How to Make a Sourdough Starter
Making a sourdough starter is really easy! All you have to do is mix flour and water and let the beneficial yeasts naturally found in the air culture your starter by falling through a cheesecloth.
How to Make a Sourdough Starter
What you will need:
flour
filtered water
cheesecloth
How to do it:
Step 1: Mix 1 cup spelt flour with 1 cup of water in a bowl, cover with cheesecloth and leave on the counter at room temp.
Step 2: Every day after that, ‘feed’ the starter with 1 more cup of flour and water (always covering with a cheesecloth)
Step 3: At approximately day 5 your start will bubble up (but it is not ready yet)
Step 4: When your starter looks ‘flat’ again, it is ready.
*Where people often get confused and throw out a perfectly good starter is when they don’t see it bubble and assume that it didn’t work! Don’t assume that just because you didn’t take a peak when the bubbles were active, that doesn’t mean that you don’t have a successful starter!
After about 5-7 days (depending on how warm your kitchen is- the warmer, the faster), your starter should be ready. If you didn’t see the bubbly hours, follow your nose. When you start to smell that delicious yeasty smell, then your sourdough mama is ready!
Step 5: Once your sourdough starter is ready, you can now cover it with a regular tea towel.
Step 6: Preserve your starter by feeding it every day (1 cup water, 1 cup flour), still keeping it on your countertop.
*or if you don’t plan to use it that often, refrigerate it and ‘feed’ it once a week in the fridge.
Note: If the kids start to complain that your starter is too sour, every time you feed it, pour off the water that settles at the top (consider that pouring off the sour) and ‘feed’ it 1 cup of flour and 11/2 – 2 cups water (keeping it the consistancy of a thick blended soup).
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