Meet Ernie! When I brought Ernie home, I wondered, “How do I feed my new sourdough starter and keep it alive?”. Yikes!
Jump to Recipe
Ernie is my sourdough starter that I brought home in January. He is 200 years old! I took a beginners class that taught me how to make sourdough bread. I have been cooking and baking for a long time, but this was a completely different concept for me.
My husband caught wind of my desire to learn how to bake sourdough bread and surprised me with the class for Christmas. Great idea babe! My sister took the class with me and boy was that funny. We were having to retrain our brains. We had only ever cooked and baked using cups, teaspoons, tablespoons, etc. Measuring and weighing with a scale and using grams was very different.
My sister named her starter Bert and I named mine Ernie. So we came home with our new babies, four hours of knowledge, a book, and access to an online class. Yikes!
The class was great and she was a wonderful teacher, but it’s like coming home from the hospital with a new baby and no nurse. Ya know!
Why you will love this sourdough starter feeding method
This method has been working for me for sixteen weeks straight and he is still alive. It is simple and gives you enough starter leftover to feed your discard and to have enough for a new feeding the next time. Basically, you have a little leftover and you wont run out of starter with this method.
Where can I get a starter?
I brought Ernie home from my class. You can order starters online or if you can find a local class to attend you can get one there. If you know of anyone who makes sourdough you can ask them to sell you a starter. They will most likely give it to you though. Oh, and you can make a sourdough starter from scratch. I haven’t done this myself, but Lisa over at Farmhouse on Boone is considered an expert in this field.
Can you double the recipe?
I see people online with HUGE jars and containers of starters. This recipe works for me. It is manageable and doesn’t go to waste. You can double it or even triple it if you have enough to work with.
Can you feed it a smaller amount?
You can feed it 15 grams of starter, 75 grams of water, and 75 grams of rye/bread flour mixture. If you do this, you can use a smaller jar to feed it in.
Ingredients
25 grams of sourdough starter
125 grams of room temperature water
125 grams of rye/bread flour mixture (Flour Mixture: 100 grams of rye/900 grams of bread flour)
Tools You May Need
-room temperature water (My gurgle pot is so much fun. I will put water in it and leave it on the counter.)
How do I feed a new sourdough starter and keep it alive
-Weigh your jar without the lid on it and write the amount in a sharpie on the side. I didn’t understand why when I first started this, but it helps when figuring out how many ounces of starter are in the jar.
-If you are brand new, put 25 grams of starter in the jar.
-If you are not new and you have sourdough starter in the jar, take out the extra until you are left with only 25 grams of starter. For example, if I weigh my jar and it says 431 grams, I will take 431 minus the weight of the jar, which is 396 in this case, and see what the difference is. The difference is 35. That means I have 35 grams of starter in the jar and I need to take out 10 more grams to get it to 25 grams.
-Tare the jar down to zero. Just hit the “tare” button while the jar is on there and it will send it back to zero.
-Pour in 125 grams of room temperature water.
-Mix the water with the starter using your spatula.
-Tare the jar down to zero again.
-Add in 125 grams of food. The food is a mixture of 100 grams of rye and 900 grams of bread flour that I mix up ahead of time and put in a big container. This usually lasts me several feedings.
-Mix this around well with your spatula.
-Loosely put the lid on and sit the jar on your counter.
-Leave the jar alone until it has more than doubled.
-Use the starter at that time in any recipe that you like or put the lid on and refrigerate it. It is still considered active if you use it in one to three days.
-Feed it once a week.
Storage
If you are not ready to use your starter when it has peaked, you can put the lid on it and refrigerate it. It is considered active if you use it within one to three days. After that, you would need to feed it again for a recipe that asks for an “active” starter.
How often do I need to feed it?
Feed it once a week to keep it healthy and strong. If you forget and it gets bad, you may need to feed it, wait a day, and then feed it again. If you don’t have time to bake with it, you can do a maintenance feeding.
What is a maintenance feeding?
If you don’t have time to bake with your starter, you can do a maintenance feeding. This will help to keep it alive, healthy, and strong. The ratio for a maintenance feeding is 25 grams of starter, 25 grams of water, and 25 grams of the rye/bread flour mixture.
What do I do with the tiny bit of leftover?
Don’t throw anything away. Take anything that is leftover and put it in another jar. You will call that your discard jar. Each week, after you feed your starter, you will have a tiny bit left over. Add that amount to the discard jar, give it a really good stir, and now you have a strong starter and discard.
Food mixture
The food is a mixture of 100 grams of rye and 900 grams of bread flour that I mix up ahead of time and put in a big container. This usually lasts me several feedings. I have mine in a tupperware container, but you can use any container that has a lid. I keep it in the pantry and just refill it when it runs out.
Tips
Not all jars weigh the same, so make sure that you weigh each jar that you end up using.
If you leave your spatula in the jar, make sure you tare it down to zero with the spatula in there.
Just make sure that you tare it down each time you are going to add in an ingredient.
More Sourdough Recipes
Homemade Pancakes with a Sourdough Option
Feeding a Sourdough Starter
Equipment
- skinny spatula
- 1 quart mason jar and lid
- scale (that weighs in grams)
Ingredients
- 25 grams sourdough starter
- 125 grams room temperature water
- 125 grams rye/bread flour food mixture (100 grams of rye to 900 grams of bread flour) (see post for food mixture)
Instructions
- Weigh your jar without the lid on it and write the amount in a sharpie on the side. I didn’t understand why when I first started this, but it helps when figuring out how many ounces of starter are in the jar.
- Turn the scale on and make sure it is tared down to zero.
- Put 25 grams of starter in the jar.
- Tare the jar down to zero. Just hit the “tare” button while the jar is on there and it will send it back to zero.
- Pour in 125 grams of room temperature water.
- Mix the water with the starter using your spatula.
- Tare the jar down to zero again.
- Add in 125 grams of food. The food is a mixture of 100 grams of rye and 900 grams of bread flour that I mix up ahead of time and put in a big container. This usually lasts me several feedings.
- Mix this around well with your spatula.
- Loosely put the lid on and sit the jar on your counter.
- Leave the jar alone until it has more than doubled.
- Use the starter at that time in any recipe that you like or put the lid on and refrigerate it. It is still considered active if you use it in one to three days.
Leave a Reply