From flour types to feeding schedules and optimal storage, here's everything you need to know.
At the outset, the process of making your own sourdough starter can seem daunting, an inscrutable mix of microbial science and metaphysics. But if you understand the underlying concepts and follow the right steps, you will be rewarded with an active, well-developed starter that can raise bread.
People get really sentimental about their starters—so much so that they name them. And rightly so—a starter is a living ecosystem, so often thought to be shaped by some glossy, romanticized notion of “terroir.” Specifically, we could call it a microbial terroir—the net effect of flour, water, air, temperature, feeding, time, probability, and your own two hands. It’s important to remember that as much as we want to keep things tidy and sterile in the kitchen, we don’t cook in a vacuum.
Over time, your starter's cycle of peaking will become clearer, and you can adjust the feeding schedule accordingly. Just make sure to take your time. It's better to make changes slowly while observing your starter than to shift schedules at the first sign that it might be time to do so. Discarding also gives you precise control over the feeding ratio. You can weigh out exactly how much starter you want to “seed” with your flour and water. Because you control the seed amount, you effectively control how quickly your starter ferments, keeping the culture from becoming too acidic or weak in gluten structure.
The effective range for the development of a new starter lies between 70 and 80 degrees. In this range, yeast can grow steadily, and lactic acid bacteria can flourish. Based on several sources, keeping the temperature around 80 degrees is optimal for reliable development early on. If held at higher temperatures , undesirable microbes such ascan compete with yeast and LAB in a starter's early stages, resulting in off-putting odors, orange or red mold, and spoilage.
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