How To Feed Sourdough Starter

Here’s how to feed your sourdough starter especially if you got your organic, unbleached all-purpose flour starter from Johnson Home NC.

Sourdough isn’t as fussy or high maintenance as some people think it is but it is hungry so feed your sourdough starter often!

Many sourdough experts only use a kitchen scale when baking and rightly so. It measures way better than by volume. However, I do use cups to measure out feedings for my “Sarah Dough” sourdough starter and all is well.

empty quart jar, metal measuring cup of flour, glass measuring cup of water and a wooden spoon on a wood table

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Sourdough Feeding Recipe

These are the instructions for my regular sourdough starter created using Arrowhead Mills All-Purpose Organic Flour.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup sourdough starter

1/2 filtered water (if on municipal water, consider filtered or bottled water as chlorine can affect the sourdough negatively)

1 skant cup of flour (skant means barely a full cup, just eye ball it)

Instructions:

Mix all three of your ingredients together well. You want your starter to look and feel like wet, sticky dough. It should be kind of hard to stir it after incorporating all ingredients together.

If you feel like your starter isn’t doughy enough, maybe too much like pancake batter, add a half of a tablespoon more of flour until it becomes hard to stir sticky dough.

Cover jar with a lid. If it is fruit fly season, use a coffee filter on a quart mason jar with a lid. Those boogers will still get up under the lid and into your starter.

Notes:

You can also do your starter in a weck jar or a Le Parfait jar that already have an attached lid.

How often do I need to feed my starter?

I bake about 2 times a week so I feed my starter whenever I take out any to bake with.

Using this recipe yields about 1 and 1/2 cups of starter. One cup to use, half a cup to feed for growing more sourdough for later.

woman in black shirt scooping flour from large glass jar to feed sourdough starter

How long can I go without feeding my starter?

My Sarah Dough sourdough starter can be okay on my countertop for 2 days before I feed it again. It won’t be active but it won’t be moldy either.

These are the results from MY sourdough, I cannot speak for all sourdough starters; therefore, it is always best to have dehydrated reserves of your starter on hand in case of an accident of leaving it too long.

When you’re going to be away for longer than a couple of days, put your starter in the refrigerator to slow the fermentation process down.

Then simply feed it again with this sourdough feeding recipe upon return and it’ll be ready to use as an active starter again in a few hours. Generally my sourdough is active and bubbly and ready to use in about 6-8 hours.

What if I used too much and do not have 1/2 cup of starter to feed?

Any amount of starter will work. The formula I use is:

Whatever amount of starter + that same amount of filtered water + double that amount in flour but skant (skant means barely full).

Helpful Tip

I do like to keep my Sarah Dough starter on the counter by the stove so I can see it every day. I can easily take note of if it’s active or not and be reminded if I need to feed it.

A visual reminder is nice to have since sourdough is a living thing.

clear quart jar of very active sourdough starter recently fed

If you’re an elder millennial, you probably had a Tamagotchi. A keyring game where you had to keep an animal or a baby alive. Change it’s diaper when needed, feed it on a schedule or else it would die.

Sourdough is a millennial’s Tamagotchi.

Bonus for us and our kids: these things are back on the market again. Go get your kid a Tamagotchi and teach them responsibility of living things before getting a kitten or puppy.

I’m kidding but honestly, these were the iPads of my childhood era.

Name your sourdough starter. Treat it like the living thing it is and you’ll be less likely to accidentally kill it off.

How do I not waste any of the sourdough starter or discard?

Here’s what I typically do with an active jar of starter so there’s no waste of sourdough. Pinterest is full of sourdough discard recipes like these:

How do I clean up after feeding sourdough?

It’s flour and we know what happens to flour when it meets water. You also know what happens to wet dough when it dries– it becomes like cement! So, take care of your plumbing!

If you discard your discard, NEVER PUT IT DOWN THE DRAIN!

Always throw sourdough away with the trash or feed to your chickens or livestock.

Chicken Tip: they will love the sourdough discard and it will be evident on their head and faces as they sling it while eating it! The discard will remain on their feathers for days afterwards.

Rinse your jars and utensils with leftover sourdough on them with COLD WATER, not hot. Hot water will essentially bake your sourdough to your plumbing. Let your kitchen tools soak in cold water for a spell. This will dilute the flour making it easier to go through your plumbing and into your septic.

Where can I get dehydrated sourdough starter?

I do not currently have an e-commerce website to shop from but if you fill out this google form, it’ll act as your starter request and I will be in touch to complete your order.

Healthier bread options

When you consider how grocery store breads are filled with terrible preservatives to make it shelf-stable, you’ll come to appreciate the simple, wholesome, REAL ingredients in sourdough bread you make yourself.

You’ll appreciate the time spent in the kitchen, working with your hands, to provide real food for your family and yourself.

You’ll appreciate the flavor, the texture.

You’ll appreciate a slice of warm bread right out of the oven.

You’ll appreciate the way butter melts into YOUR bread’s waiting air pockets.

You’ll appreciate the ability to make your own bread and likely never look again to what the grocery shelves have to offer.

hand holding a half eaten slice of buttered sourdough bread

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