Sourdough Starter Help
Make a Starter in 7 Days!
Download my free guide to grow a strong sourdough starter in 7 days—I’ve used it myself and it’s worked for hundreds of students too!
Download my free guide to grow a strong sourdough starter in 7 days—I’ve used it myself and it’s worked for hundreds of students too!
For an established starter, unbleached all-purpose flour works great and gives the most consistent results. Just avoid bleached flour or anything with additives. Learn more about the best flour for sourdough starters in this sourdough flour guide.
If you use rye flour (my top choice for starting a starter) or whole wheat flour, it will take about 7 days. Get the step-by-step guide here.
Your sourdough starter is like a pet and like a pet, it creates waste. Once it is no longer in its active stage, you need to remove most of the old starter and refresh (feed) to make it healthy again. Review the process in this post.
Use the fridge. If a starter sits at room temp, it should be refreshed daily. To avoid that extra work, after you refresh your starter, let it sit out at room temp for a few hours to become active then put it in the fridge. Make sure to take it out and refresh in a week. You can get a sample feeding schedule in my free quick start sourdough guide.
Common issues include low room temperature, old flour, too much water, or not feeding regularly. Try a warmer spot and more frequent feedings. Check out this post on reviving an old starter.
That’s called “hooch”, a layer of alcohol created by the microorganisms to preserve themselves. Just pour it off, take a portion of the old starter, place it in a new jar, and feed it. The rest of the old starter can be discarded.
