Stop Wasting Time & Flour Maintaining A Sourdough Starter. This Strategy is Way Better

interesting!! thanks for the starter info!

Measorebator...

No need to waste it. Homemade sourdough crackers are delicious. 1/4 cup avocado oil; 1 cup starter, 1 cup flour, 1/4 tsp salt; herbs of choice. Mix, chill, roll out and bake at 375 until crisp.

Why is it you brits take some many words and talk so much. Saying so may words just to say one thing. 👎 Not very smart to me and im a moron

Thanks. I am glad I saw this video before my 1st sourdough loaf. I've been baking, eating home made bread since David Cameron said he made his own. Oct' 2013 ??

excellent presentation keep up the good work, thank you

I too had many jars of starter and some eventually get pushed to the back, Over and over. I found a jar that was in the back of the fridge for at least 2 years! There was about an inch of "Hooch" on top and it smelled pretty strongly of alcohol. I just poured off the hooch and then feed and added water until it seemed like the right consistency and after 12 hours, it was bubbling but not super active. I fed again and 12 hours later it had more than doubled! I have been using it for the past month now and even sent some to a family member to start using!
I have even had a jar that got it's top knocked loose and the starter had COMPLETELY dried out! ROCK Hard! I added water until it softened, then stirred it up really well, Fed it and added enough liquid to make it the right consistency and it TOO Revived Just fine within 24 hours!
I think everyone has made a big deal out of feeding and worrying about it "dying"! I haven't had any that "Died". Granted, I've only been baking sourdough for about 8 years!

What type of water do you use? Tap water? Filtered?

I sit a teaspoon of starter in a jar in the fridge for up to three weeks with no problems kick starting it.

I keep my starter at 70% hydration, so it dries out before it goes bad; the scrapings method is great, but you can scrape it down still further as the yeastpets are microscopic and there are plenty left, even if the jar appears empty.

The best bread is the one you actually bake, rather than the imaginary one you wish you'd be baking.

As I started experimenting with sourdough baking, I quickly realized that constantly feeding and managing a starter was not going to be sustainable. I don't care enough about baking to schedule my time around the whole baking process, and wasting lots of unused starter also does not sit well with me.

What ended up working for me, was baking a couple loaves on a 2-3 week cycle. The starter stays in the refrigerator for that period, without any additional feeding. I maintain a 240 g whole grain spelt starter and use 2x60 g directly from the fridge (no "feeding to get it active") for baking two whole grain (mostly spelt, a little rye) spelt loaves in bread pans. It is not "oh my god look at those incredible air bubbles" bread, it is reasonably dense (as you'll anyways expect for 100% whole grain), but it's tasty, has "enough" air and healthy. Baking works like a charm; make the dough late evening, give it a quick knead to firm it up, let it stretch out to baking pan size, cover pans. Next day, some time around noon / early afternoon, size has doubled and it is ready for baking. No multiple rounds of kneading, no stretch & fold & relax & wait, and what not. Healthy and nice bread, and easy to fit into a bi-weekly schedule.

No disrespect for doing it the more elaborate way for a more refined end product. If I had that level of interest in baking, I would probably be doing the same. But ... I mill the flour myself, that has to count for something 🙂

As far as I have understood, the temperature at which you maintain the starter will directly affect the mix of microorganisms, and when it is kept at refrigerator temperature there will be more vinegar production and less lactic acid bacteria compared to a starter maintained at room temperature, which results in an end product which is also a bit more tangy and acidic. Which suits me just fine for the bread I bake.

The "scrapes" method sounds interesting; if I ever start baking more frequently I'll want to check that out.

I use this method and if I'm not going to be baking for more than a week or so I sprinkle flour on top and barely mix it in so the starter dries out. That way it lasts a long time in the fridge. It will last for weeks doing this, maybe longer. I think moisture is what ages your starter and can eventually kill it. Then when I'm ready to bake I just add the amount of flour and water needed for my recipe.

I'm a sourdough starter! Twisted sourdough starter! Boomba chickada Boom. HEY Hey hey. I'm a daily baker. Artisan ryebread maker. Boomba chickada Boom. (with apologies to Prodigy)

I have a very small jam jar that I use to just store a very small scrap of starter in it.

In fact I have seen in the very remote area in some countries women use the same unwashed bowl for mixing bread dough every day without commercial yeast.

can you use scrapings from yeastwater (fruit fermented water starter) to maintain the poolish (as it is called in this case?It made lovely bread.......

you just dump the starter in the fresh dough, let it rise, and pinch off a hunk to keep as starter for the next batch (add a little water to keep it moist)... I thought everyone did that. If you bake a loaf every day, you might have 2 or 3 starters, just to allow the culture to achieve a good population for when you use it.

Historically, it was done for beer brewing as well, where you'd skim the Krausen of an actively fermenting batch and dallop some in a fresh vat of wort.

it can maintain for a month without feeding...just feed before baking and bake.

It always amazes me when I stumble across videos like this or others complaining about the hassle of keeping a sour dough starter. You can bet my grandmother didn't do half the things the experts claim needs to be done to keep a sour dough starter going. She kept it in the fridge when not needed, like if we going to be away for a few weeks and no one was cooking. But sour dough was something that was used in everyday cooking. You didn't worry about feeding it or discard because it was being used for everything from thickeners to drop biscuits. I have no idea why the so-called experts felt it was necessary to take a simple process that was accessible to everyone who might not have had access to yeast at certain times in history and make it so complicated.

Chef Jack or whatever his name was and you are going back to the basics in that way. Because sour dough doesn't need to be fed on a daily basis. If it did, it wouldn't have been so popular among those who had limited access to flour and yeast during times of war. Sour dough was the only way some people had access to a leavening agent during the Great Depression. They couldn't afford to waist the amount of flour today's experts say is needed to keep a sour dough starter going. Here's a tip, let some of your starter dry out and store it. I actually have some of my started dried out and stored in a mason jar for a backup. I have never had an issue with getting it started again if needed. But I've also never had a starter die on me and I'm very lazy when it comes to maintaining my starter. I don't feed it on a regular basis, I don't weigh anything, and I certainly don't worry about what the experts say must be done to keep a sour dough starter going. I just do all the things my grandmother taught me about keeping a starter. I don't cook with it on a daily basis like my grandmother did, but all the things she taught me about keeping a starter still apply even if I'm not using it for weeks at a time. Sour dough starter doesn't have to be complicated or wasteful.

This is great! Just what I needed.

Hey, they make sourdough bread in rural Turkey, what they do it cut a piece of the fermented dough and bury it directly into the flour basket. It forms a crust, dries, but for the next time, they just use that as a starter.

No way we can consume even one loaf of bread daily. I occasionally put a small amount of lively starter in my freezer as a backup.

Besides the drying-method it might work to keep whatever sour-dough starter within a "vacuumed" plastic back in the fridge (use a straw in case you won’t have a vacuum sealer)?!

I do similar to you, but when I do not bake, I feed 1 tbl.spoon of flour and 1 tbl.spoon of water once a week and keep it in the fridge. The evening before baking, I feed up to the amount needed for my bread (50/50 flour and water) + little extra to save for later

Its called yeast. Makes a fantastic loaf of bread without all this rigomorole. Will never go back to all that

I put 50 grams in a small clean container and have kept it in the fridge for 2 months before using it. I fed it at 6AM with 50 g water and 50 g flour. Fed it again at noon, 6PM. Next AM I fed it at 6AM, noon and started my bread at 3PM did the usuals and put it the formed loaves in the fridge and went to bed. Next AM I baked at 9AM.

To think that people make these starters and feed them half the amount of flour every couple of days after throwing half of it away is insane! Yeast doesn't eat vast quantities of food. Wine starters are often made in a 100ml bottle which keep for years by adding only a few grams of sugar to keep it active maybe once a week. The yeast breeds like anything when it gets warm and goes almost dormant in the fridge. Wine makers have been doing this for years but it seems you and baker Jack are the first ones to go public to tell us you can do it with bread.

😬I leave mine in my fridge for several months sometimes and so far it has always become active after feeding.

I Would Just Use Yogurt sour Yougurt Greek Yogurt Yougurt Yogurt Yugurt.

Been there, done that! This is genius. Works perfectly for me.

First time on your channel. Thanks so much very helpful. I have five going in various locations driving me crazy

I am so pleased that someone is putting this method out there.
I haven't used a feed and discard for over ten years. It works.
Here are some extra tweaks:
Freeze some starter using one of those silicon 1" cube ice trays. This is an easy backup just replace them every year. This is also good if you are going away.
My starter will last 2 weeks quite easily in the fridge.
If the starter is left too long in the fridge it becomes a little acidic and gives the sourdough that 'sour' flavour I don't like. It will still work just fine. If you really don't like that do a small discard and keep going.
I don't use scrapings. I keep anything between 50g and a 100g in the fridge. I feed it prior to using it to give me the amount of starter I want and leave 50g - 100g to go back into the fridge. I tend to keep 100g as it means that my preferment is ready to use in some four hours after feeding in a warm room.
It's a rolling pre-ferment not a starter.
If I want a rye starter I merely feed it on rye for the bake.
If I am doing a two step sour rye starter I use 1/2 of my fridge starter for stage one of my rye starter and the other half is fed with wheat fur and goes back into the fridge.

Thanks for putting this video out there. Far too much fussing goes on around wild leavens they are so easy and impossible to kill.
Best to you! 👍

Oh, whilst I'm here - Building a wild yest starter for the first time. Use wholewheat flour not white flour. Wholewheat flour has more nutrients and it get's the starter going faster. I start with 50g water and 50g flour, by the end of the day it is bubbling away and I feed it 50g water and 50g flour. The next day it is bubbling away again and I give it 100g flour and 100g water. It is ready to use in 48 hours for the first bake.
Tip: Use a little wholegrain rye flour in those feeds. It is chock full of nutrients yeast really likes to chomp on and your starter will get going very quickly. If you can keep your starter at about 28C whilst getting it going... It will get going faster.
For the technical folks: It takes about four weeks for the Lactobacillus to move in to the yeast colony and strike a balance with it.
Cheers :)

The channel The Elliot Homestead has a tacky starter that is in the fridge that you don't have to feed. You pull out a tablespoon then feed that for your loaf.

I'm just learning this starter and sourdough bread thing thank you very much

So I missed the part about putting the jar in the fridge during the day. It sits on my counter all day, with just the scrapings & a washcloth & rubber band as a "lid". Been doing this for 2 weeks... everything has been fine, hasn't hurt it at all. In case you still were wondering about would it dry out, it doesn't.

Question: In order to use this "scraping method" do you still need to go through the initial procedure as described in your "How to Make a Simple Wheat Sourdough Starter | The Perfect Basic or Beginners recipe" ? Thanks as always.

I am a newbie and I would not do this crazy discard ever.
Keep mine in the fridge and feed before I bake.
My schedule is too irregular.
Glad more people "come to their senses "and don't throw such treasures away 😊

I don't bake very often, so in between I take just a little starter (a couple of tablespoons) and feed it with about 100 grams of 50/50 flour and water. I've gone almost a month and a half between bakes and have had the starter stay viable. I usually get it out two days before, take a little and feed it. Then repeat the process the night before I make bread. That gets rid of the majority of what was in the fridge (which can get to looking a little nasty) and makes sure that the starter is really active. I'm sure there are better ways, but I've kept my starter going since 2020.

To store the starter, the scrapings method is simple and PERFECT. I learnt about it 4-5 years ago from "Bake with Jack" and it became my standard procedure.

To develop a sourdough starter without wasting a bunch of flour there is a method called "reto cucharilla" by Spanish author Ybán Yarza. Just for fun I tried it. By the 3rd day there was some activity and a few days later it was a beautiful bubbly/spongy mini-starter. It requires 1 teaspoon of flour to begin with and an extra 1 teaspoon every day.

Thank you for this video. I definitely will try the sourdough starter again! I tried it during the pandemic and I wasteed so much flour trying to get it started and maintaining it and I wasn’t making bread more than a couple times a month. I bake bread all the time and I haven’t been making any sourdough bread since then. But now, with your methods, I will definitely get back into it!

I find that I just need to feed then split in half and freeze the half. Because it's been fed just before freezing, it has food for the thaw and it stores for years that way. I do that because I've lost my starter before, after going in the hospital with no one to feed it.

My starter is much wetter and I keep about 16 oz in the refrigerator when I'm ready to bake bread or pizza dough or whatever I bring it out and stir it let it sit and hour add flour water give it a stir and in a couple of hours it can be used. Have stored it unfed in my refrigerator this last time for 4 months, after I use it I add a bit of flour and water stir let sit 30 minutes and back into the refrigerator.

Here's what I don't understand... if I start from scratch, and after 24 hours, 2 feedings, I have a 100% rise of the starter, can I then bake, or do I HAVE TO keep feeding for several more days? IF so, then why? What makes a 7 day old starter better than one that's already shown to be very much alive with such a rise? Thanks!

why can't I just use a tablespoon of active yogurt?

I use this method and I’ve never had an issue. A shout out to Jack

i just feed my starter everyday by taking 5 g starter and 15 g water and 15 g flour, when i bake then
i take 5 g starter and whatever quantity i need for the bake for the next day and do it the night before

i keep a small amount of 5 g starter and 25 g water 25 g flour in the fridge as a backup and i feed that only once a month but it's just a back up in case something happens to my starter and i dont want to start all over again, for me this works well and costs little flour

If this works for me, I can clear out much needed space in my fridge for other stuff!

Best recipe works so well.

It's not a bad habit to turn excess starter, into pizza doughs. They freeze well if you end up with too much, a quick and good pizza is rarely a difficult choice, and they even make decent gifts for close friends.

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I’ve been doing this all along… is this not the way we’re supposed to do it?