How to Make a Sourdough Starter + Tips for Success

Melissa K Norris: Hey pioneers. Welcome to episode number 288. Today's episode, we are going to be talking all things sourdough, specifically sourdough starter. Because most of the time when people have failures or issues or you're not quite happy with your sourdough bread, it all comes back to that sourdough starter and your starter isn't as robust as it should be. So this is the episode for you if you don't have a sourdough starter and you're wanting to start one, so that you can get one going the correct way from the very beginning. And if you have a sourdough starter but like I said, maybe it's not performing as well as you would like, or what you think it should be doing, then you are going to glean a ton from this episode. So in this episode, I'm going to be sharing with you the basics on how to create a sourdough starter.

Melissa K Norris: And like I said, even if you have a sourdough starter, you can still use these tips to get it into tip top shape. But I also am doing a very special, live class that you have time to sign up for. So you go to melissaknorris.com/starter for my nine tips for a better sourdough starter that you probably aren't doing, and that will pick up where this episode will leave off. Because I can only do so much in one episode. So I highly encourage you to go and get signed up for that class. I will be doing live Q and A at the end, we're going to have some fun giveaways, some a great downloads with recipes and schedules that you're going to want to get your hands on, and all of it's for free, by the way. I don't know if I mentioned that. So I want to make sure that you know about it and that you go and get your seat. So melissaknorris.com/starter to go and get your seat reserved for that very special class. Let me officially welcome you to the podcast though.

Melissa K Norris: Sourdough is something that I find a lot of people get intimidated by, or they're not really sure that they want to jump into it. So I'm going to share with you ... Excuse me, a little bit of a frog in my throat there. Sorry about that. So I'm going to share with you my sourdough starter story, and that is how I came up with the tips and the way that I do sourdough now, that I'm going to share with you. So I have always loved the flavor of sourdough. I have always liked whole wheat, and I've always liked that tangy flavor of sourdough. So more of those hardy types of breads. But growing up, my mom actually does not like sourdough and she does not like whole wheat. So all we ever had was white bread. After I got married, my husband also always has liked sourdough.

Melissa K Norris: And so I decided I was going to start baking our bread and I wanted to do a sourdough starter. So, and this is where many of you are probably going to relate, so I started my sourdough starter based on advice that said to use a packet of regular store-bought yeast, flour, and water, which is a very bad way to start a starter, and mine completely failed. It developed all kinds of mold, black and pink mold. Did not work at all. Now, the reason that I start from that point is because a sourdough starter should only have two ingredients for a real true sourdough starter, and that is flour and water. So a sourdough starter recipe, two ingredients, flour and water. Now, when it comes to the types of flour that you can use, you can use pretty much any type of flour that you want.

Melissa K Norris: I have done sourdough starters with all purpose flour. I've done it with bread flour. I have done them with fresh ground hard white wheat. I have done them with iron corn, ancient grain, and I've also done gluten-free sourdough starters as well. Because I have been teaching people online, how to make sourdough starter now for a number of years, in my book Hand Made, I have had to do a sourdough starter and I had a lot of people asking how to do starters with lots of different types of flours. So I started all of these different starters, kept them going as I was filming my full sourdough bread baking course, and developed recipes using each of those different types of starters. So when I say you can use almost any type of flour to make a starter, you absolutely can, but there are some best practices for picking your flour to make your sourdough starter.

Melissa K Norris: And I like to use organic, unbleached, all purpose flour if I am using store-bought flour. So you can use store-bought whole wheat flour. You can do any of those types of flours that you want, but ideally organic and unbleached is going to give you the best bang for your buck. Now, when it comes to gluten free flours, in my experience, the ones that work the best has been a rice flour, buckwheat works great, and also quinoa works really well. What I would stay away from when making a gluten-free starter as far as flours go would be things like coconut and almond flour. One, because these are nut flowers. They're not grains that have a lot of starches and carbs in them. And one of the important things that you need to understand about your sourdough starter is it is a living organism. So it is a combination of yeast and lactobacillus bacteria, which is good bacteria.

Melissa K Norris: I know often times we think bacteria and we think, oh no. But there's a lot of good bacteria out there and those organisms need food to eat. And so they consume the starches. So I would not recommend doing your sourdough starter with something like those nut flours. Like I said, something that has a starches in them, with the rice, the buckwheat, and the quinoa have in there, and they have sustained gluten-free sourdough starters very well. Now, the other ingredient is our water. I get a lot of questions asked about that. Now, if you are on city water that has a lot of chlorine in it, or is treated with a lot of chemicals, then you either have the option of letting that water set out for about a day or overnight to let those chemicals off gas or evaporate out. Or you can bring that water to a boil and let it cool back down to room temperature and you can use that.

Melissa K Norris: We are on our own private well, and I have had no problem using our well water. There's no need to go and buy distilled water or some type of special water for your sourdough starter. Unless like I said, it is very heavily treated with chemicals or you don't have a really good filter system to filter out some of those chemicals if you're on a city type of water. So that being said, it is just your flour and your water. Now, where does the yeast come from? Because that is essentially what we're doing is we are creating an environment with the flour and the water that is very friendly to the yeast and the good bacteria so that they have a breeding ground and that they can breed and grow. Which sounds kind of weird. We're talking about food. But you have the yeast and the lactobacillus bacteria. It's already on the surface of most grains.

Melissa K Norris: It can be in the surfaces of your home, your skin, et cetera. And so what we're doing is, like I said, we're actually creating an environment that it's going to be very happy in and it's going to proliferate and it's going to grow. We're not actually making yeast per se. It's already on the grains. Now, a lot of people prefer to do, like I said, the unbleached and organic and/or the whole wheat. You'll oftentimes hear people say they will start with rye flour for their sourdough starters because those tend to be grains, but the whole wheat flour, as well as rye, that there seems to be a lot of natural yeast on there, in a higher content than say, just regular all-purpose flour from the store. And so a lot of people feel that they get started easier by using those flours. However, like I said, I have made numerous starters and walked over a thousand people in my bread course, thousands of people that went through my sourdough starter series videos, and have been able to create their starters without purchasing any type of special flour.

Melissa K Norris: But just so you know why you will see that and why some people choose to use those flours more so than other ones. That's kind of the reasoning and the thought process behind there. But you can be very successful with any of those flowers that I've already outlined for you. Now, when you're first getting ready to start your starter on day one, I like to use a Mason jar or a glass bowl. I just find that a ... I like to use a wide mouth pint size Mason jar. It's works really well, and I just use the same Mason jar all the time. I very rarely ever clean out my Mason jar, sourdough starter vessel.

Melissa K Norris: Now, the amount of flour and water that you're going to use to start your starter, you will see, again, varying amounts all over. And if you have my book Hand Made, then you'll see that in that one, I started out saying that I use six tablespoons of flour with four tablespoons of water. I've done sourdough starter videos, if you went through any of my sourdough starter videos online, and you'll see that I used four tablespoons of flour. There is a difference in the amount of flour and my friends, that's because you can use as much or as little flour, really, as you want. Now, I would not go beneath the four tablespoons of flour, but really, you just need to have enough flour and water to be able to feed the yeast and the bacteria and to keep it going and happy and healthy. And I prefer to use less flour because I don't want to just be feeding it a whole bunch of flour. I don't keep a large amount of sourdough starter on hand at any given time because there's really no need to do so.

Melissa K Norris: So I have seen where people have huge crocks of sourdough starter. And I got to tell you, I am just too frugal. I am not going to invest that much flour feeding just a sourdough starter. And you can quickly get as much amount of starter as you need, if you need a large amount of starter for a recipe, very easily without maintaining this huge amount of sourdough starter. So if you were doing a sourdough starter in the past, you've seen it and it's like, man, it's using a ton of flour, then I think you're really going to like the method that I use. So day one, you're going to have a glass vessel and your flour and your water.

Melissa K Norris: So I use a quarter cup, which is four tablespoons of flour, to two tablespoons of water. Now, if you have a scale ... Now, I know in days gone by when they were making sourdough starter out on the prairie and all the different ... You know, sourdough starter has been around for a very, very long time as a way of leavening our bread before we had commercial yeast, which wasn't the active, dry yeast that we have in packets that you and I are used to seeing now on the store shelves, or on the store shelves prior to the pandemic. There's been times where it's been out and unable to get, but that yeast was really, became big during the 1940s when they needed yeast to be able to bake bread and to do things like that. Prior to that, you had yeast cakes, which I have never used, but I've seen in older cookbooks. And then before that we had sourdough.

Melissa K Norris: So you're going to just take your quarter cup of flour, and you're going to take your two tablespoons of water. Now, like I said, that is considered 100% hydration, which means if you have a scale, which a lot of people will use scales now to do sourdough because it makes it really easy to get the exact amount that you need if you're doing 100% hydration. 100% hydration simply means that it's 50% water and 50% flour by weight, not volume. And that 50% plus 50% equals 100% hydration. So that's all that means if you've heard that terminology before.

Melissa K Norris: Now, I've been doing sourdough so long now that I can tell. I don't even measure. I just take the flour out, put it in, add the water, and I can tell by the thickness if it's at 100% hydration, because I've been doing it for over a decade. But when you're first starting out, you don't have that experience. So if you have a scale, it's 30 grams of flour and 30 grams of water. If you don't have a food scale, quarter cup flour, two tablespoons water. So put that in your jar, and you're going to stir that and combine it until the flour is incorporated with all the water so we don't have any little dry bits of flour. Then I use just the white plastic screw down lids, and I just screw it a couple of threads because I don't want to get any ... You don't want it to be airtight so don't use a regular canning lid.

Melissa K Norris: You don't want it to be airtight and I'm fine using the plastic, reusable lids, but I don't really want to use plastic wrap. And so I just love those white, screw down lids. You can't can with them, but they're for the fridge or the freezer. And I just keep a whole bunch of those because I use my Mason jars for pretty much everything, leftovers and including my sourdough starter. Now, if you have though, glass jars are called like a Fido jar, and those are the glass jars that have like the wire and it's a glass lid and they have the rubber gasket and they're like the little wire Bell lid that you can then close them. I have used those for my sourdough starter in the past as well, and just tooken off the rubber gasket, but still closed it.

Melissa K Norris: And without the rubber gaskets, it is not airtight either, but you want to make sure, however you're closing up your vessel, that it's not airtight. It needs to be able to breathe. It needs the oxygen for the yeast and the culture. So it's an aerobic culture, not an anaerobic. So we want to make sure that there's oxygen present. Now, the warmer the room, the happier, or I should say the faster, a sourdough starter will consume its food and be more active. And this is true of really, any ferment. And that's why in the summertime, if you're used to doing ferments or even yeast with regular active dry yeast or instant dry yeast, whatever that yeast is, you know that the warmer the room, the faster the bread rises. Well, it's kind of the same thing with our ferments. And so ideally, between 70 and 78 degrees Fahrenheit is considered a really great temperature.

Melissa K Norris: But my home is usually pretty much even in the summer months. So we'll get a little bit hotter in the thing of summer, but I live in the North and the Pacific Northwest. Usually in the morning when I get up, my house is about 60 to 62 degrees Fahrenheit. And then we build a fire, and by the evening, afternoon, it's usually between 70 to 74 degrees Fahrenheit. So my home fluctuates between that temperature range and my sourdough starter does just fine. But in the beginning, when you're really trying to create that optimal environment for the yeast and the lactobacillus bacteria, then if you have a oven that you can turn just the light on in.

Melissa K Norris: Make sure you put a note so nobody preheats the oven with your starter in there. That can create a proofing box and it's in sort of really nice, warm environment. Or if you happen to have a microwave over top of your stove, which is how our house is, I can turn just the light on that lights ... It's the light over the stove. But because my microwave is in that same unit, it also makes the microwave really warm too. Obviously without turning it on. And so I can put my starter in there as well.

Melissa K Norris: So if you can find a warm spot like that, it's ideal, but if you don't have a warm spot, as long as your home is above 60 degrees Fahrenheit, you should be okay, but you can try and find a warm spot. Usually the fridge. Heat rises, right? So on top of the fridge, maybe next to a heat vent or a stove, whatever your heat source is. Obviously not on it, but next to it can also be some great spots. Now, with that sourdough starter, so we've mixed in that quarter cup of flour and the liquid.

Melissa K Norris: Then I like to start mine in the morning, but you can do it at night, but 12 hours later, you're going to add in another quarter cup of the flour and another couple of tablespoons of water, and you're going to stir it again. So that's day one. So I like to do, when I'm getting my sourdough starter established or trying to get it robust, maybe it's really not rising and doubling as much as I would like, or I feel like my bread is a little bit dense, it's not rising my bread, then to get that yeast and the bacteria in it's tip top, most robust shape, I have found that twice a day feedings work so much better. This also helps it from becoming too sour.

Melissa K Norris: So to walk you through the first five to seven days, and that's usually how long it takes to get a sourdough starter really going. But we got to talk about that because oftentimes people give up on sourdough starters. I get a lot of emails asking questions about my sourdough starter is only five days old or it's seven days old, and it's not doing this or that. Most people are giving up much too soon on their sourdough starter. So day one, which is the day you start your starter, all the way through day five, you're going to feed it twice a day. And then every other feeding, which if you're feeding it twice a day equals out to once a day. So if you start it in the morning, you feed it at night. Then on the second day, which is the next morning, you're going to remove half of the flour and water that's in your sourdough starter jar.

Melissa K Norris: Now, use that flour and water in another recipe, or put it in another jar and pop it in the fridge. It's called discarding. The reason we're discarding down is, you have to have more food that you're feeding into it than you do volume of starter. Otherwise, your yeast and bacteria are not going to get enough food to keep going. And that's oftentimes when people will see the development of hooch, if you're getting a lot of liquid on top of your sourdough starter, or it's turning gray, or it's just not bubbling and rising, it's oftentimes because they have a very wrong ratio of too much starter to too little amount of food. So you're just going to discard down. Like I said, you can stave that discard, or if you're making anything that has flour in it, it's such a small amount, right? You're discarding that down to just a remainder half of it, which is about a quarter cup. Go ahead and use that in another recipe. It's totally fine.

Melissa K Norris: It's not really considered sourdough yet because you're at the beginning stages. And so it's totally fine just to use in any type of recipe. Now, about day two or three, you will start to see some bubbles forming. So you may only see a bubble or two on the very top. Maybe you'll see a few bubbles on the bottom if you're looking through your glass jar. Those are all signs of activity that the yeast and the lactobacilli, the good bacteria, are there and they're beginning to proliferate. Those are all signs. So this is a really good thing. Now, in the infant stages of a starter, which is really those days by through seven, sometimes you'll see, like on day two or three, a huge amount of bubbles and the sourdough starter will actually start rising and falling.

Melissa K Norris: And these are all really good signs. But what happens is usually a few days later, this will all stop. With an immature starter, this is very normal, but a lot of people think that it means that their sourdough starter has died. And that is totally not the case. It's just to be expected with a very immature starter. So you're going to keep going through these steps of feeding it the same amount of flour and water twice a day, discarding to half once a day for the first five days. Now, at the five day mark, you should see bubbles and this is now considered a sourdough starter. It's too weak in most cases though, to bake bread, but it is perfect to use in things like pancakes and waffles, anything that doesn't require it to rise, like rolls or actual bread, like sandwich bread or an artisan loaves, et cetera. Cinnamon rolls.

Melissa K Norris: Anything that doesn't require rising, you can use this in. So sourdough muffins, all the different things, and you're going to keep feeding it to get it robust enough to bake bread. I have found most starters aren't strong enough to bake bread and to get a really good rise until about four to six weeks. So you're going to keep feeding it. If at seven days, it is really strong, it's very predictable in the amount of bubbles that you're seeing in the activity, some people like to go down to a once a day feeding and that's completely fine. You can keep it at a once a day feeding. Totally not a problem. Once a sourdough starter is established, and I don't consider a sourdough starter to be mature until that four to six week mark, when it is actually doubling predictably in size when you feed it.

Melissa K Norris: So that means you will feed it and, within about three to four hours, it has completely doubled in size. When it's doing that on a very predictable basis, so kind of day in and day out, then I consider it a mature starter and I will start using it to bake bread. And once it's reached that point, then you can put it in the fridge and not feed it every day and only bring it out when you are wanting to use it. And so this is how I maintain just a half. Usually about a half a cup of starter is all I ever have on hand at one time. So I'm not feeding it a whole lot. And then I just bring it out of the fridge when I'm ready to do some baking, or I want to make a recipe and I'm not having huge amounts of flour.

Melissa K Norris: And it's not really even a daily maintenance unless I'm choosing to cook with it every day, and then I just need to feed it every day because I'm using it. So the sourdough starter is really easy. And like I said, you can choose to do a once a day feeding, but I have found if I want to keep it really robust and I want to make sure that it has a less sour taste ... So I love the sour flavor of a sourdough bread, but my kids do not. So if I'm baking loaves for them like sandwich loaves or things like that, then if I do the twice a day feeding, I have found that it helps to keep the acidity level and the sourness down. So it's more like a yeasted bread without that really tang, tart taste to it. Now, if you're like, well, I really like it to taste sour, then keeping it at a cooler temperature and feeding it less often will produce more of that sour flavor.

Melissa K Norris: So you can just do once a day or even every other day and keep it at a cooler spot in the home. And that will produce a more sour flavor. Now, I have a lot more tips to share with you. If you want to go and actually check out the sourdough starter posts, because all the podcast episodes have a blog post. So if you want to look at that so that you can see the amounts and the daily feeding schedule all written out for you. I know sometimes when we're listening to something like this, it can be a little bit harder. You can get that at melissaknorris.com/288. Just the number 288, because this is episode number 288. And again, you can also sign up for, depending on the time that you're listening to this, the live sourdough class that I'm going to be teaching. We'll go into a lot more depth and we'll have a live Q and A session at the end, and you can get some of those written recipes for my sourdough pancakes and sourdough waffles, and really fun things like that.

Melissa K Norris: So highly encourage you to sign up for that. But sourdough is a great thing for you to get into, one, because you don't have to buy yeast from the store. Secondly, a fully cultured or fermented sourdough product, because we have that yeast and the lactobacillus bacteria that is consuming the starch, truly fermented, which usually means that it sets in cultures for at least eight hours, sourdough bread or sourdough baked goods, they have a lower glycemic index, meaning that they don't spike our blood sugar and cause such a large release of insulin when we eat them, because they are lower in starches because the yeast and the bacteria has been consuming them. They're also easier for us to digest. They're better on the digestive system. And a lot of times, people who may have issues with wheat products or regular bread have found that if they eat a fully cultured sourdough in a true sourdough starter, which we're talking about here, that they can consume those and it doesn't bother them.

Melissa K Norris: But as I shared, you can also do it gluten-free and I have to say of all the gluten-free baking that I have done the gluten-free sourdough bread was what piece did the absolute closest and mimicked, taste-wise and texture, bread made with wheat, but was a gluten-free variation that I personally have ever had. So I was very, very happy with that.

Melissa K Norris: So I hope that you guys enjoyed this episode and I hope that I get to see you in the live class. We're going to have a lot of fun. So until then, blessings and Mason jars.