Sourdough Starter the Easy Way that Actually Works with LESS Flour

making a sourdough starter does not have to be complicated and you don't have to have this huge vessel of starter that you're feeding huge amounts of flour to all the time [Music] this is my sourdough starter that i have had for over 10 years and this is how much i keep on hand which is a very small amount in just a pint size jar sourdough starters are actually really easy to use and to start once you know the exact things that you need and i'm here to tell you most people really over complicate it my friend all you need is flour and water now you can use a scale if you want to and in the beginning using a scale is going to get you a lot of accuracy but honestly you don't have to use it i'll give you the measurements without having a scale but you're going to get to the point where you can just eyeball it and know if it's at the right hydration level which is what kind of a fancy term you'll hear people talk about a lot with sourdough baking what the hydration level is and i like mine at 100 hydration and all that means is it's equal parts flour and water by weight which you can tell by looking at when it's thick so to start a sourdough starter from scratch all you need is water and flour you don't need any type of special flour i do recommend using unbleached flour if possible because what we're doing is we're not actually capturing the yeast from the air but the yeast is already on your flower and so unbleached is ideal because you're going to have a better colony of yeast already there and then we're just creating an environment for it to chlorofluid and grow into our sourdough starter this is unbleached organic all-purpose flour you can use whole wheat a lot of people like to use rye you can also do ancient grain ein corn you can do spelt and you can do gluten-free if you're doing gluten-free i like to use a rice flour buckwheat's popular quinoa also works i stay away from nut flowers because you do want the starch for both the yeast and the lactabalae which is the good bacteria which creates our sourdough culture for them to feed on so to start your sourdough starter all you're going to need is a quarter cup of flour and you don't have to have exact measurements i promise sourdough starter doesn't have to be that complicated so we've got a quarter cup of flour to have a scale is going to be 30 grams and then we're going to use two tablespoons of water which would be 30 grams if you're weighing it on the scale and we're just going to stir that together and we're going to incorporate it i do recommend glass mason jar works great but if you have like a glass bowl or a different type of glass jar that's totally fine so you're just going to mix this and it's going to be kind of like a thick paste now it's totally fine if you need to add just a little bit more water so that you have all of the flour incorporated basically what we don't want is any little dry clumps of flour we want all of the flour to have moisture so i'm just going to add another little bit of a tablespoon of water to this now if you're on a well water that's fine to use if your water has a lot of chlorine in it i would recommend either boiling it and then letting it come to room temperature or you can let it sit out overnight to off gas but you don't need to go and buy any type of special water so you can see this is pretty thick it's not really runny and then we just need to cover it now we don't want it to be airtight it does need oxygen to breathe and so you can if you have plastic wrap you can use plastic wrap i don't like to use plastic wrap what i like to use are just these white plastic lids they're not airtight they're reusable freezer safe fridge safe all those fun things and i just kind of set it on there and i don't always i don't screw it all the way down so it definitely has room to breathe now i when you're doing a brand new sourdough starter i like to feed it twice a day so you're going to do this in the morning and then you're going to feed it again in the evening and a warm spot is best to especially help get it active so if your house is cold my house is usually pretty cold in the winter time then you can just use an oven with just the light on and that makes a great little proofing box keeps it warm heat rises so the top of your fridge is a good place but if your house is 70 degrees fahrenheit or warmer you're fine just at room temperature so this is approximately 12 hours later please do not set your clock an alarm buy it you just want to have a you know evening and morning ideally so we're going to come back and we're going to feed this with the same exact amount so a quarter cup of flour or 30 grams and 30 grams of water and i always like to make sure that i scrape the sides of the jar so that it's all getting stirred and incorporated there we go that is day one feeding complete okay so for day two this is where you do the discard part discard simply means we are going to be removing half of the amount of the starter that's in the jar now it doesn't mean that you're wasting this and if you want to get really technical like you can weigh and measure it out as i said i am not technical with my sourdough we're just going to eyeball this and i'm approximately leaving about a quarter cup or so in there and we're just going to remove a half of it so this is not technically sourdough starter yet because it's only day two this is just flour and water so you can use this in any baking recipe throw it in if you're making pancakes or a cake or cookies or bread or whatever it's just flour and water there's no need to throw this away or toss it you can also set this in the fridge because you're going to be discarding once a day and build up enough of this to make something else if you're like i don't really have anything that i'm going to be using just a quarter cup of flour in now it's time for the first feeding on day two and it's the exact same amounts every time that we've been using so a quarter cup of flour and our water mix that all in and your jar is starting to look like a true sourdough starter jar and getting a little bit of flour up on it getting a little messy looking there we go and then we'll come back and feed this again on the evening of day two now you will probably start to see a few bubbles and that is a really good thing that is showing that it's active so sometimes you'll see bubbles on the sides of the jar and sometimes you'll also see them on the top and these are all signs that we're looking for now don't panic if you're moving into day two and you're like i don't see any bubbles yet just keep up with the feeding and the stirring and the discarding now like i said with a discard the reason that you need to do that is because if you don't the culture that's beginning to form it's not strong enough yet to support all of this flour and so that's why we're removing that out and adding in fresh fresh food or feed we're feeding it it is a live live culture there of the yeast and the lactobacillus bacteria and so if you don't remove this it's really hard for it to become active in a really strong starter you're going to be hindering it if you don't remove and discard every day so day three we're gonna do some more discarding and you should begin to see some bubbles at this point so you're gonna continue in this same vein for five days now at the end of five days your starter is not strong enough to bake bread yet but it is considered a sourdough starter at day five so you can begin to use this discard and the starter in any type of sourdough recipe that isn't a bread recipe or roll recipe that requires the action of the yeast to rise so quick breads and pancakes and waffles and if you want to get my sourdough feeding schedule then written out for you you can go to the blog post i'll have it linked beneath the video so you can go and check that out there so you have it all written out with the amounts and some of those either once a day or twice a day feedings now oftentimes in the beginning people will see their sourdough starters sometimes like around day three or four be really really active like you'll see a huge explosion of bubbles and it will be rising and falling and you'll think oh my gosh this must be strong enough to make bread it's not yet it's still too infant it's not going to rise and make good bread but this is very common and what will happen for a lot of people is then you'll begin to get to like day five and six and you won't see nearly the amount of bubbles or actions and people think that that means that they're sourdough starters something's wrong with it and it's dying and they'll oftentimes give up and throw it out please don't do that it's very normal and that's why we don't use our sourdough starter for bread yet because it's still very much in its infancy and it's getting the balance down of those cultures until it's a strong culture and it's predictable enough to bake bread so don't give up and if you accidentally miss a day of feeding it don't worry about it just discard down and go back to the feeding schedule as soon as you remember sourdough starters are actually very very forgiving people just give up on them a lot too soon if you already have a sourdough starter i highly recommend checking out my sourdough chocolate bread it is delicious and if you want some more recipes you can go and check out that written blog post and snag some of them as well

Channel: Melissa K. Norris - Modern Homesteading

Views: 166,233

Rating: 4.9454584 out of 5

Keywords: sourdough starter, homemade sourdough, how to make a sourdough starter, easy sourdough starter, sourdough starter from scratch, sourdough starter recipe, how to make sourdough starter, how to make sourdough, sourdough starter guide, starter from scratch, sourdough bread starter, easy sourdough starter recipe, sourdough guide, sourdough starter maintenance, sourdough starter troubleshooting, sourdough starter feeding, how to make a sourdough starter from scratch

Id: 1tkg69mFavo

Length: 10min 22sec (622 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 20 2021