Reconstituting your dry starter
Ingredients
50 grams of dry starter (¼ cup) (Entire little bag)
62g of room temperature water (¼ cup)
Day 1 Directions
Take your dry starter and place it in a food processor or spice grinder. You want your starter as fine as possible. In a glass jar, mix starter and water. Remember to use only filter or bottled water. Mark your jar as best you can to see if your starter is reactivating and growing. You might not notice much at first, but you should see it start to bubble a little.
Day 2 Directions
Feed your starter 32g (or ¼ cup) of all-purpose flour and 62g (or ¼ cup) of water, and mix well. Don’t forget to mark your jar, so you see that it is active and growing. In a few hours, you should start to see activity in your starter.
Day 3 Directions
If it’s active on day 3, then you can start your normal feeding routine as mentioned in the sourdough starter care section. If the starter hasn’t changed much, stay with feeding it the same ¼ cup of flour and water until it is active.
Sourdough Starter Care
The sourdough starter is the most important part of making any good sourdough bread. It’s the wild yeast and good bacteria (lactobacilli) that is picked up naturally from the local environment. It’s what gives the bread not only it’s distinct sour taste but it’s also what makes the bread rise and give you the bubbles inside.
It’s a living thing that you have to care for and feed so that it’s ready to use every time you want some delicious sourdough. You’ll always need at least 1 cup of starter to keep it going. So never use all your starter in a recipe or give it all away.
Water – It’s important that you use filtered water or bottled water to feed your starter. We don’t recommend using tap water because it can contain chlorine which would kill the good stuff and render your starter useless.
Flour – Use all-purpose flour to feed your starter. We use King Arthur flour as we’ve found it the best flour around.
Scale – This is optional but we highly recommend getting a scale so you can accurately measure amounts in all bread recipes. However, we have included the other measurements as well.
Glass Crock – You’ll need something to store your starter in and it needs to be big enough to let the starter grow when you feed it.
Top Covering – If you are storing your starter on the counter, You’ll need a breathable cloth to put on top and hold secure with a rubber band. It needs access to the air but you don’t want to get any bugs or other things in it. If you are storing it in the fridge, then you can put a top on it but make sure it’s not a tight lid. You want to keep out the different smells but it needs to burp once in a while.
Mixing Utensil – Only mix your starter with a wooden or silicone spoon. Never use anything metal as might hurt your starter.
Here is a video of reconstituting starter!
Keeping the Starter Alive
Each time you feed your starter, you’ll be adding equal parts of flour and water by weight. If you plan to use your starter to make bread with, you’ll need more then if you are just feeding it to keep it alive. You can either store your starter on the counter or in the refrigerator depending on how often you plan on using it.
On the counter – If you plan on using your starter often it’s best to keep it on the counter but it will need to be fed every day to keep it alive. A starter stored on the counter only takes a couple of hours after being fed to be ready to cook with.
In the fridge – If you are not going to use it all the time, you can also store it in the refrigerator. That will slow down the yeast and you’ll have to feed it about once a week. If you forget to feed it, don’t freak out, your starter can handle it. However when you want to use it to bake with you’ll have to pull it out the night before, feed it the small amount, and let it come back to room temperature.
When you are feeding your starter just to keep it alive, you’ll only add a small amount, like 50g of water (¼ cup) and 50g of flour (½ cup). So it has enough to eat to stay alive but won’t grow so much that you have too much starter that you end up throwing a bunch away.
NOTE: If your starter gets a thin dark liquid or separates at the top don’t worry! It’s a result of fermentation and is called hooch. Your starter is just protecting itself and letting you know that it’s hungry. Don’t discard it, just stir it in well and feed it!
Feed to Bake Bread
When you are ready to use some starter to bake with, you’ll make the starter all bubbly and active before we can bake with it. You’ll also want to make enough so you have some to bake with and at least 1 cup to keep your starter going. If you are making a bigger recipe, you can always add more as long as you keep the flour and water the same ratio of 1:1 by weight.
