that hosts a culture of beneficial yeast and bacteria. The yeast consume, and ferment, the flour and water producing carbon dioxide gas which leavens your bread and causes it to rise. The yeast also produce sugar which the bacteria consume and produce acid. The acid is what gives sourdough bread its sour flavor.

It is important to remember temperature will impact your starter. Fermentation will happen more quickly at warmer temperatures and slow down as the temperature cools.

When baking with a leaven, you don’t need to keep much starter. Keeping too much starter can be difficult to maintain and wasteful. You have two options for feeding your starter.

Option One: Discard all but about 10g or so of starter. Feed it with a specific ratio (1:1:1, 1:5:5 etc).

Option Two: Discard all but a little bit of starter. Feed it with a tablespoon or two of flour and a little bit of water. The mixture should resemble a thick batter and should not look watery.

Feeding ratio refers to the amount (measured in grams) of starter to flour to water and is expressed as 3 part number. A 1:1:1 ratio represents one part starter to one part flour to one part water. An example of a 1:1:1 ratio is: 10g starter, 10g flour and 10g water. Other ratios you may see are 1:2:2, 1:5:5 or 1:10:10.

I feed my starter with organic, high protein white flour and filtered water.
If you’re storing your starter on the counter, you should feed it once every 24 hours. If it is warmer (summer) and your starter is fermenting faster, you can feed it every 12 hours, alternatively, you can feed it with a higher ratio.

I recommend refreshing your jar every week or two.

What do you do with discard? Save it, feed it and use it in another recipe (bagels, waffles, pancakes etc.), or you can put it in your compost bin.

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