Does the Amount of Sourdough Starter Matter? And What Happens When You Change It? (2024)

FAQs

Does the Amount of Sourdough Starter Matter? And What Happens When You Change It? ›

Reducing a starter down quite low helps conserve flour and reduce waste, but using 100% all-purpose flour also helps reduce activity and keep that lengthy interval.

Reducing a starter down quite low helps conserve flour and reduce waste, but using 100% all-purpose flour also helps reduce activity and keep that lengthy interval.

If you have too much starter compared to the additional flour and water you're adding, your hungry starter consumes all the nutrients and then it's not as bubbly.

Basically, if you want to build strength in your starter stick with a 1:1:1. If you want to maintain a mature starter, use a 1:2:2. ALWAYS WEIGH YOUR FEEDINGS. The most important part of sourdough is precision so buy a cheap kitchen scale.

You can't actually kill it, but many bakers mistakenly discard and refeed their starters so frequently that they weaken it to the point of near-death. Learn how to avoid this mistake.

In general, the less sourdough starter you use, the less chance you have of over fermenting your dough during the bulk ferment. This reduces the risk of sticky, unshapeable dough. As with any sourdough recipe, before you start baking bread, you want to make sure that your sourdough starter is as strong as possible.

Yes, you can overfeed your sourdough starter. Audrey explains: “Every time you add more flour and water, you are depleting the existing population of natural bacteria and yeast.” If you keep adding more and more, eventually you'll dilute the starter so much that you'll just have flour and water.

Frequently Asked Questions. Do you stir sourdough starter before using it? No you do not have to stir sourdough starter before you use it.

When your starter slows down, or loses its characteristic taste, you need to reduce its acidity and revitalize it. Dilution reduces acidity. And larger feedings encourage yeast activity.

Do you have to discard sourdough starter every time you feed it? ›

Do I have to discard my sourdough starter? It would be best if you discarded some portion of your starter each time you feed it unless you want to continue to let it grow. Eventually, you need to discard the used “food” (flour and water) that's been used to sustain your starter during the last fermentation period.

Typical feeding ratios are 1:2:2 or 1:3:3 (old sourdough: fresh flour: water). However, even extreme ratios like 1:50:50 would still work. In that case, the freshly fed sourdough would just require more or much more time to grow and reach its peak, as judged by the maximum volume increase in the jar (at least doubled).

When starting to build your starter you can leave it a bit thinner but once you start making bread you will want it THICK, You want your sourdough starter to be the consistency of thick pancake batter. if it's too thin add a scoop of flour. If it is too thick add water to find the right consistency.

However, if you detect any strong, putrid, or rancid smells, it is a clear indicator that something has gone wrong. Rancid or Putrid Smell – If your starter has a rancid, putrid, or even rotten odour, then it is likely to have spoiled or have been contaminated.

Yeast will die if exposed to temps of 60C or above (140F). It is very likely that your sourdough starter will actually die at temps lower than this. Anything above 120F (50C) would be considered too hot for a sourdough starter and will kill the wild yeast if exposed for long periods.

If you don't get rid of the excess, eventually you'll have more starter than your feedings can sustain. After a few days, your daily 1/4 cup flour and water won't be enough to sustain your entire jar of starter, and your starter will be slow and sluggish, not much better than discard itself.

All you need to do is take 20g of the starter you already have and then feed it with 20g of flour and 20g of water (so 1:1:1). Then you'll have a 60g starter, which is considered a smaller amount. You can of course reduce these amounts even further if you wish, but this is a reasonable size to keep waste to a minimum.

Starter that's kept at room temperature is more active than refrigerated starter, and thus needs to be fed more often. Room-temperature starter should be fed every 12 hours (twice a day) using the standard maintenance feeding procedure: discard all but 113g, and feed that 113g starter with 113g each water and flour.

You can use the 1:1:1 ratio in many situations when scaling your sourdough starter. Even if you only had 10g of starter and you wanted 200g of starter, you'd just have to feed it at 1:10:10 which would mean adding 100g of flour and 100g of water to that 10g of sourdough starter.

Your starter may have a little bit of a smell if it hasn't been fed in a while, and your cooking projects will taste a little more sour to reflect that. So if you want to avoid the super sour sourdough taste, you might just need to feed it more often and not let it sit out on the counter as long.