Out of yeast? Make your own sourdough starter

Some home bakers have recently found it difficult to purchase yeast. Unlike most baking ingredients, store-bought yeast is one you can get by without by growing your own sourdough starter.  All you need is flour, water, a week or two and patience.

Notes: It is best to start with stone-ground whole wheat or rye flour and then switch to all-purpose (white) flour after a few days. You can use any glass, stainless steel, ceramic or plastic container, as long as you can cover it with a lid or plastic wrap. Keep somewhere warm.

Day 1. Mix 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour with about 1/4 cup water. Stir. You want the mixture to have consistency of thick pancake batter. Cover.

Day 2. (Once you see bubbles – anywhere from 12 hours to 3 days) Add 1/2 cup whole wheat flour & 1/4 cup water. Stir. Cover.

Day 3. Stir starter. Discard half of starter (later on you can use discarded starter, this starter is not ready to be used yet). Add 1/2 cup whole wheat flour and 1/4 cup water. Stir. Cover.

Days 4 – 7. Stir starter. Discard half of starter. Add 1/2 cup all purpose flour and 1/4 cup water. Stir. Cover.

Day 8 & beyond. Continue with the discarding and feeding every day but now you can use the starter like yeast in baked goods.

Bubbly sourdough starter after feeding. (Note: this jar should be wiped down to prevent mold from growing!)

What should happen? Every day after feeding the starter should bubble-up to double its size and then shrink back down by feeding time. At first the starter should smell like very stinky socks or something rotten. By day 7 it should smell a little alcohol-y and sour but pleasant.

How do you use sourdough starter? It is best to use starter when it is the most active so try to time your feeding for the day to an hour or so before your baking. Instead of discarding half before feeding, feed 1 cup flour & 1/2 cup a water (make sure the container it is in is big enough so the dough can expand to at least twice its size without overflowing). Once it is at its most bubbly, use half the starter in place of yeast, 1 cup flour and 1/2 cup of water in a recipe. Save the rest of your starter and keep feeding daily.

Will sourdough starter change the taste of baked goods? As opposed to just yeast, baked goods made with sourdough starter are being raised by yeast and lactobacilli. The lactobacilli produces lactic acid which adds a slight but pleasant sour taste to baked goods. The longer the baked good spends rising, the more pronounced the sour taste will be.

What about the discarded starter? You can throw away discarded starter or you can add it to a recipe so it doesn’t go to waste. Some people add a couple of ingredients and make pancakes every morning with their discarded starter.

What if you only need starter for baking occasionally? You can store your starter in the refrigerator and discard starter and feed weekly instead of daily. Bring it out a day ahead of using it for baking, let it warm up and feed without discarding (as described in “How to use your sourdough starter” above).

Recommendations: Keep tightly covered if you have ants or fruit flies in your house. Keep the sides and rim of your container very clean or change starter to a new clean container every few days, especially during warm weather, or you may grow mold. If you grow mold, throw starter out and start over!

There are many good resources on the internet that can add to this information or help you troubleshoot. https://www.sourdoughhome.com/starting-a-starter-my-way/ is a good one!

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by Sara Swanson

Sara Swanson is an editor, writer and founder of the Manchester Mirror.