My Sourdough Starter Making Journal

I started with making sourdough bread back in 2010 when a neighbor gave me some of his starter. I’ve kept that going ever since, with him having kept it going since the mid-1970s. During the COVID lockdown when the sourdough bread making thing was taking off people kept asking me how to start one. The thing is, I never started one from scratch. I decided to do it, document it, and post about it on my blog to help people. As I see now I did the first two parts but never actually documented it here. This post remedies that, albeit almost four years later. Below you will see the source of the program I used, the overall theme of it, how the process unfolded for me, and my first bake with it.

Starting a sourdough starter isn’t really that much different than keeping one alive. It’s really just creating an environment for the microbes to do their thing. There are countless ways to do it but the simplest is just add flour and water together and go from there. A baker I followed on social media since near the beginning of my own sourdough journey was Theresa Greenway at her Northwest Sourdough site . She has lots of recipes, instructional videos etc. On that main website you can get a link to the free e-book I used for making my own starter. She also published this YouTube playlist of her going through the steps herself.

It starts with adding equal parts flour and water together in a small container and letting it sit for a couple days. On the third day you pour out half of it and feed it again with the equal parts flour/water mixture. Starting the fourth day you do that same step twice a day but with a lot less starter making it into the next batch. By day 8 the starter was strong enough to bake a small roll. By the 10th day it was strong enough to bake a full loaf. After it is up to full strength you can keep feeding it twice a day in perpetuity. Alternatively you can put in the fridge for a week or two at a time between uses. You can then take it out of the fridge, do a feeding and letting it come up to strength again, and then repeat the process. It really is simple as that.

When you see the discussion about making individual rolls from the sourdough starter discard rolls, this recipe is what I’m doing. I still use this to this day to use up discard when I’m not doing full size loaves

Journal

• Day 1 (4/9/2020):
  • Started with 30 grams of white, 30 grams whole wheat, and 60 grams water
• Day 2 (4/10/2020):
  • Stirred. Thought at first smelled a canned corn smell but then it just smelled like flour
  • By end of evening looked like starting to expand substantially
• Day 3 (4/11/2020):
  • Before feeding smelled like sour beer or maybe some partially rotting fruit garbage or something. Had bubbles on top so looked like good activity
  • Stirred together then discarded all but 60 grams of it. To that added 40 grams of water, 20 grams of white flour, 20 grams of whole wheat flour
  • Mixture smelled far less like the sour beer smell after mixing
• Day 4 (4/12/2020):
  • Saw some bubbles, but not as much as on beginning of day 2.
  • Smelled more like sourdough than sour beer, but same kind of smell lingered too
  • 07:30 Feeding #1: 30 grams of mature starter, 25 grams whole wheat, 25 grams white, 50 grams water
  • 20:30 Feeding #2: 30 grams of mature starter, 25 grams whole wheat, 25 grams white, 50 grams water
• Day 5 (4/13/2020):
  • Saw some more activity compared to yesterday same smell
  • 07:30 Feeding #1: 30 grams of mature starter, 25 grams whole wheat, 25 grams white, 50 grams water
  • 20:30 Feeding #2: 30 grams of mature starter, 25 grams whole wheat, 25 grams white, 50 grams water
• Day 6 (4/14/2020):
  • Saw some more activity compared to yesterday but with more sourdough than beer smell now. A couple big bubbles too.
  • 08:30 Feeding #1: 30 grams of mature starter, 25 grams whole wheat, 25 grams white, 50 grams water
  • 21:00 Feeding #2: 30 grams of mature starter, 25 grams whole wheat, 25 grams white, 50 grams water
• Day 7 (4/15/2020):
  • Had doubled in size by morning with more big bubbles. The old off smell is gone but there is a new one, which is far more mild though. Now smelling a lot more like just sourdough
  • Had doubled in size within 6 hours of the morning feeding. By 20:00 when I fed it it was more than double in size with lots of bubbles on the top
  • Took 100 grams of discard, added 50 grams of unbleached AP flour (so technically 50% hydration) and some salt. Did this weird stretch and fold on itself kneading for a couple minutes and formed into ball. Will see what it looks like tomorrow.
  • 08:15 Feeding #1: 30 grams of mature starter, 25 grams whole wheat, 25 grams white, 50 grams water
  • 20:00 Feeding #2: 30 grams of mature starter, 25 grams whole wheat, 25 grams white, 50 grams water
• Day 8 (4/16/2020):
  • Starter was at full size again this morning
  • Took out the shaped roll from the fridge to warm up and cook after it rises again
  • Started a second roll to try to not have it over-proof at any stage
  • Both rolls baked up well, over-proofed one didn’t spring as much
  • Tasted over-proofed one and tasted really good. Had nice chewiness too
  • Started a Tartine leaven from part of discard and 100% whole wheat roll with the other
  • First roll from yesterday came out great (by the looks of it anyway)
  • 07:30 Feeding #1: 30 grams of mature starter, 25 grams whole wheat, 25 grams white, 50 grams water
  • 19:30 Feeding #2: 30 grams of mature starter, 25 grams whole wheat, 25 grams white, 50 grams water
• Day 9 (4/17/2020):
  • Leaven for Tartine loaf looked really good. It had a different smell than my usual starter does as well. Far more complex sourdough smell but not in a bad way.
  • Loaf came out great but with tighter crumb than usual. Still perfectly acceptable.
  • 8:00 Feeding #1: 30 grams of mature starter, 25 grams whole wheat, 25 grams white, 50 grams water
  • 20:00 Feeding #2: 30 grams of mature starter, 25 grams whole wheat, 25 grams white, 50 grams water
• Day 10 (4/18/2020):
  • 21:30 Feeding #1: 30 grams of mature starter, 25 grams whole wheat, 25 grams white, 50 grams water
  • Put in fridge for first time
• 4/19/2023 – 5/3/2020:
  • Stored in fridge
• 5/4/2020:
  • 08:00 Pulled out of fridge for first time.
  • 14:40 Feeding #1: 30 grams of mature starter, 25 grams whole wheat, 25 grams white, 50 grams water
  • 21:30 Had doubled in size already!
  • 21:30 Feeding #1: 30 grams of mature starter, 25 grams whole wheat, 25 grams white, 50 grams water

First Bake Photos