Get the most out of your starter

You’ve made a super strong sourdough starter. You know what it needs to stay alive and happy. Let’s have a look at how you can use it to bake the best bread you could bake.

Use your starter when it’s most active

You need to make sure that your starter is active before you use it in your dough.

If you haven’t fed it, your starter is inactive. It needs new food to set off a fermentation process that will make it rise and achieve its highest activity. That’s when you usually use it. But if you’re short on time, or want a less sour flavour, you can also use it “young”, meaning when it has just risen a bit.

After happy bubbling at its peak for a while, your starter will go down again. That’s nothing to worry about, just a part of the process. You can still use it in your dough.

At some point, though, it will have declined too much. You need to feed it again to use it.

Please see our paper napkin sketch of this process below 😉

Get to know your starter’s rhythm

Every starter is different due to its unique bacteria composition. That’s why there’s no law how long a starter needs to rise. It depends on the starter, the flour, the seed amount and the conditions.

But after a couple bakes, you’ll know your starter. You’ll even be able to predict when it will reach its peak. That’s super helpful when you plan your day and your baking!

Signs your starter is ready:

  • Your starter has risen a lot. Within 8 hours after you fed it, it should at least double in volume. A strong starter can even triple in under 6 hours. You can place a rubber band around the jar to mark the start-off point. This will help you get a better sense for how much the starter has increased.
  • It looks active. It’s surface is uneven, with valleys and peaks. It’s bubbling. There shouldn’t be any brown liquid on it.
  • It smells a bit sour. Like mildly overripe fruit, or cheese or yogurt.
  • It feels like and billowy. It falls off a spoon in clumbs, not like water.

Your starter shows these signs? You’ve got an active starter that you can use to mix your sourdough!