Sourdough Starters

First loaf of sourdough! Made with whole wheat flour and Gretel. 

     I'm going to be super honest with you guys... I was super nervous about writing this post! I feel like there is so much media out there about how to make the perfect sourdough loaf. Blogs written by people who have decades old starters and make hundreds of loaves a week. There are a plethora of videos by home bakers on how to do coil folds and what the perfectly proofed dough. Something that all these people have, and I don't, is years of experience. However, I have decided that I want to be the voice of reassurance and vulnerability in the sea of sourdough experience and knowledge. So yes, I may not be the most knowledgable, I might kill a starter, I may not have the perfect crumb, and not every loaf is going to be pretty, but I will be honest, I will share what works for me, and I will try new things. 

Rose pre-molding

    I started my sourdough journey at the beginning of January (2025) by attempting to make a starter from scratch. As I was following the directions from the book I bought off of amazon, I read somewhere else that making a starter from scratch might be one of the hardest sourdough related things to do! Of course this scared the crap out of me! I didn't give up on my starter (I ended up naming her Rose in hopes that she would eventually rise and bloom like a healthy starter) but she didn't survive very long. A few days after I got her to peak like she should, she molded. I am not sure how or why but she was fine when I left for church one Sunday morning and when I came home from youth group that night she had little fuzzies all over. I was told that I could've just scraped off her new little friends and just wait a few feedings before baking with her but I am not that brave. Into the trash she went! 

    Thankfully, when I read about how difficult starters are to make, I quickly arranged a backup plan! I got a hearty starter from a friend that has yet to fail me! I immediately split my new starter into two (it was too big for all my containers and I had to give the one it came in back.) I named my two new starters Hansel and Gretel because of a joke pertaining to them being my children even though they go in my oven. Hansel is a smaller starter that I keep in my fridge in a sealed baby food jar as a backup. Gretel is my main gal that I keep on my counter. I feed her and use her almost every day! She has a bread flour base so she's not fancy or anything, just a good ol' reliable starter. 

Gretel when I first got her.

    Sometimes people like to feed their starters with other types of flour. From what I have read is that you usually feed your starter with the kind of flour you are going to make your bread with. However, you probably shouldn't switch up your flours all of the time. So, I have seen people who have several starters, all of witch they maintain and are based on different flours. For example, Rose was a whole wheat starter while Hansel and Gretel are bread flour starters. The other ones I see the most online are rye, all purpose (unbleached), and chocolate! At the time of writing this I have no intentions of making a different flavored starter, but maybe I will try one of these someday!

    When Rose molded it shook me up a bit! So, I decided that Hansel wasn't enough. I needed more backup! That is when I discovered dried starter! I guess if you dry starter, whatever bacteria is in it doesn't die, it just goes dormant. Because you take the water out it becomes shelf stable! I decided this was something I needed to do in case both Hansel and Gretel die. I started off by taking a good amount of both starters (don't worry, they grew back) and spread it thin on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. 

    After about 24 hours my starter was completely dry and cracked all over. I took it off of the parchment paper and broke it into small enough pieces to fit into a small mason jar. From what I have read, this should be totally shelf stable for years to come! However, f you do plan on rehydrating your dried starter years in the future, I would recommend doing a little more research on your own before you do. 

    The true test to see if this method is to see if it successfully rehydrates and functions like a normal starter. To test this, I took a few chunks of my dried starter and mixed it with a little water until it was rehydrated. I then took about the same amount of bread flour as I did water and mixed that in until it made a paste. A few hours later, to my relief, it was a bubbly healthy starter! It was a little on the weak side so before baking with it I did let it feed a time or two but I count my dried starter as a total success!

    As of right now all my starters are healthy and thriving but I'm sure there will be bumps in the road in the future as I continue to learn about this magical thing called sourdough. In the future I would like to test a few different conditions on a starter and even try making a few different "flavored" starters using different kinds of flour! Let me know what you would be interested in seeing or if you have any advice for me down below in the comments! Thank you for reading!

Loaf made from pieces of The Witch rehydrated.