I finally have an active starter, now what? The quick guide to maintaining a sourdough starter

This article includes

• Is your sourdough starter actually ready
• How to maintain starter
• The low-maintenance, fridge-dwelling sourdough starter
• If you want to ignore your starter for longer than a week
• How to use active starter
• Do I really need to discard starter?
• Link to my favorite recipes, curated with notes

Is your sourdough starter actually ready?

Before using a sourdough starter, make sure it is ready.

It should smell pleasant. If it smells like baby vomit, socks, or a boys locker room, it might not be ready. I will be honest, I am that mom that cleans up all the messes, disgusting or nasty, without too much of a problem. At the beginning, my starter was overwhelmingly repulsive. One morning I tried to avoid gagging as I fed it, and by the afternoon it smelled sweet and yeasty, almost like beer. Science can be SO WEIRD! I never imagined that something so repulsive would become appetizing!

Starter should consistently double after each feed, looking almost like a liquid sponge with its bubble formation that will calm down given time or a stir of a spoon. Tam-a-dough-a, my sourdough starter, took 8 days to mature. It’s not uncommon for it to take up to two weeks or longer, especially if it’s cool where you live. It helps to keep it in a warmer area of the kitchen and away from any air conditioning.

Click here if you would like the sourdough starter recipe we used.

One important detail, if you notice mold or orange/pink streaks, that means your starter has actually gone bad. Other useful tips and nitty-gritty details can be found here.

How to maintain starter

If following the King Arthur sourdough starter recipe, each feed is a ½ cup of warm water and 1 cup of unpacked unbleached flour. Or if you are using weights instead of volume, which is more reliable, you should have equal parts starter, flour, and water. Then stir. 

The King Arthur recipe feeds twice daily and discards all but a half cup of stirred-down starter before every other feed. If that is too high-maintenance for your lifestyle, a quick google search will provide many methods of providing daily feeds rather than twice daily feeds. There is also a Good Eats episode on Sourdough if you are a fan.

I often substitute ½ my all-purpose unbleached flour for whole wheat flour for taste and nutrition.

It is possible to maintain various sizes of sourdough starter to fit how much it is used. This is where a scale is super-handy. The key is to keep equal parts starter, flour, and water by weight. Yes this is the same ratio we use at any other feed, just with adjustable quantities.This is a second reason I prefer measuring by weight. Some recipes require more starter than others. Rather than keeping only a half cup as specified, this recipe allows me to maintain whatever is left. It’s less work! This is also how we grow our starter for larger recipes, because we don’t always need the same amount of starter.

Speaking of less work, I am a huge fan of the refrigerator-dwelling sourdough starter, and think you might like it, too. Why? Because I only have to think about Tam-a-Dough-a for a couple days each week, or less if I wanted. I have a young family, and I can maintain a sourdough starter this way. I only bake once a week and find this fits my needs perfectly.

The low-maintenance, fridge-dwelling sourdough starter

You can keep your starter in the fridge for the majority of the week if you don’t need to bake daily. The pros of this are that it is much lower-maintenance and you only need to touch your starter three or four times a week. If you know you are going away for a bit longer than a week, add a little extra flour.

This is how I do it: I feed my starter as usual. After it starts to bubble, I put my starter in the fridge until a day or two before I know I would like to bake. When I take it out I do one of two things. 

• If I want discard, I give it a feed and put any discard into a container in the fridge for up to 10 days for use in a discard recipe.
• If I need to grow starter, I keep following twice daily feeds following the 1:1:1 weight ratio until I have enough starter for the recipe I’m using plus however much I need to keep in order to maintain a starter. I harvest active starter about 4-6 hours after a feed. It is important to ensure it is doubling appropriately after each feed before using (see using active starter below). 

Then I wait until the next feed time, feed as usual, and put it back in the fridge after some bubbling begins. I have put it in the fridge anywhere from 20 minutes all the way up to a couple hours later, and the starter has been fine.

I try not to let the starter go much longer than a week in the fridge because I don’t like too much “hooch” to develop on top. It’s a totally harmless gray/brown alcohol, however, and can be poured off or stirred back into the starter. It just indicates that the starter is hungry and needs a feed. 

If you want to ignore your starter for longer than a week

Apart from having someone babysit your starter, you have two options: dehydration and freezing. You can follow the fridge method and stick it in the freezer instead of the fridge. Thaw, and feed a couple of times to get it active again. To dehydrate a starter, feed it, wait for it to double, then spread it thinly in a sheet pan for it to dry in a warm place or dehydrator. Then break it up and store in an airtight container until ready to use. You can read more about using dehydrated starter here.

How to use active starter

If you need active starter, the golden time to take from your starter is 4-6 hours after a feed or before it has started to decrease in size after its doubling. This is when it will be most active and provide you with the best rise. Many people put elastic bands or write with a dry erase marker on their container to mark the starting level to help eyeball when doubling has occurred. Once I have harvested the starter, I make sure the starter gets one more feed and begins to bubble. Because I use the fridge method, it then it goes back into the fridge for the week. If I didn’t use the fridge method, I would keep up with twice daily feeds and discard as desired.

Click here for a list of recipes that I like.

Do I really need to discard starter?

Each day you have a few options:

1. discard some starter
2. use enough active starter that you will have zero discarded starter
3. continue growing your starter using the weight-based 1:1:1 ratio that I mentioned earlier in the maintenance section.
4. or you could use a combination of 2 and 3

I tend to go with option #4.

If consistently getting too much starter, try to maintain a smaller starter.

You can use your “discard,” or discarded starter, in recipes. Discard can be kept in the fridge for up to about 10 days, so feel free to keep adding to it until the 10 days is up if you want to minimize baking, or until you have what you need for a discard recipe. Discard does not have as much leavening power as active starter and might require additional leavening agents like baking powder or yeast packets.

Here is a link to active starter and discarded starter recipes that I have tried and recommend (or don’t! HA!) along with notes on how to improve the recipe or make them more allergy-friendly.