Bring your dried starter back to life
If you are reading this, hopefully you have your dehydrated starter and are ready to go!
The starter has been dehydrated at its peak, so the lively cultures are all asleep, waiting to bubble back to life.
It’s a fairly simple process, it just needs a little food (flour) and water.
What you'll need:
- A scale (I highly recommend using one for sourdough. It’s easiest and most accurate)
- A clean jar with a lid or some kind of cover to keep it from drying out and keep clean of bugs. (I highly recommend Weck jars, but any ‘ol jar will do)
- Unbleached flour (all purpose, bread, wheat, organic, conventional. I use organic all-purpose)
- Chlorine-free water (your tap water is probably fine. If in doubt, use filtered)
- Dried sourdough starter (of course!)
Reactivating by day:
Day 1:
Pour 10g, or approximately half of your dried starter into a clean jar. (Save the other half as a backup, if needed.) Add 15g of flour and 15g of water. Stir well and cover.
It will be thick and maybe slightly clumpy, and won’t look like much.
Leave for 24 hours.
Day 2:
Add a fresh 15g of water and flour. Stir and cover.
Repeat again after *12 hours, so you are adding food twice on day 2.
It will still smell floury and you may or may not see bubbles forming on the sides of the jar by the end of day 2.
*Use this time suggestion as a loose guideline. Anywhere from 8-14 hours is sufficient. I will never lose sleep over sourdough, and you shouldn’t either, its not that serious.
Tip: sourdough cultures love oxygen! Optional, but giving it a vigorous stir between feedings can help give it a boost.
Day 3+:
Continue to feed fresh flour and water every 12 hours until you see bubbles on the top and it starts to grow between feeds.
Once it begins to grow between feeds: At this stage, you are ready to discard (or remove excess starter before feeding). Discard all but 15g before feeding 15g each of flour and water.
By day 3 you should see some bubble activity. It’s okay if you don’t. Keep going.
Different ambient temperatures with affect how quickly it comes back to life.
By day 5, your starter should be growing in size (and may also fall again) by the next feeding. When it reaches this point, it is ready to use!
Tip: Once your starter starts showing bubbles on top and growing between feedings, you can move on to sourdough starter maintenance mode.
It’s also ready to bake! Feed it so makes enough starter and take on a recipe.
Sourdough Starter Maintenance
It’s ALIVE!
Sourdough starters are fairly easy to keep alive, and quite hard to kill. They can almost always be revived from the brink, as long as there is no mold (which will never grow on a strong, healthy starter).
Your sourdough culture is a hungry little thing that will need to be fed regularly to keep it strong and healthy.
The good news is, it can be temperature controlled (AKA stuck in the refrigerator) to help slow it between feedings.
To feed:
Add equal weights of flour and water in at least the same quantity of starter you are “feeding”.
(Example: if you have 50g of starter, you want to feed it 50g of flour and 50g water. This is 1:1:1 ratio).
However, I recommend higher ratio feedings.
This builds a strong starter, gives you more time between feedings, and gives you a longer *peak window.
I usually feed mine 1:5:5, meaning if I have 15g of starter, I will feed it 75g of flour and 75g water. It will usually take around 12 hours for this to be ready to use.
DISCARD: If you have too much starter before feeding (say, you have 100g but you only need 50g) the extra will need to be discarded, or removed before feeding.
There are lots of discard recipes out there to use this excess up. Many people have a “discard” jar that they keep in the fridge for this.
*PEAK: This is when your starter is most active and should be used. At peak, your starter will have at least doubled since feeding (and not yet fallen), have bubbles on the surface and sides, and smell sweet- not floury or acidic.
In order to remain active and ready, your sourdough starter will need to be fed at least once a day. Don’t need to bake every single day? Stick in the fridge!
Refrigeration will slow down the yeast activity.
You can feed refrigerated starter as little as weekly, but it will need at least 2 peaked feedings to bounce back before using.
TIP: VERY little starter needs to be kept or maintained to keep it going. I often just save my “dirty” sourdough starter jar because what is left sticking to the jar is sufficient.
When I go to bake something, I will feed it the weight of exact amount of starter I need for the recipe, then save the “dirty” jar again. I almost never have leftover discard.
Troubleshooting:
My starter isn’t growing:
– Do not discard until you see bubble activity on the top of the starter. If you discard too, soon, you may not be giving your starter enough time to consume the fresh flour.
– Alternately, if you see lots of bubble activity, or the starter seems runny, it may not be getting enough to eat between. Discard all but 15g before feeding again.
– Make sure you are not using chlorinated water or bleached flour. Both can hinder yeast growth.
What if I don’t have a scale?
If you don’t have a scale, you can use tablespoons instead. 15g of flour is about 2T. You want to add HALF the volume of water to flour- so feed 2T flour and 1T water.
Need more help?
Please reach out to me below. Providing as much detail (what your process has been so far) and photos will help me help you the best I can!