Starting My Sourdough Starter Journey
2025 has been declared my “year of messy action”. I’ll probably need another post to dive into how awesome and freeing that phrase “messy action” has been. But for today we’ll just dive into my latest, quite literally messy adventure.
my guide
The only thing I know about sourdough is that I really like to eat sourdough bread. Top it with some avocado, smoked salmon, greens, and maybe a cucumber or radish and you’ve made my favorite quick meal. So my journey really started at square one.
There are so many different sourdough starter recipes out there. I could have gotten stuck trying to find the “best one” or “most fool-proof one” forever. So instead of doing bunches of research, I opted to use the guide provided by a blogger that I really enjoy - Homestead and Chill. Luckily, her guide has pictures and even a video to sort of hold your hand through the process.
Here’s the guide: How To Make Your Own Sourdough Starter From Scratch
THE JOURNEY
Day 1
I had all ingredients collected and ready to go. Upon reading her post a little more thoroughly, I realized my 1L container was exactly half the size of hers. I considered delaying the journey and purchasing a 2L jar, but opted to continue to embrace the messy action and instead just halved her recipe and crossed my fingers:
250g organic all-purpose flour (her recipe suggested bread flour, but all-purpose is what I had bought)
1/2 organic apple, grated
180mL room temp, filtered water
So far so good! Everything looked about right and I excitedly set my jar aside and hoped for the best
Day 2
It rose! Delighted, I told my husband it was alive and could not wait for Day 4. But the recipe said to sit tight, so wait I did.
Day 3
It went down. Now I was really antsy for Day 4, but I continued to practice patience and waited.
Day 4
Now a layer of liquid sat on top of my baby starter. According to the blog post I was thinking that meant “hooch” had developed and my starter was very hungry! I was excited to tackle the next step: The first discard and feed (again, halving her recipe).
Day 5
Nothing happened…
Day 6
Time for another feeding! Another layer of liquid had formed. After two days of watching nothing happen, I had started browsing Reddit. According to people there (I honestly have no clue who’s correct here), hooch doesn’t form so early in the process and a liquid layer formed while creating a starter just means your starter is too wet and that layer is just water. So I gave it a little more flour and hoped for the best.
Day 7
Perhaps if I had followed the recipe precisely, my starter would have been completed on this day. Instead...nothing happened. There were still bubbles though, and no mold so I opted to troubleshoot and went ahead and bought bread flour because all-purpose clearly wasn’t cutting it.
Note: If I could do it all over again I’d probably just start with Rye Flour per the King Arthur Flour recipe.
Day 8
Time to feed again. My baby starter wasn’t totally lifeless — it had bubbles at least. But it still wasn’t growing even with the weather warming up. I fed it with bread flour (125g) this time and slightly less water than recommended (less than 85mL). I also put some batteries in a thermometer and stuck it next to my baby starter (now named Cin-dough-rella, by the way). I needed assurance she was really staying around 75 degrees Fahrenheit.
Day 9
She grew! Still nothing crazy, but she grew! I opted to feed again with some bread flour and wait and see…Before the end of the day, I saw her rise and I was feeling pretty optimistic.
Day 10
She doubled in less than 24 hours! Cin-dough-rella was finally ready :)
Making sourdough starter was definitely a practice in resisting perfectionism and embracing a little mess, curiosity, with even a hint of whimsy. I can’t wait to see what Cin-dough-rella and I make together.