Golden Sourdough Waffles - Easy Sourdough Starter Recipe! (2024)

FAQs

How do I get my sourdough starter more sour? ›

Longer fermentation

When it comes time to proof your dough, the longer you proof, the more sour the dough will be. As your dough proofs, the good bacteria eats up sugars and starches in the flour. This decreases the sweet undertone and creates a more sour undertone.

By discarding a portion of the starter and feeding it fresh flour and water, you help keep the bacteria and yeast balanced. It also helps maintain a milder flavor profile and prevents the starter from becoming overly sour.

Once it's ripe, remove the amount you need for the recipe (I almost always use between 100-200 grams) and then save 20 grams, feeding it with 20 grams water and flour. You're back to having 60 grams of starter to keep for next time with enough to bake your bread now.

After a few days, your daily 1/4 cup flour and water won't be enough to sustain your entire jar of starter, and your starter will be slow and sluggish, not much better than discard itself. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, depending on what you want to bake with it.

The best flour blend for creating a new sourdough starter is 50% whole-meal flour (whole wheat or whole rye) and 50% bread flour or all-purpose flour. I recommend a 50/50 mix of whole wheat flour and bread flour. Why do you need to use these two types of flour?

For more tang: Incorporate some rye flour and/or whole wheat flour early in the bread-making process, such as when feeding the mother culture and the preferment. Rye flour in particular will help your culture produce some acetic acid.

Using flours with more ash, or mineral, content, will yield more sour taste. If you can't get enough ash, adding a bit of whole wheat flour to your recipe, which is what is done with the 20% Bran Flour, will boost the sour of a bread. Conversely, using a lower ash flour will tend to produce a milder bread.

The yeast and bacteria in your sourdough starter actually feed off the sugar from the starches in the flour. They essentially don't need any extra food. In fact, while adding sugar to the dough may provide "fast food" for your sourdough yeast, this quick food source is unlikely to provide any protein.

If you're an experienced baker and are familiar with working with a cold sourdough starter that has been kept in the refrigerator for a long time and you've had success, then it's totally OK to use your starter straight from the refrigerator. You can utilize a cold starter in any sourdough discard recipe.

What can I use if I don't have enough sourdough starter? ›

What if I do not have enough sourdough starter for my recipe? If you need more starter than you currently have, just keep building it up by not removing any starter prior to feeding and feed the starter an equal 1:1:1 ratio until you have the amount you need. It builds quite quickly.

stir your starter in between feedings - try stirring it twice in between feedings and really give it a chance to get oxygen into the mix. This will help to activate your starter without too much effort.

I keep my starter jar very clean by scraping down the sides and wiping the rim every time I feed it, so I transfer it to a clean jar once every few weeks. If you keep a very messy starter jar you may want to transfer it to a clean jar more frequently. The only thing that can really kill your starter is mold.

Yes, you can bake with sourdough starter straight from the fridge | King Arthur Baking.

Your sourdough starter is the foundation of baking sourdough bread. Through proper maintenance and a little attention, it can last indefinitely and provide you with countless healthy and delicious loaves of bread.

You can use leftover starter into banana bread, waffles, pancakes, tea cakes, muffins, pizza, cookies, and so on. If you want to use less flour overall, check out my guide to maintaining a smaller sourdough starter.

If you are keeping your sourdough starter on the counter, you could leave it for a few hours and then you'd need to feed it again ready to make your next batch. Whether you use your starter in your bread making or you discard your starter in other ways - you MUST discard to keep your starter healthy and thriving.

The discard is not active enough to make sourdough bread rise but it does have many other uses and baking powder can be added if required. Savoury options include English breakfast muffins, pretzels, caramelised onion biscuits, and sourdough pizza dough.