Starting a Starter
Jul 20th, 2008 by SteveB
While bread leavened with baker’s yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) is an integral part of any baker’s repertoire, that repertoire would be incomplete without the complex flavors that can only come from naturally leavened bread. Known as sourdough bread here in the U.S., this type of bread relies on the wild yeast and bacteria naturally present on the grain to provide both leavening and a unique, mildly acidic flavor profile. However, before they can be used in the production of bread, these wild yeast and bacteria first need to be activated and cultured. This is the process of creating a sourdough starter.
Producing a sourdough starter can be a bit tricky if one is not familiar with the way a healthy starter looks and behaves. For this reason, I strongly recommend that a baker’s first experience with sourdough be with a well established starter. Ways in which to obtain such a starter include:
- Asking a friend or local bakery,
- Getting some dried starter, gratis, from Carl Griffth’s sourdough page or
- Purchasing one from King Arthur Flour.
For those who are a bit more adventurous and wish to create their own starter, I’ve detailed the method I use below. There are many different ways to create a starter; there is no one ‘correct’ way. As with many aspects of baking, the best counsel is to use what works best for you.
Day 1
- 50 g Organic medium whole rye flour
- 50 g Unbleached all-purpose flour
- 100 g Water
Mix together the rye flour, unbleached all-purpose flour and water until combined. Organic whole rye provides an excellent source of the yeast and bacteria we wish to culture. If desired, organic whole wheat flour can be used in place of the rye flour. Although tap water will probably be fine if it isn’t too heavily treated, I prefer using spring water. The mixture will resemble lumpy oatmeal:
Let the mixture sit for 24 hours at approximately 80°F. After the first 24 hours, the mixture may have risen considerably. Don’t congratulate yourself just yet! In all probability, you’ve managed to culture leuconostoc bacteria which, while not generally harmful, is not a genus of bacteria you are looking to propagate. To get an indication if leuconostoc is present, carefully smell the culture. A putrid smell is a hallmark of the leucostonoc genus. Fear not! Leuconostoc bacteria will eventually die off under acidic conditions and as the culture develops, it will become more and more acidic.
Day 2
- 100 g Culture
- 25 g Organic medium whole rye flour
- 25 g Unbleached all-purpose flour
- 50 g Water
Discard half of the culture from Day 1 and to the remaining 100 g of culture mix in the rye flour, all-purpose flour and water. This mixture is once again allowed to sit at approximately 80°F for another 24 hours. After this time, the culture has shown signs of rising, then falling:
Days 3-5
Continue with the feeding regimen shown for Day 2 every 24 hours. As the desired yeast and bacteria begin to populate the culture, the culture will drop in pH (become more acidic) and the leuconostoc bacteria will die off. In some cases, it may take longer than 5 days for this to happen. The culture will no longer rise and it may appear as if nothing is happening within the culture. Be patient. Just keep on the previous feeding regimen until you once again begin to see small bubbles forming within the culture.
Day 6
- 100 g Culture
- 50 g Unbleached all-purpose flour
- 50 g Water
At this point, enough yeast and bacteria have been activated so that rye flour is no longer needed. Mix the culture, all-purpose flour and water and again let sit at approximately 80°F. Continue this regimen but shorten the time between feedings to every 12 hours. After a few more of these 12 hour feedings, you should have a very active, bubbly and pleasantly yeasty-smelling sourdough starter.
Because a sourdough starter is a living thing, it needs to be continually fed on a regular basis or it will die. Some choose to refrigerate their starter in between feedings as a way of extending the time between feedings. I prefer to simply feed my starter on a twice daily basis. Since I prefer a firm starter (50% hydration), I feed my starter every 12 hours using the following formula:
- 25 g Starter
- 50 g Unbleached all-purpose flour
- 25 g Water
The starter is kept at around 72°F in between feedings. Using this protocol, I am able to keep a relatively small amount of starter on hand and only build up the quantity of starter needed when I wish to bake bread. This keeps the amount of discarded flour to a minimum.
I’ve just baked my first (successful) sourdough…plenty of attempts over the years have been basically disastrous. If you get the starter right, you can’t fail.
I used a recipe from the Moro cookbook by Sam and Sam Clark which involved fermenting a bunch of organic red grapes for the best part of a month. It worked extremely well, producing a vigorous and active starter. But the effort, the effort….feeding twice a day, general angst and worry, complaints from the family about ‘weird smelling slurry’…
My creation is now laying dormant at the back of the fridge, but will be re-awakened for a couple of loaves next weekend.
i am in the process of starting my own starters from scratch as well. i have 3 of them going…..in case one fails. i’m using the maggie glezer starter, peter reinhart and la brea bakery starter (which uses fermented grapes). i like the idea of reinharts to include pinapple juice to deal w/ the problem of the leuostactic bacteria. the la brea bakery w/ the grapes has been very responsive since the beginning. the glezer is doing well now too. i’m really looking forward to getting to the point of being able to bake bread w/ them. probably about one week away! i’m enjoying your blog and your pictures are wonderful and bread shapes so artistic!
Deborah, I’m glad you’re enjoying the blog. When it comes to starting a starter, I’m all for simplicity; organic flour, water and the most important ingredient of all, patience. Everything you need is already on the grain! If you can stand the smell for a short time, leuconostoc bacteria, should they be present, are not really a problem since they cannot survive the developing lower pH of the starter.
them apples, I’m assuming your family doesn’t have any pets. Maintaining a starter is far easier and much less worrisome than taking care of the family hamster, cat or dog!
Hi Steve,
I think I gained enough courage to try the sourdough starter. It sounds a bit intimidating but fun at the same time… I have a few questions I hope you can answer for me.
1. I don’t have organic flours. I only have KAF AP, and KAF medium rye. Will these work?
2. The current temperature here is 75degrees, will that affect my starter very much?
3. I am unclear on Day 6 and onward. Do you discard everything except 100g of the culture on day 6? From Day 7 onward you mention 25grams of starter, 50g of AP and 25g water . Does this mean you throw out all but 25grams of the starter before adding the AP and water? After waiting 12 hours you repeat, throwing all but 25 grams of starter away again before adding the flour and water?
4. If I chose to refrigerate after day 7 to lower the number of feedings, how long can I refrigerate before feeding again? I don’t want to kill it by letting it sit too long in the fridge. However, I don’t think I will have time in the next few months to make sourdough more than twice a month.
I can’t wait to try my hand at sourdough! I made your baguettes around 4 months ago and they were FABULOUS! The first time EVER that I made an edible baguette ~ all thanks to you and your great videos.
I was getting ready to try some of your other breads but my father passed away a few weeks later and I couldn’t get myself to get back into the kitchen to bake. Bread baking was a passion my father and I shared and it was just too hard knowing I wasn’t going to be able to e-mail him pictures of my latest creation. I think I am ready again….
Thanks for the hard work you put into your site, I visit it often to drool! Your videos ~ lifesaver~ and so informative. I hope you continue to post for beginners like me.
Kind Regards,
Jules
Hi Jules,
Before I get to your questions, I’d like to first offer my condolences on the loss of your father.
1 – I’ve specified organic flour because this indicates that no pesticides or other chemicals were used in the cultivation of the grain. These chemicals can adversely affect the microorganisms, present on the surface of the grain, that you are looking to culture. Not having organic all-purpose flour isn’t too big of an issue but, at a minimum, I would try to make sure that your rye flour is organic.
2 – A temperature of 75ºF should be fine.
3 – You are correct. Whenever a specified quantity of starter is used for a feeding, the remainder of the starter can be discarded.
4 – If you refrigerate your starter once it is fully active, my recommendation would be to feed it at least once a week, whether you use it to bake bread or not. Others have reported refrigerating their starters for much longer periods of time before feedings, but I wouldn’t recommend it.
Thanks for all your kind words and good luck!
Thank you Steve for the condolences. I am still not back to my old self (maybe will never be) but I am trying to get back to my normal routine as much as possible. Practicing this wonderful, edible art form, I hope can be theraputic. Maybe I will take out some of my agression towards my dads doctors while kneading my dough. A few extra slap arounds shouldn’t hurt the final bread too much….
I will start my starter tonight and let you know, if I am not put to shame, how it works out.
I am on ebay looking for a chafer dish insert (or rig an aluminum roaster) to create a steam oven like you did. Another ingenious idea!
Thanks again for your creativity and willingness to share your expertise
Hello SteveB
I enjoy yours blog .Beautyful and tasty bread.I has made a starter on yours the recipe and has baked bread Pain de levain- very tasty bread. I am happy with result.
Now I have two questions 1—my starter became much more dense (I keep it an 100%hydration) –Dos it is normally?
2- how many time should the starter has risen after feeding and through how many hours it ready to beke?
Or all to do under the old scheme – 12 hours?.
alla, it’s nice to hear that you’ve been able to bake a tasty pain au levain using the starter instructions and recipe posted here.
Answering your questions in order:
1) Your starter should become less dense (greater volume) as the 12 hour feeding cycle progresses due to the formation of bubbles in the starter. If your starter has become more dense at the end of your feeding cycle, it might mean that your starter has fermented too much, used up all its nutrients and has collapsed upon itself. You can check this by looking for a starter residue line up on the inside of your starter container. If this is the case, you may need to lower the temperature a bit to get a 12 hour feed cycle.
2) I like to go through at least two, 12-hour feeding cycles before using the starter to bake bread. Remember, the starter should always be fed and used to bake bread right at the point where it is at maximum volume, right before it collapses.
There are many other feeding cycles that people use but what I’ve described above is a good place to start.
[...] Art des Sauerteigs weiterzuführen, begonnen, ihn alle 12 Stunden zu füttern, wie es hier und hier erklärt wird. Dabei habe ich 25g Mehl, 25g Sauerteig und 25g Wasser [...]
Wow! The amazing pictures of bread on your site really make me want to start a starter! Your explanations are the best I have seen yet, with very helpful pictures. I hope you can answer some of my questions before I proceed:
1. Is there a particular reason you prefer a firmer starter with only 50% hydration? does it change the taste?
2. Is there a particular reason you shorten the feeding time to 12 hours after day 6? Some other sites recommend just feeding the starter daily, but since I haven’t tried their “recipe” I have no way of knowing if this changes anything.
3. I have organic rye, organic wholewheat and organic all-purpose. Does using rye increase the acidity (as opposed to wholewheat for instance)? If I am looking for a complex but subtle flavor and not a blatantly sour one, what should I choose (or does it not make a difference)?
4. I have read that it takes DECADES (!!!!!) for the starter to achieve the desired flavour and that the first few breads baked with the starter are virtually unedible. Is that true from your experience? How old is your starter?
5. Can I scale down your recipe to half? Or is that the smallest you can get to properly culture the little critters?
6. You put equal parts in MASS of flour and water, whereas all the other sites I have seen put equal parts in VOLUME. Does it make a big difference (I do not own a kitchen scale)? 100g of water are a 100ml, easy enough, but do you know how many cups 50g of rye and flour are? (or where I could find out)
7. I will be moving to another apartment in September this year. Should I wait til then to start a starter or can I move it along with me (albeit veeeryyy carefully)? Do you know if strange things will happen to it?
8. Finally, I only plan on baking about once a week. Although I do plan on placing my starter in the fridge (thinking it would be more economical than keeping it out), do you think it is worth getting into all the trouble of making a starter if I only bake once a week?
I am sorry for such a long series of questions. Thanks for your instructions!
Aisha, it seems as if you have certainly been bitten by the sourdough bug!
I’ll try to answer your questions in turn:
1 – When first establishing a sourdough culture, I recommend working at a 100% hydration for the simple reason that the chemical and biological processes in your starter will occur at a faster rate than at 50% hydration. Once your culture is established, it can be maintained at any hydration you desire. The hydration of your starter can have an effect on the specific microbial populations present within the starter, but other parameters (e.g., the amount of starter mixed into your bread dough, the length of time elapsed during the first fermentation, the temperature at which the fermentation takes place, etc.) can be manipulated to result in a bread with the desired flavor.
2 – The feeding regimen is changed to every 12 hours at Day 6 because by this time, enough yeast and bacteria should be populating the culture such that all the food (i.e. flour) would be consumed by then. After the starter has become well established, the time between feedings will be determined by the ratio of starter to flour and water you decide to use.
3 – The flavor of your bread is not necessarily determined by the flavor of your starter (see answer to question 1). Besides, by the time your starter is ready to be used to make bread, all of the initial whole grain flour you used to start your culture will be diluted out by repeated feedings with white flour and you will have, for all intents and purposes, a white sourdough starter.
4 – Totally false.
5 – You should be able to scale it down.
6 – When beginning a starter, it doesn’t make a big difference whether you measure your ingredients in units of weight or volume. When baking bread, it makes a huge difference, so I would suggest investing in an inexpensive kitchen scale.
7 – Go for it!
8 – I only bake once a week myself. Only you can decide if it is worth the effort.
Excellent! Thank you so much for such a quick and precise response. I’m off to buy a kitchen scale tomorrow, and will be all set to prepare my starter. I discovered your site barely 4 days ago and am really impressed by your bread-making skills, your clear explanations and videos. I especially like the “experimental protocol” writing style (intentional?). It appeals to the biologist/medic in me. You make preparing a starter sound as easy as culturing E. coli in Luria broth!
Now if I could only get the “broth” right on my first attempt… Thanks again!
Aisha, I’m glad I can be of some help. I’m afraid my writing style is a result, in part, of my years of training as an organic chemist.
Hi Steve – I have a starter troubleshooting question. I have a healthy 100% hydration wild yeast starter I began with the Reinhart method. I followed Maggie Glezers instructions for converting it to a firm (50%) starter. My firm starter attempts seem weak, however. When I refresh, I dissolve the fermented starter in the water and knead together with the flour to form a stiff dough. It seems almost too stiff – it takes lots of pressure from both thumbs to knead and persistence to incorporate all the flour. I put 85 grams of starter in a one cup measuring cup in a 70 degree place, and it will take 24 hours or more to fill the cup, and 36 hours or more to rise then collapse. I understand a good benchmark for an 85 gram starter is to achieve one cup of volume in 8 to 12 hours. Even after two weeks of refreshments, the time to rise hasn’t approached that benchmark.
I wait to refresh until the 85 gram starter fills a one cup measuring cup. I am weighing ingredients and using a thermometer. I have had good success with 100% hydration wild yeast starter, and pre ferments with packaged yeast. It is only the firm starter that seems to evade me. Do you have any suggestions? Is the volume benchmark I am using (1 cup for 85 grams of starter) an appropriate one?
I appreciate your time and really enjoy your site – it is obviously a labor of love and very nicely done.
Bruce G
Hi Bruce,
I just did some quick calculations and it appears as if Glezer’s quantities for converting a 100% hydration (liquid) starter into a 50% hydration (firm) starter are in error. One would need to add 40 g of 100% hydration starter to 15 g of water and 50 g of flour, producing 105 g of the 50% hydration starter. Try these quantites and see if it works.
Hey great web site!
I started the starter about a week and a half ago and followed your instructions step by step accurately. There is one question I have. Why does it smell so strong like alcohol? It is supposed go away soon or what. Please help me!
P.S. It rises very well about triple in size.
anom, I’m glad you’re enjoying the site. A slight aroma of alcohol in your starter is normal, as alcohol is one of the metabolic by-products of yeast. If the alcohol aroma is overpowering, it may be an indication that you need to feed your starter more often.
[...] that is an adventure in and of itself, but is well documented on many sites, such as here, here, or here. The specifics may differ, but the idea is always the same: you need to create a water/flour [...]
Για σου στηβ η μιζα μου ειναι πολυ καλη και μπορω να κανω καλα ψωμια. Αυτο που δεν εχω καταλαβη ειναι ποση μιζα πρεπει να εχω για 10 κιλα αλευρι για τελικη ζυμη . ευχαριστω
anastasios, I am sorry but unfortunately I do not speak Greek. If you have a question and are able to ask it in English, I will try to answer you.
[...] Bread Cetera: Starting a Starter [...]
Hello again Steve,
When I start the starter, I am assuming that the container I use to grow the culture should be covered with the container’s lid, or should I use loose plastic?
Also, if my place is not warm enough, can I put the container inside the oven or should it remain on the counter (and maybe wrap a hot towel around the container). Sorry for my stupid questions (but as my former boss said, “there is no such thing as a stupid question.”
Thank you, Steve. Great site! So simple, no clutter. The layout of your site keeps me focused. I like the absence of visual traffic.
sharon, as long as your container is loosely covered, it really doesn’t matter what you use to cover it.
To provide a warm environment for a starter, some people use their oven (turned off, of course) with the internal light kept on. The incandescent bulb should provide just enough heat to keep the starter warm.
I need a 50% hydration starter. Do I first make the 100% hydration starter? Help needed
karin, some people create their starter at 50% hydration from the outset, but I prefer to create mine at 100% hydration then, once it is active, convert it to 50% hydration.
thanks Steve!