This is How to Make an Easy Sourdough Starter from Scratch with Two Ingredients

This is How to Make an Easy Sourdough Starter from Scratch with Two Ingredients

You don't need to buy anything special to create a sourdough starter. It just requires flour, water, and patience.  The sourdough starter is simply a fermented mixture of flour and water that takes in yeast from the air around us.  It sounds weird, but this is actually how it works!  It took us five days to create a sourdough starter and then we continued to maintain the sourdough starter over the past couple of months. We now make sourdough bread in our dutch oven a couple of times each week!

These are the two steps to create an easy sourdough starter:

1. Create the starter with flour and water
2. Feed the starter every few days with more flour and water

Let me break this down in more detail.

Recipe: Easy Sourdough Starter

You'll notice that the ingredients for the starter are the same for the initial creation and then we use the same 4 ounces of water and 4 ounce of flour daily to maintain the starter.

Ingredients for the sourdough starter (day 1)

• 4 ounces of all purpose flour
• 4 ounces of water

Ingredients to maintain the sourdough starter (daily from day 2 and onward)

• 4 ounces of all purpose flour
• 4 ounces of water

Directions

1. Add the 4 ounces of all purpose four and 4 ounces of water to a container and stir until thoroughly mixed. Store in a container with a loose fitting lid.  The container that we use is approximately 1 quart in size and we leave the lid sitting on top of it without fully closing it so that extra air gets in. We store our starter on the counter.

2. Each day, add another 4 ounces of flour and 4 ounces of water and combine well.  Again store with a loose fitting lid sitting on top of it. We leave it on our counter.

3. Repeat step 2 until the mixture is frothy.  We used our first batch after 5 days and then continued to feed it according to step #2 above for the past two months. It may not look pretty but this sourdough starter has helped us to make fantastic bread for the past couple of months! We look forward to continuing to feed our starter and use some of it each week when we make bread.