Golden Sourdough Waffles - Easy Sourdough Starter Recipe! (2024)

FAQs

What is the best flour to feed sourdough starter? ›

All-Purpose Flour: All-purpose flour, which is a blend of hard and soft wheat, is a popular choice for feeding sourdough starter. It provides a good balance of protein and starch, which promotes a healthy fermentation process. Bread Flour: Bread flour has a higher protein content compared to all-purpose flour.

Tips For Making Sourdough Starter

Use all-purpose flour to keep a healthy starter. Place the starter in a container with a consistent room temperature of 70°F to 75°F.

I keep 1 ounce of starter and feed it with 1 ounce of flour and 1 ounce of water because I rarely need a massive amount of starter on hand, but various other sourdough luminaries advise different amounts. If you don't have a scale, go for 1/4 cup starter to 1/2 cup of flour to 1/4 cup water.

It would be best if you discarded some portion of your starter each time you feed it unless you want to continue to let it grow. Eventually, you need to discard the used “food” (flour and water) that's been used to sustain your starter during the last fermentation period.

Premature discarding and overfeeding will weaken your starter and elongate the process. Don't discard and re-feed a weak starter before it shows increasing bubble activity or height from the previous feeding. If you don't see more bubbles or a faster rise each day, skip a feeding, and give it more time.

*If making sourdough is new for you, do not be discouraged if you starter takes longer to get active than mine – stick with it, it will happen! *Tap water is usually fine, if you are not sure, use boiled and cooled water, you can use it at room temperature or cool; do not use distilled water.

What Happens If You Feed a Sourdough Starter Too Much Flour? If you add more flour than water into your sourdough starter jar, it will be a very stiff starter. This is not always a bad thing, and sometimes extra flour is necessary to rectify a runny starter or make the starter peak at a later time.

What Flour Should I Be Feeding My Sourdough Starter With? You can feed your sourdough starter with any flour you like, as long as it provides the starches the wild yeast in your sourdough starter need to convert to Co2 to rise your dough. The flour you choose should always be unbleached flour.

Unbleached All-Purpose Flour: All-purpose flour is admittedly a broad category, but it's a popular option for sourdough starters due to its wide availability.

You can keep a “peaked” starter in the refrigerator for about 12 hours (sometimes more), and still use it directly in your mix. You do not need to let it come up to room temperature. If your starter is well past peak (a few hours) and visibly falling, you can give it a “refresh” feeding to reactivate it.

How long should sourdough starter sit before using? ›

Allow to sit of for 4-12 hours before using in a recipe, once it has about doubled in volume. If not using for baking, feed about 12-24 hours after last feeding or place in the fridge.

Generally a starter can stay at room temperature without feeding for a maximum of 3 days. After that you will need to give the starter few feedings before you can use it again. This is because it will become less strong and it will need time and food to become strong again.

If you didn't discard a portion of your starter each time you feed it, two things would happen: Your starter would grow to an enormous, unmanageable size. Your starter would likely become more and more inhospitable to the bacteria and yeast we want as the mixture would become ever more acidic.

Remember, you can't use the discard from your homemade sourdough starter for the first 7 days. You can use sourdough discard in all kinds of sourdough discard recipes, including these no wait sourdough recipes, overnight sourdough discard recipes and sourdough discard recipes that use up a lot of discard.

One only needs to discard when making a starter from scratch because it needs daily feeds for a week or two before it's strong enough to make bread. If one doesn't discard then before long you'll have a swimming pool of starter.

Whole wheat and rye flours provide more nutrients for your starter and ferment more actively, but working with rye flour makes starter maintenance easier than whole wheat. Rye provides increased fiber and nutrients similar to whole wheat flour, but because of its lower gluten amount it's much easier to stir.

Whole wheat flour is high in protein because it contains the entire wheat berry, including the bran, endosperm, and germ. Bran is naturally high in protein. Typically, whole wheat flour protein percentages range from 13% to 15% or higher. (For reference, King Arthur Baking Whole Wheat Flour is 14% protein.)

All you'll need to make your sourdough starter is strong white flour and water. But you can also choose dark rye flour if you prefer.

Einkorn flour is certainly no stranger in my kitchen. I grind it fresh and use it in nearly every loaf of bread I bake. As the whole-wheat component for all artisan sourdough, I like the deeper, nuttier flavor it adds; but 100% einkorn sourdough is a whole other matter.