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Creating & Maintaining Heritage Sourdough Starter
This recipe works best with Heritage flours. It may not work the same with conventional wheat.
Ingredients
- 1/2 Cup Sunrise Flour Mill Heritage Flour
- 1/2 Cup Tepid Water Water should be no hotter than 100F. Use well water or bottled spring water. If you use filtered or boiled city water, it’s best to let it sit out for 24 hours before using to evaporate any remaining chlorine.
Instructions
- The mixture should be the consistency of a thick pancake batter. Mix by hand and leave on the counter with a loose cover over it. A warmer place in the house where the temperature is 70-75 F is best.
- Each of the next 5-6 days – take out half the mixture and throw it away, adding equal amounts of flour and water (1/2 C or less) maintaining the batter-like consistency.
- Somewhere around day 6-8 bubbles should start to appear and there should be a yeasty smell. Now it’s time to build up the amount of starter for use in bread recipes. If it looks like the starter is actively working, don’t throw any away, just add ½ C each water and flour as before and mix well by hand.
- The next day – add ¾ C each flour and water.
- The next day – 1 C each
- Now there should be enough starter to take out 20-30 gr to start a levain (see our recipe for sourdough bread).Estimate how much starter is left and add enough flour and water to double it in size. There is not a critical measurement at this point. Maintain the starter’s quantity in the future based on how often bread is baked. Build up the volume when baking is planned. Halve and maintain it if baking will not occur for a while.
- If baking every day or two, leave on the counter and feed it every day. For once a week baking, feed it and put in the refrigerator. Take it out the day before the levain is made. The next day, make the levain and feed it again before putting it back in the refrigerator. It should be good until the next week.
Notes
Using starter – To obtain a more sour taste will require longer fermentation. The more time and temperature the more sour the bread will be. Longer and cooler sometimes is the best. Leaving a preferment in the refrigerator for one to several days seems to develop the best taste. Experiment to determine preferred taste.
Going away for a week or two – take a tablespoon-sized portion of the starter and add flour until it is a stiff dough ball. Place the dough ball in a small jar and cover with flour. Put in the refrigerator. Upon return, take out the ball and add water and flour as before. This time it should grow into a usable starter in a few days.
Remember, starter is a living thing so it needs to eat!
Tried this recipe?tag #sunriseflourmill
I am very fond of this company and love working with their flours!! I have been using it for a few years,either buying at Mill City or ordering online. I have had the greatest pleasure of making cast iron dutch oven style bread for family members that are flour sensitive and they have had 0 problems when they eat the bread I bake!!!! Such a THRILL !!! Thanks Sunrise !!! See you soon at Mill City as Im running low and fall is all about baking bread !!!
Does the starter not use yeast?
According to their recipe which can be found here, it is simply just flour and water. That’s what many starters are. There are other ways of making a starter, but this is the most traditional way it is made.
The starter is capturing wild yeast from the air. Isn’t this awesome!!! Some starters are years old. I heard some bakeries have theirs for decades. Just keep using some and creating more like this recipe instructs.
The starter is developing the wild yeast in the flour and in the air in your kitchen. This yeast is more easily digested than commercial yeast and is why each person’s starter is unique.
It produces it’s own yeast
Can you use heritage whole wheat flour to make the starter? I only have King Arthur flour white flour at this time. Was using up the flour that I had in the pantry.
King Arthur has starter recipes on their website as well. But the King Arthur starter will be GF UNfriendly. I would give the KA away and enjoy the Heritage Flour.
Where can I get a packet of SFM Sourdough Starter to grow my own? Please ship with my order for the bread-making kit ordered 7/4/2021. I’m excited to use my new flours and keep our tummies healthy.
Question— I have baked with sourdough starter before but I am new to making my my own starter as I worked in a bakery before and it was an aged starter… what is the reasoning/purpose behind throwing out half of the mixture? Is there something you can do with the discard besides throwing it away?
Someone replied to the person who wants to use the rest of her King Arthur flour that it is not gluten free. No wheat flour is gluten free. She may also be using their organic which is very good flour. Please don’t badmouth a good company even tho sunrise flour is better in my opinion in the fact that it has never been hybridized. I cannot eat most bread without ending up in pain if I eat too much but can eat more of KA than others, I’m trying to switch out completely to sunrise tho and one other for a certain type of flour that I enjoy also. Who knows, perhaps KA may join the non hybridized group so less people are eating what makes them sick.
I realize that this is a year after. I have found that of the flour companies that use the newer gmo modified wheat, King Arthur is very good. If you are allergic to the modified wheat, like I am, it still causes a lot of pain. I tried King Arthur organic before I found Sunrise and had to give it away.
Can you split the starter and make two, instead of throwing it away? I can’t see why, except eventually your counter will have no room for all the other stuff that ends up there.
I made some starter a few months ago and made a couple of loaves. Then I forgot about it, so it’s been sitting in the refrigerator unfed for at least two months. Do I try to salvage it or start over?
Once you take out the 20-30 grams( 1 ounce) . How do you determine the amount of flour and water that will make it double in size? Also, if I want to give some to my daughter to use, how much do I give away?
What criteria should be used in selecting a jar for my starter?
Mine was already twice as “big” and had bubbles after only 24 hours!!
New Starter here!
So I received a sourdough starter with my order but the recipe just says flour and water…do I use the packet I received and match that with water? Or just use flour and water
So, can someone tell me if they are having difficulty with the starter forming a crust on top? I lived in rural AK for many years and make my starter with an Alaskan recipe but in the last year or two have had difficulty with it forming a crust. I’ve gone over all the ingredients and decided it had to do with the flour which is why I began researching flours . . . but am still getting the crust. If no one else is having the problem, then it’s something in my house or in the air. And there is no mystery re sourdough starter, the gold miners hiking the Chilkoot Pass to Alaska could not cross into Canada without showing one year’s worth of provisions. Try carrying that on your back, so here came sourdough, it was carried in the top of the flour sack; in a Prince Albert tobacco tin in their shirt pocket, some took it to bed with them to keep it warm, it just takes flour and water and they did not start it in a glass mason jar! They mostly used wood.. And for a tidbit of info you might find interesting to help make you realized how important surdough is, if you can find a copy of the first English translation of the Bible by John Wycliff, 1382, in old Chaucer English, Mathew 13:33 translates as follows: “An other parable Jhesus spac to hem. The Kyngdom of hevenes is like soure dowz, the whiche taken, a womman hidde in three mesuris of meel, till it were all sowrdowid.” Sourdough has been around a long time .. . . .
Can Heritage whole wheat flour be used instead of Heritage white flour to maintain the starter, or does this change lead to problems?