Starter Care and Maintenance

Your starter won’t provide consistent and lofty leavening if it’s stored in a refrigerator and fed irregularly. If you look at the way a natural levain, like a sourdough starter, is tended in a bakery versus a home, the starter in the bakery is a continuous fermentation, likely never refrigerated and refreshed once a day, maybe even twice. If you refresh your starter daily at home your starter will be roaring in no time.

 * 38-42℉, the common temperature zone of a refrigerator, is well below the preferred climates of the microbes in your starter. The yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) ferment sugars efficiently between 82-91℉, and the la.b. (lactic acid bacteria) do the same between 86-104℉. When your starter goes into the fridge a portion of yeast and bacteria die off in the cold. This means that not only are you diminishing the microbes, you’re also starting out each bake with a slightly different population.

 * The ph. level also influences the microbial composition and health of your starter. Baker’s yeast prefer 4.5- 6.0 ph. and lactobacilli are comfortable between 5.8- 6.0 ph. When a starter goes into the fridge, the acidity builds up, dropping the ph unfavorably low. Keeping your starter on the countertop, at room temperature (68-72℉) and refreshing it daily will balance the overall ph. of your starter.

 How to Refresh Your Starter

I refresh my starter everyday with my first cup of coffee, it’s a ritual I look forward too. (Refreshing it early means I have the options for an impulsive bake and I can count on it being ready when I need to make my overnight levain after dinner.) I keep a small amount of starter so that the discard is minimal, and it doesn’t painfully deplete my flour bins. (I discard 280g per week = 140g of flour in 7 days, not too awful!) I find there is less waste this way than when I kept it in the fridge and refreshed a large amount several times at the end of the week for a weekend bake.

 Use a clean, pint-sized deli container, or something similar, for each refreshment. Into the container, drop a small amount of seed starter – a portion of healthy starter held back from the discard. Add warm water (around 78℉) and stir to create a slurry. Next, add the flour and thoroughly stir again (I like to use a chopstick for this task). You want the starter to be around 78-80℉ when it’s done being mixed. It will generally acclimate to the temperature of my kitchen, about 72℉, within a few hours. At 68-72℉ it reaches its peak in 8-10 hours and will hold there for 3-4 hours. I keep it out during the day at room temperature, then transfer it to my Sourdough Home set at 55℉ for an overnight rest.

In hot and humid weather, or climates you may need to refresh your starter more frequently, i.e. every 12 hours rather than every 24. You could choose to store it in the fridge for part of the day, or overnight to reduce activity. If you find your starter is constantly going past its peak, collapsing, and needing to be fed more than once every 24 hours, try reducing the water, or stiffening it.