Sourdough starter
- Barney Desmazery
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Makes 2 loaves (12-15 slices each)
More effort
Total time: 120 hrs
5 days feeding the starter, chilling and cooling
A star rating of 4 out of 5.58 ratingsRate
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Learn how to make a bubbling sourdough starter using white bread flour and water. After feeding the starter for five days, you can use it to make a sourdough loaf
Dairy-free
Egg-free
Nut-free
Vegan
Vegetarian
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Barney's tips for making the perfect sourdough starter:
- The original starter will take four or five days or possibly longer to make when following my recipe steps, however it only requires a few minutes of your time each day. Once it’s active, you’ll be able to use it again and again to make bread, as long as you keep feeding it.
- I’ve used strong white bread flour for ease, but many recipes will recommend starting with wholemeal, rye or a mixture of white and wholemeal – whichever you choose, the method is still the same.
- If you’re not baking, I'd recommend feeding or refreshing your starter weekly, but it isn’t essential. If the starter looks split with grey water on the top, don’t worry - you just need to stir it.
- It’s actually very hard to kill a starter. Most of the time, it is just lying dormant, and probably requires some refreshing to bring it back to
- life. Signs that your starter is genuinely dead and should be thrown away include a really bad smell, like sick or curdled milk, or signs of mould.
Ingredients
Units:
MetricUS
-
250g strong white bread flour
preferably organic or stoneground
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Method
-
step 1
Day 1:
To begin your starter, mix 50g flour with 50g tepid water in a jar or, better still, a plastic container. Make sure all the flour is incorporated and leave, semi-uncovered, at room temperature for 24 hrs. -
step 2
Day 2:
Mix 50g flour with 50g tepid water and stir into yesterday’s mixture. Make sure all the flour is incorporated and leave, semi-uncovered, at room temperature for another 24 hrs. -
step 3
Day 3:
Mix 50g flour with 50g tepid water and stir into yesterday’s mixture. Make sure all the flour is incorporated and leave, semi-uncovered, at room temperature for another 24 hrs. -
step 4
Day 4:
You should start to see some activity in the mixture now; there should be some bubbles forming and bubbling on top. Mix 50g flour with 50g tepid water and stir into yesterday’s mixture. Make sure all the flour is incorporated and leave, semi-uncovered, at room temperature for another 24 hrs. -
step 5
Day 5:
The mixture should be very active now and ready for making your levain (starter). If it’s not bubbling, continue to feed it on a daily basis until it does. When it’s ready, it should smell like yogurt. -
step 6
You now have a starter, which is the base to the bread. You’ll need to look after it, but naming is optional! Keep it in the fridge (it will stay dormant) and 24 hrs before you want to use it, pour half of it off and feed it with 100g flour and 100g water. Leave it at room temperature and it should become active again. The longer the starter has been dormant, the more times it will need to be refreshed – the process of pouring off half the starter and replacing it with new flour and water – to reactivate. If your starter is ready to use, a teaspoonful of the mixture should float in warm water.
The starter can now be used to make white sourdough bread.
Barney Desmazery
As Good Food's longest-serving team member, Barney has written and tested thousands of recipes, worked with many of Britain's top chefs and created videos, live events and masterclasses. After gaining a chef's dipolma and working in restaurants across London, France and Australia, he joined Good Food, where he specialises in sourdough baking, foraging, seasonal ingredients and open-fire cooking. Barney has also published his own cookbook One Dish Four Ways. See Barney’s recipes.
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A star rating of 4 out of 5.58 ratings
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