Everything You Need to Know About Making Sourdough Starter From Scratch—Including the Best Flour to Use (2024)

Learn how to make a sourdough starter from scratch with our recipe, which is adapted from Artisan Bryan. The starter is alive—it's an active colony of wild yeast formed by continuously combining flour and water until it is bubbly enough to create the leavening needed to bake a loaf of bread. (You don't add any yeast yourself; instead, you allow the wild yeast present in the flour to develop over time.)

Long before commercial yeast was developed, this was the method bakers used to raise their dough. Store-bought yeast has made baking more consistent and convenient, but there's still an appetite for naturally leavened bread, which is more digestible. While you can get a homemade starter from a friend, or buy starters online or at the grocery store, you can also easily make your own. Here's everything you need to know about making sourdough starter from scratch, the first step in making artisanal-style sourdough loaves.

What Is a Sourdough Starter?

A sourdough starter is a symbiotic colony of bacteria and wild yeast. "The organisms cohabitate well—subsisting on what we feed them (flour and water) and producing gas and other by-products, which flavor and raise our bread and other baked goods," says Martin Philip, baking ambassador for the King Arthur Baking Company and author of Breaking Bread: A Baker's Journey Home in 75 Recipes.

Making a sourdough starter takes about one week. The process begins by stirring together equal amounts of flour and water in a jar and letting the resulting paste sit in a warm room; you should then stir and feed at regular intervals.

The Best Flours to Use for a Sourdough Starter

Philip says the best starting material is a wholegrain flour. "I recommend whole rye, as it contains significant vitamins and minerals and ferments well," he says. A blend of all-purpose white flour with whole-grain wheat or rye will lend a more complex flavor to your dough; those whole flours also have more microbial matter for the yeasts to feed upon.

The Best Container for Your Sourdough Starter

A variety of vessels will work for initiating a starter, as long as they come with a lid.

Material: You can use anything from glass to nonreactive metal bowls, or even a repurposed plastic container. (If you want to see your starter bubble and ferment, select a clear vessel.)

Size: More important than the type of container is its size—you should choose one that is big enough for your starter to double in mass.

Temperature Matters

It's important to feed your starter with water that is about 80 degrees Fahrenheit—too hot and it could kill the yeast. Also, an ambient temperature of about 70 to 75 degrees is ideal for encouraging activity in your culture. If your kitchen is cool, place the starter in the oven with only the oven light on, in a warm corner cupboard, or on a shelf near an electronic device that gives off a small amount of heat.

Stirring Is Vital

Stirring is essential, especially early in the process of making your sourdough starter. Here's why:

Aeration: Peter Reinhart, author of six bread-baking cookbooks, including The Bread Baker's Apprentice, suggests stirring your starter two to three times daily for about one minute each time to aerate it. You should only do this during the first week of establishing your starter—it's not necessary once you've developed a stable culture. "Yeast loves oxygen and multiplies faster when you stimulate the mixture with air," he says.

Hydration: "In addition, the stirring evens out the hydration of the dough and exposes any surface organisms that may have drifted onto the starter to the acidic environment within, and thus deactivates them while the yeast and the good lactobacillus organisms continue to grow," says Reinhart.

1. Mix together both flours.:

   Measure 45 grams flour mixture (about 1/4 cup), setting the rest aside. Place in a bowl or container (we use a quart takeout container, so it's easy to watch grow). Add a scant 1/4 cup lukewarm water (45 grams) and mix until it creates a thick batter.

2. Cover and keep warm:

   Keep at room temperature, covered with a kitchen towel.

3. Feed the starter each day:

   Repeat feedings of 45 grams each water and flour mixture once a day at the same time, mixing with a rubber spatula, for 4 days.

   In the beginning, you won't notice much movement; by the end, the starter should appear lively, with a bubbly appearance.

   See Also

   Beginner Sourdough Starter Recipe - The Clever Carrot

4. Start feeding twice a day:

   On the 5th day, switch to entirely white flour and water, and start feeding twice—once in the morning and once at night.

   At first you may smell some strong, not-very-pleasant smells, but eventually the starter will smell nutty and a little sour but pleasant.

5. When starter ferments, use or refrigerate:

   Once it ferments—predictably rises, doubling in volume and creating a porous, webby-looking mixture after feedings—it is ready to use; this took us about 7 days. From this point, refrigerate your starter completely covered with the container lid.

6. Regular feeding:

   Start a regular feeding schedule—at least once or twice a week.

   For each feed:

   To maintain a large starter: remove all but 100 grams (discard the rest, or use for another purpose, such as our Sourdough Banana Bread recipes), and add 100 grams each all-purpose flour and water.

   To maintain a smaller starter: remove 40 grams (discarding or using the rest), and feed with 40 grams each all-purpose flour and water. In the latter case, you may need to build your starter up to have amounts you'll need for recipes with leftover to maintain it; just feed without discarding for a couple of days in advance of when you'll need it.
   

When to Feed Your Starter

Once you've created a stable culture, you'll need to feed your sourdough starter to keep it alive. How often you should feed it depends on when or if you plan to use it.

Baking time: "When I am planning to bake bread, I usually feed my starter two to three times per day for a couple of days before I use it," says Kierin Baldwin, chef-instructor of pastry and baking arts at the Institute of Culinary Education.

Maintaining (Not Making Bread): If he's not going to be making bread, Baldwin usually keeps his starter in the fridge and only feeds it once every few weeks. (Note that the starter should rise to its full height each time before you feed it again.)

Using Your Sourdough Starter

To ensure your starter is ready to bake with, always feed it a day before you plan to mix your levain. If you are very confident it's lively enough—it has reliably doubled in volume after feeding and is stretchy and webby—you can replace the levain in bread recipes with fed starter equal in weight to the parts of the levain combined.

5 Recipes That Use Sourdough Starter:

• Sourdough Boules
• Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Sourdough Croissants
• Tartine Bakery's Country Bread
  
• Rye Sourdough Bread