How to Make Your Own Sourdough Starter • The Prairie Homestead (2024)

Flour and water. That’s all you need to make your own yeast in the form of a homemade sourdough starter. With just a little bit of patience and this simplerecipe, you’ll have a starter that will decrease your dependence on the grocery store and help you make the most amazing sourdough breads, pancakes, crackers, brownies, and more.

Sourdough captured my imagination way back at the beginning of my homestead journey.

I actually found a little post-it note in one of my old recipe books that said the date of my first sourdough starter: October 11, 2010, which was right at the beginning of my homesteading adventures here on this blog.

I’ve been doing sourdough off and on since then and have learned plenty along the way. I’ve written about sourdough in my cookbook; I showed you how to make sourdough bread in my heritage cooking crash course; I’ve even talked about sourdough a bunch of times on my Old Fashioned on Purpose podcast.

I’ve had some massive sourdough failures over the years. I’ve made the classic brick loaf that you can use as a paperweight or a doorstop. I’ve had loaves that taste way too sour or have an odd texture that no one wants to eat.

I’ve killed plenty of sourdough starters. I’ve cooked a sourdough starter by accident. I’ve let the sourdough starter die on the counter. I’ve neglected it in the fridge.

Through trial and error over 10 years of sourdough making, I’ve failed many times at sourdough, but I’ve also learned plenty of handy tips and methods to make successful sourdough recipes.

Today I’m going to show you how to make your own sourdough starter with nothing more than flour and water.

You don’t need a purchased starter and you don’t need to add extra ingredients like yeast, fruit, or sugar. This is as easy at it gets, my friend.

If you’re just getting into sourdough, I’ve got loads of awesome tutorials, podcast episodes, and videos on sourdough.

Here are more sourdough tips:

• Troubleshooting Sourdough (Answering all sourdough questions)
• Easy Sourdough Bread Recipe
• My favorite ways to use sourdough discard
• Tips for Reviving a Sourdough Starter
• Easy Sourdough Gingerbread Cake Recipe

What is a Sourdough Starter?

Sourdough is simply naturally leavened bread that is made with wild yeast captured from the air. This method has been around since the beginning of time.

Using a sourdough starter doesnot mean your bread has to end up being super sour. Much of the sourdough bread you find at the store isn’t true sourdough. It’s often made with regular yeast and has other flavors added to make it sour.

So even if you dislike the taste of grocery store sourdough bread, there’s still a good chance you’ll enjoy homemade sourdough bread.

A real sourdough starter does not require commercially-bought yeast to get started. A true sourdough starter is simply made by combining flour and water and letting it sit for several days to either “capture” wild yeast in the air or to get the wild yeast already in the flour to become activated.

(There’s a LOT of passionate debate as to whether the wild yeast is present in the air or in the flour. I suspect it’s probably both…)

After a few days, your newly-formed sourdough starter will start bubbling, which tells you that the wild yeast is starting to become active and multiply. In order to keep that wild yeast happy, you have to feed the sourdough start with fresh flour and water over the next few days.

After about a week, your sourdough starter will be super bubbly and ready to be used.

What is Wild Yeast?

Wild yeast is all around us. It’s in the air, on your hands, in your food, in your bags of flour…yeah, it’s everywhere. Since the very first humans who discovered you could make bread from water and ground grains, wild yeast has been used for leavening.

The commerical store-bought yeast we are accustomed to seeing in grocery stores only replaced wild yeast for making bread because it’s easier for companies to make and sell. It’s also easier for bakers to store and use commerical yeast.

So, if store-bought yeast is indeed a little easier,why make your own sourdough starter with wild yeast?

Not only do I love making my own sourdough starter because I think old-fashioned living and homesteading is awesome and worthwhile, but I think that bread made with wild yeast is all-around better…it makes a superior tasting bread with a better texture that is easier for us to digest.

Not to mention, yeast isn’t super easy to find at the grocery store right now…

Fortunately, capturing wild yeast is super easy to do. If you prepare to watch rather than read, here’s my video showing how to capture wild yeast and start your own sourdough starter.

The Health Benefits of Real Sourdough Bread

Real sourdough bread has impressive health benefits for your family. The biggest health benefit with real sourdough revolves around the fact that sourdough is a fermented food.

Like other fermented foods, sourdough bread is wonderfully nutritious. As your sourdough bread dough ferments, proteins are broken down into amino acids for you, so your digestive system’s job becomes much easier.

As a result, your body is able to snag more nutrients out of the bread, since it’s easier to digest. It makes your bread more digestible, and sometimes folks who have issues with regular bread can tolerate sourdough.

Fermentation also helps to preserve food, meaning sourdough bread often has a longer shelf life than homemade breads made with commercial yeast. That’s because the fermentation process creates all sorts of organic acids that resist fungus. Basically, it’s harder for mold to grow on sourdough.

The fermentation process also breaks down the phytates, or anti-nutrients, present in wheat. This allows your body to absorb more of the vitamins and minerals in the flour.

So the fermentation process creates all kinds of beneficial nutrients in your bread, then it also makes those nutrients extra easy for you to digest. It’s one of the reasons why I love eating fermented foods (by the way, if you love fermented foods, check out my tips on how to use a fermenting crock.)

How to Make Your Own Sourdough Starter

Ingredients:

• Whole Wheat Flour* (*see notes)
• All-Purpose Flour
• Non-Chlorinated Water

Instructions:

Step 1: Mix ½ cup whole wheat flour with 1/2 cup water. Stir vigorously, loosely cover, then let sit for 24 hours.

Step 2. Add ½ cup all-purpose flour and ¼ cup water to jar, and stir vigorously. (You want the starter to have the consistency of thick pancake batter. If it is too thick, add more water.) Loosely cover, and let sit for another 24 hours. You should hopefully begin to see bubbles in your starter at this point, but if not, don’t give up yet.

Step 3. Discard half of the starter, then feed again with ½ cup all-purpose flour and ¼ cup water. Stir, loosely cover, and let sit 24 hours.

Keep repeating Step 3 until the starter doubles within 4-6 hours of you feeding it. If you still aren’t seeing any bubbles after several days of this process, it’s probably best to dump out and start over.

Once the starter is bubbly, active, and doubling consistently after each daily feeding, it’s ready to use in your recipes! (This usually happens between days 7-10.)

Sourdough Starter Notes:

• Using whole wheat at the beginning gives your sourdough starter a jump start (it contains more microorganisms and nutrients, which will make your new starter especially happy).
• Keep your sourdough starter at least 4 feet away from other cultures (like kombucha or sauerkraut) to avoid cross-contamination.
• Don’t use chlorinated water to feed your starter. If you have chlorinated city water, you can work around this problem by allowing a jar of water to sit out overnight (uncovered) for 12-24 hours. This will allow the chlorine to evaporate.
• The key to successful sourdough bread is using the starter in the proper stage of activeness — this will prevent you from ending up with sourdough bread bricks. Most people run into issues because they try to use barely active starter to make full-rise breads.
• Wide Mouth Quart jars are a great option for storing your sourdough starter, although I occasionally store my starter in a half gallon jar when I have more starter on hand.

How to Care for a Sourdough Starter

Storage For Frequent Use:
If you plan to use your starter every day (or every other day), it’s probably best to keep it on the counter and feed it daily. To do this, discard half of the starter each day, then feed it a 1:1:1 ratio — 1 part starter to 1 part water to 1 part flour (in weight).

You can get super technical and weigh this out with a scale, but I prefer to keep it simple. I usually discard all but about ½ cup of the starter and then feed it with 4 ounces flour (a scant 1 cup) and 4 ounces water (½ cup).

Storage For Intermittent Use:
If you’ll only be using your sourdough once or twice a week (or less), you can keep it in the refrigerator. This will prevent you from having to feed it daily (and ultimately using a lot of flour!).

To transfer a starter to the fridge, first feed it as you normally would. Let it sit out for one hour, then pop it in the fridge (covered). It’s best to continue to feed it weekly in the fridge, if you aren’t using it much. However, I will confess, there have been times I’ve sorely neglected my starter for many weeks and even months and I was still able to revive it.

To Wake Up a Cold Sourdough Starter:
To prepare a dormant sourdough starter for baking, bring it out of the refrigerator at least 24 hours before you need to use it. Discard half of the starter, and feed it the 1:1:1 ratio explained above — 1 part starter to 1 part water to 1 part flour (in weight).

Repeat this every 12 hours or until the sourdough starter becomes active and bubbles within 4-6 hours of feeding (this likely will take 2-3 rounds). If you need a larger quantity of starter for baking, or you’re planning on doing a big baking day, you can bulk it up by skipping the discard step in each feeding.

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Sourdough Starter Troubleshooting: Your Questions Answered

Here’s some of the most common questions I get asked about sourdough. Feel free to add your own questions to the comments below.

How do I know when my sourdough starter is ready to use?

Here are the top signs that a sourdough starter is ready:

• It is doubling in size
• There are bubbles in it
• The texture is fluffy and foamy
• There is a pleasant tangy, sour aroma
• If you place a teaspoon of starter in a cup of cool water, an active starter will float on top, rather than drop to the bottom or instantly dissolve into the water

Why do I discard part of the sourdough starter?

By step three of the sourdough process, you start to discard half of the starter. This might cause alarm for some of you, and I understand, because I don’t like wasting things either. However, at this point, if you keep feeding it without discarding some of it, the starter is going to get enormous and start taking over your kitchen.

If you don’t discard some of it, you end up having to add more and more flour to make the ratio correct. Since we don’t want to waste flour, it’s actually lesswasteful to discard part of the early sourdough starter. At this point in the process, the starter isn’t super sour and it’s not very fermented so you aren’t get those fermented food benefits either.

Youcanmake some small sourdough pancakes if you want, or you could give some to a friend to get some more people passionate about making bread. Otherwise, you can feed it to your chickens or put it in your compost pile.

What do I do with my sourdough starter discard?

Once your sourdough starter is active and bubbly, you’re gonna end up with sourdough discard. Besides making bread, I’ve got a bunch of sourdough discard recipes in my Prairie Homestead Cookbook. I also talk a bunch in my podcast about my favorite ways to use sourdough discard.

Help! My sourdough starter isn’t bubbly and active yet!

Sometimes you might feel panicky if you’re on day 4 or 5 and you’re not seeing bubbles in your sourdough starter yet. My first tip would be to be patient. Wait at least 7-10 days before you decide if your sourdough starter isn’t active. Sometimes it just takes time.

You can also look at the following things to help your sourdough starter:

• Warmth. Check if your kitchen is drafty or cool. If it is, try moving your sourdough starter to a warmer location. You don’t want to put it in direct sunlight or on the stove where it can scorch, but try to move it closer to a heater or warm source in your house.
• Flour. If you’re not seeing bubbles after a week, try using a different variety or brand of flour.

If you’re still not sure if your starter is active enough to successfully be used in baking, place 1 teaspoon of the starter in a cup of water. If it floats, you’re good to go! If it sinks, it’s still not active enough and needs more time.

Help! I’m getting sourdough bricks instead of bread!

I’ve been there. Most likely you’re doing what I did. I always had this problem when I was impatient and didn’t let my starter get active and bubbly enough before I tried to make my bread. If that doesn’t solve your problem, there is another factor to consider: your dough may need a little more water or a little more time to rise.

Also, my sourdough tends to be a bit “heavier” than my other breads. By its nature, sourdough a hearty bread, but I like it that way. If I’m in the mood for a light, fluffy loaf, I’ll make an easy sandwich bread recipe with more yeast and a shorter rise time.

Can I use a different flour for a sourdough starter?

You can use whole wheat, all-purpose flour, rye, einkorn, and many others for a sourdough starter. If this is your first time making sourdough, I suggest using whole wheat flour and all-purpose flour in the way I wrote in my recipe. This ratio tends to behave very well for me compared to other techniques I have tried in the past.

I have not personally made a gluten-free sourdough starter, but I know it’s possible. This gluten-free recipe from King Arthur flour looks promising.

Should I use buy a sourdough starter or use part of my friend’s sourdough starter?

Generally, I just go with the simple method mentioned above and skip the commercial sourdough starter packets, but you may go ahead and purchase a starter online if you like.

If you have a friend with a starter, you can absolutely grab a little bit of culture from them as use that instead of starting from-scratch.

Help! I am so overwhelmed with the different methods mentioned online for starting sourdough!

I would suggest that you pick a method and you just go with it. Whether that’s my sourdough starting method or someone else’s, you will drive yourself crazy trying to take something from all of them. So just pick one and odds are you’ll be just fine. They all kind of work out the same.

In the end, we just all have different preferences and little things that we do. I personally use flour and water to start my starters. There are also dehydrated sourdough starters that you can buy online and those are an option if you want.There are other people who suggest sugar and grapes and potato flakes, and I’ve just never ever found those things to be necessary.

So I just keep mine super simple and I personally have not had issues with it. Will you have some bumps along the road in your sourdough experimentation? Probably. But just shake it off and keep going. The end result is worth it– and quite tasty.

More Heritage Kitchen Tips:

• Simple Bread Dough with Commercial Yeast
• The Ultimate Guide to Canning Safety
• A Guide to Quick Pickled Vegetables
• Tips for Cooking From Scratch With Limited Time
• How I Find Meal Inspiration When I’m Stuck in a Rut