Ailine Liefeld

Ok, I made it. Despite all struggles today, here’s the easiest starter tutorial with little tools and discard. 🤗

First of all keep in mind that a starter is a living culture reacting to literally anything around it. Temperature, flour, water, even the jar and how clean it is or not will influence it. If your water is full of chlorine or other stuff or you‘re not sure about it, use bottled water. I’d not recommend filtered water as it can still contain stuff that will influence the balance. Keep your starter at a warm place (min. 23°C) and keep your jar clean.

For this starter recipe you will need a jar of 500ml size, unbleached wheat flour, water, a table spoon and optionally a spatula to stir and a rubber band to keep track of its growing. You can also use a chop stick to stir or the back of the spoon even.

If for any reason you don‘t have white flour, you can also use whole wheat or rye or all of the above.

You can start this recipe any time of the day really, just keep the times in between the same. Prefferably start in the morning or late afternoon/evening.

If you start on Monday and all goes well, you‘ll be able to bake the first bread on Sunday! 🤗

Day 1
Mix 1 tbsp of flour with 1 tbsp of water, mix well.

Day 2
Add 1 tbsp of flour and water each, mix well.

Note that day 2-4 will be a little weird, there might be a lot happening or nothing at all. Any weird smell is also normal, don‘t worry and trust the process! 🤓

Day 3
Add 2 tbsp of flour and water each, mix well.

Day 4
Keep only 1 tbsp of the mix today and discard of the rest and add 2 tbsp or water and flour each, mix well.

The discard of this day is little and as it will be smelly and imbalanced still, I‘d not recommend eating or using it.

Day 5
When the starter has at least doubled, most likely 24-36h later, add 2 tbsp of water and flour each.
NOTE: when on day 5 your starter is not as active as mine in the video, keep repeating day 4 until it does.

Day 6, morning
If all went well, your start will be balanced and active now. To have enough starter to leaven a dough, add 3 tbsp each flour and water and mix well.

…continue reading in the comments. 🙏🏼