Often times people get caught up in the “how to” details of doing something and decide not to do said thing because they are unsure of the entire process.  Let me tell you, “been there, done that”!  With a lot of things in life you’re really not aware of how simple something is until you get started.  Our brains sometimes over-complicates trivial details, but let me tell you, maintaining your sourdough starter is just that, quite trivial.

Sourdough starters are quite resilient.  Certain strands have been around, allegedly, since the gold rush years and you can get them delivered to your house, if you wish.  If they can survive a for over a century and still thrive in your kitchen, then you certainly can keep a starter if you want to.

So, to dive in to this video, I want to preface it by saying that I don’t keep a lot of starter around just because I don’t really like to waste flour.  I keep just about a tablespoon in a plastic jar and two days before I want to bake, I feed it and grow it until I have enough to make bread or sourdough pancakes or waffles.

This is my process for feeding and refreshing my starter before I bake.

• Remove from fridge and put in a clean container
• Add 50g of flour and 50mL water
• Stir together until it’s well combined.

At this point, I let it sit for 12-24 hours.

In the video above you can see that the starter hit it’s peak and starter deflating.  Ideally you want to do the next step before it starts to deflate but since we’ll be feeding it some more it doesn’t matter a ton.

Now all we have to do is give it one more feeding and it’ll be ready after it grows some more.

• Add 100g of flour and 100mL of water to the container
• Stir together until it’s well combined.

After another 12-24 hours, I have roughly 300g of starter.  I remove 1 tablespoon and put back in it’s original container for later use.  I take the remaining starter and use it for my bake.  If I want a little extra for pancakes or waffles or brownies or cinnamon rolls or whatever, I just take a tablespoon and grow it again as above until I have the required amount.