Okay…I’ve got to say, sourdough starter takes a lot of patience. If you’re like me, then you’ll want an outline of how to begin your sourdough starter. I first started researching how to make sourdough bread. I did not realize you must first make a starter and then make the bread. I started reading all these recipes for sourdough bread and I thought to myself, “Okay Tiara, you’ve got this!” and then I would read the ingredients. The one ingredient that stood out to me was SOURDOUGH STARTER.
Remember, I’m new to the sourdough baking world so when I saw sourdough starter….I was thinking…WHAT IS THAT? Then I discovered there is a whole other process I need to do before I make my sourdough bread. As a newbie this can be an overwhelming process, but I promise you it can be very therapeutic as well.
I found a website that I really liked called ‘The Seasonal Homestead’. I loved all the different categories on there of different things you can make instead of getting it from the store. I even looked at her sourdough bread recipes and again I saw SOURDOUGH STARTER.
I started thinking, “How is anyone supposed to make sourdough bread if there isn’t a recipe on how to make sourdough starter?” Now I had a whole new thing to research and come up with a solution. Another website I came across was ‘The Clever Carrot’ and when I saw her “Beginner Sourdough Starter Recipe” I almost cried for joy!
I followed her beginner starter chart because it gave a perfect step by step outline. This part took a lot of trial and error. This is where your patience kicks in or you start wishing you had some. Haha! Making a sourdough starter from scratch could take 7 days or more. Please check out her website for more information regarding the chart.
I attempted this same process three times, once with wheat flour and twice with all purpose flour and I was not getting the desired results. A friend of mine used this same chart and said she switch from all purpose flour to bread flour during her sourdough starter process and hers turned out amazing!
I have not attempted to make sourdough starter from scratch using bread flour. However, I will most likely attempt it at some point since she had such a great success story. If you end up like me and making the starter from scratch doesn’t workout out then I recommend the live sourdough starter from Breadtopia. I purchased this off of Amazon and have included the link on my links page.
I highly recommend the Breadtopia live sourdough starter! I would have preferred to make mine from scratch but I was getting impatient and wanted something to work fast! As long as you follow the instructions that come with your purchase on how to revive your live starter then you should get the desired results. The best part is….now you get to bake bread! Stay tuned!
Sincerely,
Tiara
The Cozy Bread Nook 