Hello friends! I hope you had a wonderful week! Things have calmed down around here. We focused on school, and I made my first loaf of sourdough bread! I will share with you the results next week. This week though, I want to share with you what worked for me when making my own sourdough starter from scratch.

What is so fun about having a sourdough starter, is that it is basically a baby that needs to be checked on and fed daily until it becomes active enough for making bread. If your child is old enough, this might be something fun for them to be responsible for. It only needs fed once per day, so it isn’t too time consuming.

Home Economics

In my daughter’s Schoolhouse Teachers curriculum, we have been doing Home Economics. It has been so much fun lately, because we are focusing on the kitchen. Now that it seems like I am in the kitchen most of the time working on a healthier lifestyle, I love that my daughter is able to learn more about what I am doing. A week ago, her homework was to go in the kitchen, and see if she knew where everything was. For the most part, she had an idea of where things are.

This week, she needed to create cookies from a recipe. The goal was to practice reading a recipe, follow instructions, find ingredients, and read measuring cups and spoons. I helped her along the way, but she created these sourdough discard chocolate chip cookies mostly by herself! She was pretty proud of herself!

If you are interested in this Home Economics curriculum, you can find it at https://schoolhouseteachers.com/school-subjects/electives/home-economics/ref/119608/. Also, if you are wondering what sourdough discard is, I will explain that later as I help you create your sourdough starter.

Sourdough Starter

What on earth is sourdough starter? Maybe you have never had a desire to create your own sourdough bread, so you have never researched what you need to bake sourdough bread. Sourdough starter is basically the yeast of sourdough bread, which makes it rise. It consists of flour, water, and starter. I didn’t find the process of creating it too terribly difficult. However, I do know that creating a successful sourdough starter depends on many different factors. If you have any trouble at all creating your starter, I recommend joining a Sourdough for Beginners Facebook group. There are a ton of people with different experiences and answers to all of your questions.

Supplies

• Kitchen Scale
• Silicone Spatula
• 2 Mason Jars (quart size or larger)
• Spoon
• Filtered Room Temperature Water
• A towel or rag
• Rye flour

Step 1: Prep

To start out, you need to clean your mason jars with hot soapy water. It is not necessary to sterilize the jars, because your starter will be full of bacteria anyways. Just make sure your jars are clean and dry before starting.

For water, I purchased a large bottle of water from the store, because I don’t have filtered water in my home. I have read that once your sourdough starter is active, you can use unfiltered water. At the beginning though, your starter can be a little picky. This was also easier for me, because I could leave the bottle out on the counter, which kept it at room temperature for me. Once the bottle of filtered water is gone, I will most likely put tap water in that bottle to keep it at room temperature.

For pouring water into my mason jar, I used a measuring cup. It was just easier for me to pour, without over pouring.

Before you put anything into your mason jar, take the lid off and weigh the jar. As you can see in the picture below, my mason jar is 392 g. Along with the weight, I wrote “starter” and the date that I began my starter on the lid. You will need the weight of the jar every time you feed and discard your starter. On the other mason jar lid, I wrote “discard”. The discard jar will be used once your sourdough starter is active.

Step 2: Create Your Sourdough Starter

The very first day, you will be making the starter part of your starter. Your starter is just a mixture of flour and water. You can use a different flour, but I read that rye flour was hardier, so that is what I went with. Eventually, I will try adding different flour into my starter to see if it still works. Starting on day three, you will start removing half of your starter, and adding equal amounts of flour and water.

On the first day, you can put your starter jar on the kitchen scale. Tare it, so it is at 0 g. Next, carefully spoon in 20 g of flour. Then you will pour in 20 g of water. You can tare the scale again, or just add enough water to make 40 g total. Your calculator on your phone will become very handy as the days go by.

Now you can use your silicone spatula to mix the flour and water together thoroughly. You don’t want to use a spoon to mix it, because it can break the glass. Then scrape the sides of the jar clean.

Once it is mixed well, you can put the lid on. For this part, you want to hand tighten the lid, and then loosen it a quarter turn. This will allow gas to escape if needed.

Lastly, find a warm place to set your sourdough starter. I ended up setting it on a folded up rag, so that it didn’t have to sit on my cold quartz countertops. Then I sat it next to my sink near the window, where sunlight comes in for most of the day.

Step 3: Skip a Day

Day two of making your sourdough starter is a skip day. You do not need to do anything here. If you really want to, you could give it a name. I know a lot of people like naming their starters. Maybe once I get more into this sourdough world, I will give mine a name.

Step 4: Discard and Feed

On Day 3, it is time to remove half of the starter and add in the same amounts of flour and water. Originally we added 20 g of flour and 20 g of water. This means we have a total of 40 g of starter. Today, you need to remove half of that. This means you will have 20 g of starter left in the jar.

Now you will find out why it is so important to write down the weight of your jar. When you put your jar on the scale on Day 3, it will say 432 g. Using a calculator if needed, subtract 20 g. Once the 20 g of starter is removed, your scale should now read 412 g.

The starter that you remove is known as discard. You can use discard for so many recipes. Right now however, you need to throw it out, because it is full of bad bacteria. Do not put it down the sink. Throw it in the garbage. When your starter starts doubling in size, that is when it is safe to keep your discard.

Now you can feed your starter 20 g of flour and then 20 g of water. The scale will read 432 g after flour and 452 g after water. Thoroughly mix the starter together, scrape the sides, tighten and loosen the lid, and set it back in its warm spot.

You will continue to repeat this process over the next days. It is called a 1:1:1 ratio. Day 3 was 20 g starter: 20g flour: 20 g water.

Step 5: Helpful Math

Here is helpful math for the next few days. The numbers may be slightly different for you, if your jar is a different weight.

• Day 4: Starting weight 452 g minus jar weight 392 g equals 60 g. Half of 60 g is 30 g. Discard 30 g of starter. The weight will now be 422 g. Feed your starter 30 g flour (scale reads 452 g) and then 30 g water (scale reads 482 g).
• Day 5: Starting weight 482 g minus jar weight 392 g equals 90 g. Half of 90 g is 45 g. Discard 45 g of starter. The weight will now be 437 g. Feed your starter 45 g flour (scale reads 482 g) and then 45 g water (scale reads 527 g).
• Day 6: Starting weight 527 g minus jar weight 392 g equals 135 g. Half of 135 g is 67.5 g. Discard 67.5 g of starter. The weight will now be 459.5 g. Feed your starter 67.5 g flour (scale reads 527 g) and then 67.5 g water (scale reads 594.5). I ended up rounding down for a final weight of 594 g.
• Day 7: Starting weight 594 g minus jar weight 392 g equals 202 g. Half of 202 g is 101 g. Discard 101 g of starter. The weight will now be 493 g. Feed your starter 101 g flour (scale reads 594 g) and then 101 g water (scale reads 695 g).
• Day 8: Starting weight 695 g minus jar weight 392 g equals 303 g. Half of 303 g is 151.5 g. I rounded this down to 150 g. Discard 150 g of discard. The weight will now be 542 g. Feed your starter 150 g flour (scale reads 692 g) and then 150 g water (scale reads 842 g).

Day 8 is the last day that I discarded half of my starter and fed that same amount in flour and water. I didn’t want to go over the Day 8 amount of 842 g, because it filled up half of my jar. If my sourdough starter was going to double, I didn’t want it to flow over the top of my jar. You do not need to do this much every day. I will probably end up go down to 100g starter: 100 g flour: 100 g water now that my starter is active.

After Day 8, each day, I would discard until there was 150 g of starter left, and then add 150 g of flour, and then 150 g of water.

Step 6: Start Keeping Discard

Around day 7, I started noticing that my starter was growing. I just looked at the measurements on the side of the mason jar to check where the starter level was after feeding, and then looked at it again 24 hours later before discarding. It can be helpful to mark where the starter is after feeding with a rubber band or a marker. Before keeping any discard for use in other recipes, I waited a few more days to make sure that it was doubling in size.

Once you are certain that your starter is active and doubling, it is safe to keep your discard. Just spoon the starter that is being removed into your discard jar. Then tighten the lid completely, and store it in the refrigerator. This jar will fill up quickly, so find some quick recipes to use up some of it. If you don’t use your discard for a few days, take the lid off for a second to let gas escape every once in a while. The jar can build up pressure if left in the refrigerator untouched.

The first recipe that I used was Sourdough Cinnamon Buttermilk Muffins. They mixed up and baked so quickly. Plus I had some homemade buttermilk that I needed to use, so it helped use up a few things in my refrigerator. These muffins are absolutely delicious. We had them for breakfast for the next two mornings.

The other sourdough discard recipe we used was for my daughter’s Home Economics class. It was the cookies that I shared a picture of at the beginning of this post. These are also very yummy! I don’t love the measurement for flour in this recipe, because it says a little less or a little more. I personally like exact measurements for baking. They still turned out great though!

There are so many recipes on Pinterest. Just search Sourdough Discard recipes, and you will find some delicious options for using that discard up!

Step 7: Active Sourdough Starter!

When your sourdough starter goes from this….

to this in 24 hours for 4 days straight, you have an active sourdough starter!

Look at all of those bubbles on the side of the jar! That is what you want! At first, I wasn’t sure if my sourdough starter was ready, because it still looked so thick. Plus, all of the starters you see online, always look like they are almost moving when they spoon some out of the jar. I did some research, and found out that your starter will look differently depending on the flour you use and the ratio that you implement.

This is what mine looked like before adding it to my sourdough bread recipe.

Anyways, once it is active, it is ready for making sourdough bread!

If you can’t keep feeding it everyday, put it in the refrigerator with the lid tightened completely. When you are ready to use it again, bring it back out with the lid loosened. Let it get to room temperature, and feed it again. It should come back to life pretty quickly! If you can, try to feed it at least once a week when it is in the refrigerator.

Again, this is my very first sourdough starter, and this is what worked for me. If you have any problems that I can’t answer, you may want to join a Facebook group with more experienced sourdough bakers.

I hope this process works for you, and you enjoy it! It really makes delicious sourdough bread! I will share that with you next week!

Hungry for Jesus

To finish up this topic of sourdough starter, I just want to connect it to Jesus for you. Sourdough starter has this weird acetone smell that you will notice in the beginning. It means that it is hungry. That is why you feed it every day. Once it is active, it smells almost like bread. It smells happy, and full.

Are you going through a rough time, or even just going through the motions? Maybe your life is just not the way you want it to be, or you just feel like something is missing. I know that there are many times as a stay-at-home Mom, that I become anxious. There are times that I really want to start a business from home, or start all of these projects. Sometimes, I just feel like I am not doing enough to be me, and not just a Mom. Well when I finally find a peaceful moment in my anxiety, I realize that I just need to spend time with Jesus.

Spending time with Jesus, helps me find the calm in my chaos. Jesus helps me find answers, and gives me patience when I want something right now. I know that it isn’t realistic to have certain things right away, but my mind takes over sometimes. It is so important to remember to give all of our stresses and hard times and happy times to Jesus. He is always there for you. Hunger for Him! He will give you everything you have ever wanted. Just be hungry for Him, believe in Him, and always know that He wants what is best for you. He will make you happy and full!

Jesus knows what your future holds. We just need to let Him steer us in the right direction. So, when you are hungry for Jesus, find a moment of silence and pray, or read His word. If you can’t seem to find a quiet space, read the Bible to your kids. We want them to hunger for Jesus as well. Have a wonderful week friends!

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Matthew 5:6