Active Starter - How to grow it

Do you have an active starter, but aren’t sure what to do next? Let us help! In order to make sourdough bread, you need enough active starter for a recipe.

To begin you’ll need: active starter, all-purpose flour, filtered water, kitchen scale, jar/mason jar, paper towel, rubber band.

We’ll use our starter amount as an example, 30g (I always put a little extra in the jar). Place your larger empty jar onto the kitchen scale and zero it out, make sure the unit is in grams. Scoop out 30g of the active starter into the jar, zero out the scale. Add 30g of all-purpose flour, zero out the scale. Add 30g of room temperature filtered water. Remove jar from scale & mix all ingredients together until fully combined. It should have a consistency of batter. Place rubber band around the jar at the top of the mixture, so you can measure how much the starter grows. Place paper towel over top jar & set on counter. Our starter is very active and should double within 4-6 hours.

Once starter has grown, repeat the steps over again at a 1:1:1 ratio (ex: a clean jar, 50g starter, 50g flour, 50g water). Mix & let rise 4-6 hours. At this point you will have enough starter to mix into your sourdough recipe. Sourdough is live & needs to be used shortly after it rises, BUT if you are unable to make bread at this time you can place the entire jar with a SEALED lid (not breathable) into the fridge. Pull it back out when you’re ready to use in your bread recipe within a day or two, allowing it to warm up on the counter for an hour.

Add the amount of starter into your bread recipe and save the rest in a small jar in the fridge. There are fun “discard” recipes you can also try with your extra starter. Don’t forget to save 20g or more for future bread making. You can always build up a starter, but you can’t get any back if you use it all up.