For the curious, here’s the simple instructions for growing your own starter. Everything should be measured in grams for ease of use. When baking bread, every

For the curious, here’s the simple instructions for growing your own starter. Everything should be measured in grams for ease of use. When baking bread, everything is done using the bakers percentage. All this means is that all ingredients are measured in relation to the total amount of flour being used. If you’re using 100g of flour, then at 75% hydration you add 75g of water. Note that to be super precise when you get more experienced, you want to include the amount of flour and water in the starter used in the loaf, but when getting started it doesn’t matter. Use bread flour specifically. All purpose flour doesn’t seem to have what the yeast and lactobacilli need. It can grow, but the resulting starter is weak and prone to getting mold infections easier. For a period of a week, each day mix an equal amount of flour and water by weight. I always use 100g of water and 100g of flour. This is considered 50% hydration. On each day, throw out 90% of the mixture from the previous day. You aren’t wasting anything. The flour from the day before has been eaten up. Weigh the remaining starter (20g in this example). Then weigh out 90g of water and 90g of flour. Mix all of these together. One thing I’m trying to get across is maintaining a consistent total weight, 200g in this example. After 5-7 days of repeating this process, you will have a healthy starter culture where the predominant microorganism culture is wild yeast and lactobacilli. These two work together symbiotically. The yeast eat the flour and excrete things the lactobacilli eat. In return, the LB excrete lactic acid which gives the bread the sour taste and works to suppress other bacteria and molds from growing. Use and maintenance: Once you have a healthy starter, you change the ratio of water to flour when feeding it. When baking, you generally want a starter that is 75-80% hydration vs the 50% used during initially growing it. All this means is that after baking for the day or if you’re just feeding the starter daily to maintain it, you take the 10% of yesterday’s starter and add it to a mix of 100g of flour and 75g of water. I always bake my sourdough at 75% hydration and maintain the starter at the same ratio. It makes the math easier and the bread comes out fine. After a lot of experimentation I eventually locked in a recipe that has my specific amounts, so I don’t have to do the math every time. If anyone wants my bread recipe, leave a comment here and I’ll add it later. Don’t have my book in front of me right now.