Troubleshooting Your New Sourdough Starter: Recipe RED FLAGS and Pro Tips

Are you having trouble getting your new sourdough starter off the ground?

Many popular recipes on TikTok and Instagram have oversimplified the process to the point where it no longer works. These methods are riddled with bad information.

Learn the common pitfalls, and pro tips in the one-of-a-kind video.

This comprehensive video is like 10 short videos in one. Use the chapter breaks to navigate to your areas of interest (or watch the whole thing — it is mind-blowing)!

SUMMARY AND DOWNLOADABLE GUIDES CAN BE FOUND HERE:
https://thesourdoughjourney.com/faq-starter-creation/

CHAPTERS
0:00 Introduction
4:27 Recipe Red Flags
7:09 Red Flag #1: “Use all-purpose or bread flour”
13:54 What is the best type of water?
15:47 Red Flag #2: “Measure ingredients in cups”
19:10 Red Flag #3: “Use a large jar with a cloth lid”
23:29 Red Flag #4: “Discard half and feed equal parts”
29:18 Red Flag #5: “Use discard in recipes”
36:17 Red Flag #6: “Feed every 24 hours”
45:39 Red Flag #7: “If slow, feed more frequently”
50:45 Red Flag #8: “You’ll be baking in 7 days”
52:24 The Temperature Effect
53:59 Mold Patrol
58:40 Summary Recommendations
59:27 Closing

Hi I’m Tom coming to you from The International Institute for the advancement of sourdo science and research of Cleveland Ohio also known as my kitchen thank you for selecting this video in today’s video we’re going to talk about one of my favorite topics and that is sourdough starters now if you

Are planning to create a new sourdough starter and you haven’t started yet you’re in the wrong place what you want to do is go to my video how to create a sourdough starter step by step that’s where I’ll take you through all the steps of creating a starter and in

Addition to that video I’ve just released six new tools to go along with that the ultimate souro starter guide this includes very detailed step-by-step instructions of what to expect each day it includes infographics that show you what your starter should look like each day and it includes troubleshooting tips

And all kinds of tools for people creating a new starter but if you’ve already tried to create a new starter and you’re having trouble that’s what this video is all about you’ve come to the right place the good news in this video is that there is a huge uptick in the

Number of people who are interested in sourdough baking I haven’t seen so many new people get interested in this since the early pandemic days of 2020 the bad news is I’ve also never seen more people struggle with getting their new souro starters created from scratch now when I

Created my first souro starter back in 2019 I followed the method in Chad Robertson’s book taram bread this was a fairly simple method I had my starter up and running in about 10 days and many other people who I knew at that time people on social media were following

Chad’s re recipe or similar processes what’s happened between 2019 and now is there’s also just been an explosion in the amount of instructional content out there on Instagram and Tik Tok and YouTube and other blogs around how to do Saro baking and specifically how to create souro starters and much of that

Information is contradictory and I don’t know any polite way to say it but a lot of that information is just bad advice and it’s wrong so in this video I’m not going to explain step by step what I recommend you can watch that in my other video how to create a sarados starter

Step by step and in my prle guides and on my website all that information is out there what I am going to do in this video is to tell you how to look out for the red flags and some of these other methods that are out there that are the

Most common reasons people get tripped up when they’re trying to create a new souro starter so now you might be asking yourself why should I listen to this Tom guy instead of somebody else what does Cino all I can say is look at my content I have over 40 souro videos on YouTube

Many of them related to souro starters with 2 million views of those videos my video how to create a souro starter step by step you can look at the comments on that and over the last three and a half years since I published that video there’s not a single comment that says I

Tried this method and it didn’t work check out my website where I have over 200 frequently asked questions about how to create maintain and troubleshoot sour starters I’ve published articles on starters I’ve written manuals on starters I help hundreds of people each week on social media troubleshoot their

Sourdo starters many of them trying to create a starter for the first time and I have a starter laboratory in my basement nobody else in the world has one of those where I do the most advanced studies on souro starters of anybody in the world I look at souro

Strength testing impact of hydration the impact of temperature different feeding ratios feeding them different types of flour I’ve done hundreds of unique tests on souro starters I know more about sourdough starters than I care to admit and with the work that I do every day in social media groups trying to help New

Beginning Bakers fix problems with their sourdough starters I just feel bad that so many people are struggling with this process that’s the reason I created this video now I don’t like to criticize other people who are trying to help folks learn how to make sourdough bread or sourdough starters but some of the

Content that’s out there is really just awful and it’s misleading and it’s causing people to struggle and waste flour and give up on sourdough baking before they even get out of the starting blocks because they can’t get a sourdough starter created with the work I’ve done on social media I can say this

Is a recent phenomenon I have never seen so many people struggle with creating a new sourdough starter and I think it’s because these new methods and new people that are out there have tried to simplify the process but they’ve simplified it too much Albert Einstein said you want to make things as simple

As possible but no simpler I think we’ve crossed the line and again I’m not bashing these people but you’ve seen them they’re the people that live on Instagram Farms they’re in their kitchen they’re baking a pie they have the eggs they just got from the chicken coup

There’s a donkey looking in the kitchen window and they say here’s how you make a sour roast starter you can use any old flour in your pantry you can use allpurpose flour you don’t need a scale you can measure in cups you want to keep

It in a giant jar with a cloth lid to make sure that it can breathe then all you want to do is feed your starter then discard half each day and feed equal parts you can use your discard to make pancakes or waffles and then when you

Feed your starter you want to do it every 24 hours and if it’s not growing with 24-hour feeding ings you want to feed it more frequently and feed it more flour to make it grow fast and then everything will be perfect and you’ll have a sourdough starter in 7 Days

Everything I just mentioned is completely wrong I’m going to go through each one of those in detail now I don’t have a donkey outside and I don’t have an apple pie in my kitchen but what I do have in my kitchen I have sourdough books these are the most popular popular

Books by the most well-respected sourdough Bakers in the world I’ve read all these if you read the instructions for how to create a sourdough starter in these books they’re completely different than what I just described to you that you’ll find on Instagram or on TP Tik

Tok and this isn’t my opinion and this isn’t these Baker’s opinions it’s based on science so if you’re not interested in science you can check out now because you’re not going to like the rest of this video but I’m basically going to explain to you you what you’re hearing

Today and what you should change so that it complies with hundreds of years of experience and the science of creating a sourdough starter the first mistake people make is choosing the wrong flower now when I say mistake you’re not making the mistake the people who made the mistake are the

People who told you to do this so when people tell you you can use any old flower in your pantry that is completely wrong let’s talk about four types of flour allpurpose flour red flour whole wheat flour and Rye flour many many sourdough recipes out there say you can create a sourdough

Starter using allpurpose flour or bread flour you can but it can take 30 to 60 days to do that I would never recommend using 100% all-purpose flour or bread flour most of the recipes that you see from respected bakers will say always use at least 50% whole wheat flour or

25% Rye flour if you’re trying to create a sourdough starter using all-purpose flour or bread flour you are in for a long road and it probably won’t work this is the single biggest mistake I see people making when they say I’ve been trying to get my starter going for 21

Days 35 days it just won’t work I ask one question what type of flour are you using 99% of the time all-purpose flour or bread flour now you might ask the question why don’t these work I mean people say you can use bread flour or all-purpose flour you can use

These to feed an existing starter but it’s very difficult to get a new starter going from scratch with these two types of flow why is that because of the way the flour is Mill so when you try to create a sour Pro starter what you’re trying to do is cultivate yeast and

Lactic acid bacteria in a jar that’s your job we asked the question though where does the yeast come from now some people will say the yeast comes from your kitchen from the air the yeast comes from your hands the yeast comes from the flour I’m here to tell you

99.9% of the yeast that ends up in your souro starter comes from the flour it all starts with the flour so now we ask the question how does the yeast get into the bag of flour so now you have to go to the wheat Fields when you’re growing

Wheat in a wheat field the yeast and lactic acid bacteria are blowing around in the air and they stick to the sides of a wheat berry so imagine if this orange or a wheat berry this is growing on the top of a wheat stock lactic acid bacteria and yeast cells are floating

Around in the air and they’re going to attach themselves to this so I’m going to use this blue marker to show the yeast cells on the outside of this wheat berry and I’ll use this red marker to show the lactic acid bacteria on the outside of the wheat berry so this is

Ultimately where your yeast and lactic acid bacteria comes from it’s on the outside of the wheat berry so what happens when you Mill whole grains in a flow Mill you take the wheat berry with all the yeast and lactic acid bacteria attached to it you grind that up in a

Mill and 100% of the the wheat berry ends up in the bag of flour so that would be whole wheat flour and whole Rye flour so you can see all the little dots on here are in the bag what happens with bread flour and allpurpose flour when

These go into the mill the wheat berry the hull of the wheat berry is taken off so this is stripped off in the mill and what’s left is the endosperm which is the soft white part in the middle there’s no dots on the endosperm there’s no yeast in here there’s no lactic acid

Bacteria in here this is what ends up in the bag of allpurpose flour and bread flour now in that Milling process because you’re grinding up the hull of the wheat berry some very small number of yeast cells and lactic acid bacteria cells will end up in these bags but it

Is a minuscule amount compared to what ends up in here so now if you’re trying to create a sourdough starter and you want to feed your St with a flour that has the most yeast cells in it do you pick allpurpose or bread flour I certainly would not I would pick whole

Wheat or Ry flour because that’s where all my little dots ended up in the bag so I think about it like this when you create a sourdough starter it’s a little bit like buying a lottery ticket lit literally every bag of flour is different and you don’t know what you’re

Going to get in the bag it’s just like playing the lottery but if I look at these four bags of flour if I buy allpurpose flour and use this for my starter this is like buying one lottery ticket red flour is like buying two lottery tickets whole wheat flour is

Like buying 100 lottery tickets and Rye flour is like buying 200 lottery tickets that’s how this works so when you think about what flowers you want to use always use whole wheed or or rye I recommend using 50% whole wheat flour and 50% bread flour and then you might

Say wait Tom bread flour you just said that’s not good for creating a sourdough starter it actually is good when it’s paired with whole wheat flour because the whole wheat flour needs to convert the inside of the wheat berry which is what this bag is full of it has to

Convert that into sugar to be able to eat so by combining 50% of the whole wheat flour that’s where you get the microbes and 50% bread flour is where you get their food so this is the perfect combination to create a sourdough starter the bugs are in this bag the

Sugar or the food is in this bag and then some people say you YouTubers all just over complicate everything why can’t we just make a sourdough starter like they did in Egyptian times or medieval times or the Pioneers here’s an interesting historical fact refined flour also known

As allpurpose flour and bread flour was invented in 1930 that’s about 100 years ago so if you want to Walk Like an Egyptian or if you want to be a Pioneer or a middle-age person those flowers are unavailable to you the only flowers that you could have used before 1930 were

Whole grain flowers like this maybe that’s why every one of those books in my giant stack recommends using some amount of whole grain flour now while we’re talking about ingredients let’s talk about what’s the best type of water to use for your sourdough starter some people will say I

Just use plain old tap water and that works fine what the heck does tap water even mean I mean some people’s tap water includes chlorine some includes chloramine which you can’t boil off some of it is pure mountain spring water coming out through people’s tap some of

It’s well water some of it’s reverse osmosis water and some reverse osmosis with minerals added back in there are a lot of different things that could be tap water so when somebody tells you use tap water ignore them what you wanted to use is non-chlorinated water non-chlorinated water is either water

That comes out of your tap that has chlorine in it that you run through a filter that’s what I do I have a filter in my refrigerator or you can buy non-chlorinated drinking water or some people’s well water is not chlorinated so chlorine is one of the worst things

That you want to have in your water now some filters especially these new reverse osmosis systems they strip everything out of the water even the minerals and they create something called Dead water where there’s really nothing in it reverse osmosis water or distilled water are not recommended because they don’t include minerals or

Other micronutrients so if you’re having trouble with your starter and you think it might be because of the water because you’ve ruled out everything else go to the store and buy water if I were going to do it I’d buy a jug of spring water or filtered drinking water but you don’t

Want reverse osmosis filtered drinking water try it in your starter some people will see an immediate change just by changing the water that they’re feeding their starter with now some people say when you’re creating your sourd starter you can just measure your flour and water in cups you

Don’t need to weigh it on a scale scale I disagree first if you’re planning to get into sourdough baking and you’re just getting started building your starter you’re going to need a digital scale to make sourdough bread you need to have that level of accuracy you’re

Ultimately going to have to buy one so if you think you can avoid buying one and you want to be a Sourdough Baker you’re going to need one just go buy one but some people will say I don’t believe this guy not buying a scale I’m just

Going to use cups so what happens when you use cups to feed your star starter so most starter recipes will say feed your starter equal parts flour and water each day that guidance comes from the giant stack of books that I showed earlier and what they meant by equal

Parts is equal parts by weight so that’s why people use a scale if you measure equal parts by cups a cup of water weighs two times as much as a cup of flour roughly speaking so if you follow that that that guidance and say I’m going to feed my starter equal parts a

Half a cup of water and a half a cup of flour you fed it two times more water than it needs you’ve water logged it and that will have a detrimental impact on the ability for your starter to grow and to rise it’s hurting your starter by not

Feeding equal car equal parts by weight doing equal parts in cups which is a volume based measurement and then some people will say no no Tom you don’t understand I I know what equal Parts by weight means and I found a conversion table on the internet that says if I use

A half a cup of flour that weighs as much as a/4 cup of water really that’s interesting I mean a/4 cup of water is a specific measurement 1/4 cup of water weighs about 60 G so then you would say if I use my half cup for flour this

Will be 60 G Because the Internet told me so computer how much is a half a cup of flour weighing G half cup of flour weighs about 62 G there you go so the computer says a/2 cup of flour weighs 62 gam that’s pretty close to what I know the water weighs I

Could also look at the bag of flour this says a/2 cup weighs 60 G slightly different but close but here’s what happens if I weigh my flour on this scale and I pour my flour out of this bag and level it on top it weighs 69 G

And if I scoop my flour out of this bag like this and press it against the side it weighs 95 G so a half a cup of flour is not an exact measurement and if I fed my starter with 95 G of flour and 60 G of water thinking that those were an

Equal measurement I’d have a very dry starter and if you try to compare that to other people’s starters it might not bubble the same way it might not rise the same way and then people say what’s wrong with my starter my starter doesn’t look like everybody else’s it’s because

Your half cup of flour weigh 95 gram not 60 now people ask what kind of Jar should you use some people say use a giant jar with a cloth cover this is ridiculous first of all you don’t need a cloth cover people think that you need

To put a cloth cover on here and this could be cheesecloth a coffee filter a paper towel you see all kinds of things that people recommend because they think your starter needs to breathe and they think that somehow yeast is going to fall down through here and help your

Starter grow faster both of those things are inaccurate what happens with these cloth covers is they allow a lot of air into the jar and it allows the surface of the starter to dry out and you know what likes a dry starter surface mold 99% of the time that you see mold

Growing in a sourdough starter it’ll be on the dried out sides of the jar that weren’t scraped down properly or it’ll be on the surface where it’s starting to dry out and if you use a cloth cover on your jar like this there are things falling through the air but it’s not

Yeast let me tell you it’s mold spores so look what I’ve created here I’ve created a mold collection net so for 24 hours there’s mold blowing around in my in my house and it’s going to cover this paper cover and then right when I get ready to feed my starter the next day

And I touch this paper lid all that mold showers down on top of my starter when I go like this oh I just covered everything that was collected on this that permeated through the cloth is now on top of my starter I don’t want that

You want to use a real lid on your jar the jar the lid that comes with these giant jars is actually perfect just put that glass lid L on there but now let’s talk about the jar the jar is ridiculously large you don’t need to keep this much starter and some people

Do this because they say I have a big family and I want to bake a lot of bread so I need a lot of starter for your daily maintenance of your starter and more importantly when you’re creating a starter for the first time in the first

10 to 14 days you want to keep as little starter as possible because you’re discarding most of it you don’t want to have to use a jar like this or you’ll spend the fortune on flour in the first two weeks here’s my starter jar this is

All I use to create a new starter and for my daily maintenance I keep 150 gram or less if you’re creating a new starter I recommend about 100 to 150 gram that’s a reasonably good amount for my daily maintenance when I’m not creating a new starter I keep 75 gram of starter then

The night before I get ready to bake and I say I’m going to bake eight loaves so I need 800 grams of starter then you get out your big vessel and what I’ll do is I’ll use 40 G out of here that’s all I need and I’ll

Add that to 400 G of flour and 400 G of water that gives me 840 gram of starter it’s enough for eight loaves with a little bit of leftover so you can use this jar to create a that’s what it’s called when you create the offshoot of your starter

To bulk it up for baking but you would never maintain a sardo starter in a jar like this unless you’re baking multiple loaves 365 days of the year or if you just want to waste a lot of flour now people ask about the lid do I need to

Have an airtight lid do I need to let it breathe what I recommend is you should have a normal lid like this a plastic lid so when this is on top of it nothing’s falling into my jar during the day when the starter is sitting there

And then when this sits on my countertop you want this to be able to expel gases because of starter will create carbon Dio dioxide and it will create pressure in your jar so you don’t want to crank this down airtight because you can actually theoretically crack the jar or

Blow the top off of it so what I do is I tighten it down then I back it up a quarter turn hear that noise hear that sound that’s the sound of carbon dioxide coming out and oxygen going in so my starter can breathe it can off gas carbon dioxide without

Blowing up the jar you want it to sound just like that a lot of the sourdough recipes I see out there say each day when you feed your starter you should discard half and feed equal parts I don’t know where these people went to school but that math just

Doesn’t work here’s what happens let’s say on day one I have 50 g of starter that’s my 50 poker chips and I’m going to feed that 50 g of flour and 50 g of water these two parts are equal the flour and the water now on day two I

Follow the instructions that say discard half and feed equal parts discarding half of this is half of 150 which is 75 so now my carryover starter grows to 75 G and I discard 75 of what’s remaining but now if I feed this the same equal parts that I fed the first day

50 g of flour and 50 g of water my total starter quantity has grown now from 150 to 175 G and I’m under feeding my starter because now I have one and a half times the carryover that I had before and I’m still feeding the same

Amount of flour and same amount of water so look what happens each day then this day when I discard now I’m keeping 88 grams the next day I feed that 50 grams of flour and 50 grams of water I’ve grown to 188 total grams the next day I

Discard half of 188 and I end up with 94 G of starter carried over which I feed 50 gram of flour and water that creates 194 gram of total and then the fifth day I now carry over 97 G of carryover starter and I have 50 g of flour and 50

G of water look what I just did in five days I basically am underfeeding my starter by half I’m still feeding at 50 grams of flour and 50 g grams of water but by discarding half each day I’m carrying over eventually 100 gram of carryover starter this builds up a huge

Amount of acidity and waste in your starter and it’s unhealthy so don’t discard half and refeed equal parts the math just doesn’t work now some people say no no Tom Tom you misunderstood discard half and feed equal parts means you always discard half but then you you

Feed the amount of that half equal parts flour and equal parts water that’s what that means oh really wow let’s do that math okay day one 50 gram of carryover starter 50 gram of flour 50 gram of water I discard half that means I keep

75 G of carryover I discard the rest and now I feed 75 G of flour and 75 G of water so I just increased my total size of my starter from 150 g to 225 g by adjusting my equal parts for the amount that I retain

Now what happens the next day now I have 75 G of each I discard half of that now I need to feed it 112 G of flour and 112 G of water to equal the carryover what happens on day four I need to feed it

168 G of flour 168 G of water to keep the parts equal then on day five I’m feeding at 252 G of flour and 252 G of water look now I have 756 gam of starter in five feedings I’ve increased my starter quantity by five times and this keeps going by day seven

I’d be feeding this an entire bag of flour that’s why they told me I needed the big jar because I wasn’t feeding it properly this is crazy it doesn’t make any sense and now you’re like Tom enough the charts the graphs the math Ju Just

Tell me how to fix this thing it’s easy if you want to feed equal parts each day without your starter growing in volume or without underfeeding your starter you need to discard 2/3 so on day one I have 50 gr of starter 50 g of flour 50 g of

Water that’s 150 g of starter total I discard 2/3 2/3 of 150 is 100 which is exactly the amount of flour and water I fed the previous day so I have 50 g remaining the next day I feed equal parts 50 g of starter 50 g of flour 50

Gs of water works every day 150 minus 100 goes back out so if you’re doing a one one one feeding ratio that’s equal parts carryover starter flour and water you discard 2/3 if you’re doing a one 122 feeding ratio which is what I recommend in My Method you would discard

80% and then you would feed two times flour and two times water compared to your carryover starter and now some people say this guy is too much you think the Egyptians were weighing their flour and water in ancient times here’s a picture from 5,000 years ago of a scale from an

Egyptian pyramid here’s a picture of an actual 5,000 year old scale so yes I believe that the most advanced civilization on Earth at that time that was building astronomically aligned pyramids and could lift a 5,000 lb Stone on top of a 500 foot high structure I

Think they knew how to weigh flour and water now when you’re creating a new starter discarding and refeeding that’s your job that you’re doing to help the starter grow now some people they don’t like to waste flour so they say you can use your discard to make tasty pancakes

And waffles during this time that you’re discarding to get your starter up to full strength in roughly 10 days don’t do that you should never save your discard until your starter is fully established the reason is because flour is a raw food everything that’s in the wheat field ends up in the

Bag of flour flour is looks white it’s not sterilized it’s not pasteurized the your starter can contain a lot of nasty stuff imagine when birds are flying over the wheat field you know they don’t have a bathroom up there when there are cows dropping cow pies in the

Field next to the wheat field and the Flies are on the cow pie and then the flies come into the wheat field and land on the wheat berry that stuff ends up in a bag of stuff flour it’s disgusting but it’s true the Food and Drug Administration

Says flour is a raw food and you should never eat uncooked flour because it can contain bacteria like eoli and salmonella now normally you don’t worry about that when you’re using flour and baking because you’re mixing it up and then you’re baking it you know an hour

Later and the oven will kill that that but in a sourdough starter you’re mixing dormant eoli and salmonella in a jar and you’re leaving that on your countertop for 10 days so you should imagine that your jar of starter is like a jar of raw chicken until your starter is fully

Established you certainly wouldn’t keep the discard if there was a piece of raw chicken in here now some people might say wow Tom that’s kind of gross I’m not sure I really want to get in this business of making sourdough bread this risk of contamination from these pathogens only exists when you’re

Creating a new starter once you’ve created an established starter which is usually around 10 days your starter has a low PH which means a high level of acidity a low ph and a high level of acidity is just like vinegar so after 10 days imagine instead of having flour and

Water sitting on your countertop you have flour and vinegar sitting on your countertop the vinegar repels mold it kills off Foreign pathogens if you looked at how should I clean my kitchen after I’ve cut a piece of raw chicken on my countertop people will say use Vine

Use vinegar to clean it if you say uh I have I have mold in my kitchen how do I clean mold use vinegar your your sourd starter has this own antibacterial antiseptic property built into it so once it’s established you don’t need to worry about those things

But for day 1 through day 10 you want to be careful with it and don’t keep your discard now I’m saying day 10 I shouldn’t be arbitrary don’t keep your discard until your starter is mature mature is usually around day 10 and the way you measure that is you have a

Mature starter when it doubles in volume after a one 111 feeding at about 74° fhe or 23° C that is kind of the universal test of a mature starter it’s very easy to measure once your starter is doing that that pH level is very low the

Acidity level is high and then it’s safe in your kitchen then some people say I don’t like wasting food so I don’t want to discard at all why do I need to discard there are a couple reasons the the first one we just talked about is that the raw

Flow when it’s exposed to water it reactivates harmful pathogens so that discarding is basically flushing out those that bad bacteria that occurs early in the process so that’s part of the reason you have to discard the second reason you have to discard is because as your starter ferments as the

Yeast starts growing it gives off alcohol as the lactic acid bacteria starts growing it creates vinegar those things start to choke off the yeast so when you’re discarding you’re basically it’s like cleaning an aquarium I mean if you have an aquarium and you put your fish

In there and you never clean it out the algae will start to take over and the fish will start to choke to death and die that happens in your sourdough starter every day your yeast starts to choke off and die because the starter is full of waste products alcohol and acid

So you have to clear out some of that waste product and then make room for clean flour fresh flour and clean water so that the yeast can have another run at growing its population it’s really as simple as that and the last reason we need to discard is because you know what

Likes an inactive starter mold what we’re doing is we’re trying to change the chemical balance of this jar of flour and water as quickly as possible to get it to repel foreign pathogens like ecoli and salmonella and to repel mold and the way that we do

That is by turning it into vinegar that discarding and refeeding process I keep focusing on the yeast but that’s also feeding the lactic acid bacteria which is the defender of the starter because it’s creating acid that keeps away the foreign pathogens and then some people say I

Hear you man but I don’t like wasting flour okay listen when you create a sourdough starter what I recommend is you use 50 g of flour per day in 10 days that’s 500 G of flour 500 G of flour is a little over 1 PB of flour which is 1/5

Of this bag of flour so you you need to for 10 days waste 50 gr of flour each day day throw it in the trash that’s going to cost you about $2 maybe less depending on how much you pay for your flow the cost of creating a souro

Starter that will last for the rest of your life and you can pass on to your children and your children’s children is about $2 suck it up and discard now a lot of new sourdough starter recipes recommend that you discard and feed every 24 hours now that’s not horrible advice by itself but

There are a few cases where that can significantly weaken your starter and let me give you two examples one is the method that I use which is largely based on Chad Robertson’s Tartine method for creating a new starter basically you mix flour and water on the first day and you don’t

Discard or feed until the fourth day so you basically let that sit for 72 hours before the first discard now think about why you would want to do that because if you remember what we talked about the microbes that are in this bag of whole wheat flour these are dormant they come

From the wheat Fields so basically we’re giving this 3 days before the first discard to get as many of those microbes reactivated before we do the first discard that’s the the science behind waiting 3 days to do that I believe that the population that you end up with at

The end of say 10 to 14 days is essentially the population that gets started in those 3 days that yeast population determines the speed of that curve and that’s why you can finish in 10 days for example versus if you’re discarding and feeding every day you’re

Throwing away 23 birds or more of that nent yeast population that you just reactivated from the bag of flour so different methods treat the first few days differently but in my experience you want to eek as much out of those first few days as possible before the first

Discard the other problem with a 24-hour discard and feeding cycle is that when you use a fixed arbitrary schedule like that the yeast doesn’t know what time it is lactic acid bacteria doesn’t know what time it is and sometimes your feeding cycle can get out of sync with

The starter’s growth cycle now if you think of a mature starter you discard and feed that and then you’ll see the starter grow in height that’s the yeast reproducing reproducing reproducing then it gets up to a peak in height and then it starts to fall that’s when the starter has passed its optimal

Population from a yeast perspective and the starter becomes acidic and when it becomes acidic that’s not good and it will start to fall then you’re going to discard and refeed again when you have a mature starter it’s very easy to see that cycle because the starter is rising

And falling with a new starter it doesn’t rise and fall it’s flat so what you have to use as a proxy is the bubbles on the surface so what you want to do after you feed your starter is watch the bubbles on the surface if the bubbles are increasing in size or in

Number that means there’s still plenty of food left and the yeast is still healthy reproducing and creating carbon dioxide when the number of bubbles stops or if the size of the bubbles start to shrink and they become pinpoint bubbles that’s where it’s crossed over that Peak population and it’s starting to become a

Acidic so by watching your starter you want to be very aware of where it is in that that feeding and growth cycle so here’s an example and when this is most important is during those quiet days after the initial starter feeding you’ll see that big false rise of the bacterial

Bloom then your startle will become dormant typically around days four 5 6 7 and it’ll very very slowly show activity it’s during those days that it’s most important to try to read the surface bubbles to the determine when you should feed so for example let’s say on day

Four I feed my starter I wait 24 hours and on let’s say the morning of day five I look at my starter and there are two or three bubbles on the surface two or three bubbles is not a lot so what I would do is I would wait and watch and I

Would wait six more hours 12 more hours 18 more hours 24 hours and here’s what I’m looking for there were three bubbles on the surface in the morning 6 hours later there’s 10 bubbles on the surface that’s good it needs more time it’s still healthy it’s eating I check it 6

Hours later there are 20 bubbles on the surface that’s great there’s still plenty of food the yeast is happy then the next 6 hours I look at it and those bubbles haven’t increased in number and they’re starting to shrink in size that’s when you discard and refeed

That’s the optimal time now you can imagine that cycle is never going to fall exactly on a 24-hour cycle so people say discard and feed every day I say that as well but if you read my method in detail during those middle days where the the the the starter is slowly growing in

Activity you use what I call the watch and waight method which is check in at 24 hours but don’t automatically refeed it 24 hours use your eyes look at the starter and say does this look stronger than it was the day before and if it doesn’t look stronger than the day

Before give it 6 hours give it 12 hours and you can read the bubbles on the surface that is the art of feeding your sourd starter and that’s how you can really compress the the creation process into 10 days maybe 14 days if you miss that cycle every day you’re prematurely

Discarding before the yeast has time to go back to its previous population so here’s an example of how this works now let’s assuming I’m doing that one one1 feeding ratio and let’s say I keep 30 gram of starter I feed it 30 gram of flour and 30 gram of water

Every morning and then just to keep the math simple let’s assume that that 30 gram of carryover starter has 30 yeast cells in it and that’s what we’re most interested in is the number of yeast cells so during the day that yeast needs to reproduce to become 60 yeast cells 90 yeast cells

Just to get back to where it was the previous day before we discarded 2/3 if I discard too early if I discard before that Peaks because I’m doing it on an arbitrary 24-hour schedule for example let’s say I discarded and I was only at 60 yeast cells now I discard 2/3

Of 60 my starting population yesterday was 30 now it’s 20 so I’ve actually weakened my starter by feeding it too early so now 20 becomes 40 40 has to become 60 just to get back to where I was the day before but again I cut it off based on a strict 24-hour schedule

And let’s say I fed it when it was only back to 40 yeast cells you can see what happens here by discarding 2/3 every time you’re feeding the the starter has to exceed its growth from the previous day to get new new growth in the starter population so by discarding arbitrarily if you’re

Feeding before it Peaks it weakens your starter so the whole idea is you want to be aware of what your starter is doing you want to observe it and you want to synchronize your feeding schedule with the starter’s eating schedule it’s very important now the way this synchronization works you want to

Synchronize the feed schedule with the eating schedule it’s just like surfing and you’re like what does this guy know about surfing he lives in Ohio I really don’t know anything about surfing but if I did I’d be surfing out in California with Johnny Utah and bod so let’s say

Were out there and they’re trying to mess with me and I’m trying to learn how to surf and they say Tom this is easy just stand up on your board every 5 minutes no matter what happens just get up on your board that’s the best way to

Surf so every 5 minutes I’m looking at my watch and I’m getting up on my board and I’m missing all the waves sometimes the waves come early sometimes the waves come late and they’re kind of laughing at me and then I say guys this doesn’t make any sense it seems like what you

Guys are doing the experience guys is you’re watching the wave and when the wave comes in you’re catching it right at the crest of the wave that’s exactly what you want to do with your starter the waves are the bubble when it’s at maximum bubble activity that’s the crest

Of the wave that’s when you get up on the board you discard and you refeed what that does is it incrementally strengthens your starter by catching the top of that wave every time now the typical life cycle of a of creating a sourdough starter roughly in

10 days is that you won’t see anything on day one or two you see the big false rise around day three that’s the bacterial Bloom then it goes quiet on days four 5 6 maybe 7 and then Days 7 8 9 10 you’ll start to see it actually

Rising in height the biggest mistake people make is during that quiet period in the Middle where the starter looks like it’s not doing anything and a lot of the guidance that you will read says if your starter is not Rising then instead of discarding and feeding once a day you need to discard

And feed twice a day or instead of feeding 111 you need to feed 122 this doesn’t make any sense I mean you know this from the previous segment that we just talked about because when people talk about feeding and discarding they’re focused on the feeding and they

Think you can make your starter grow faster by force feeding it you can’t force feed your starter it’s impossible and what they fail to recognize is that every time you feed your starter the more important thing that you’re doing is your discarding so now if you said my

Starter is really weak it’s not doing anything think about the discarding the recommendation is if your starter is weak and you were discarding 2/3 of it every 24 hours the way to make it stronger is to discard 2/3 of it every 12 hours that’ll really make it strong

And on top of that instead of discarding 2/3 you should discard 80% that’s the one two2 feeding this doesn’t make any sense at all all doesn’t make any sense so if your starter is not showing bubble activity it’s not eating the food yeast does not eat in secret if it’s eating

The food you see bubbles if it’s not eating the food you don’t see bubbles if you don’t see bubbles there’s no reason to refeed your starter it still has a full plate it’s like Thanksgiving dinner is piled right in front of it it hasn’t eaten the food yet always wait until you

See the bubbles the bubbles don’t lie and if you prematurely feed and discard a weak starter you make it weaker now that’s a general rule that I would recommend at all times for a mature starter never discard and refeed your starter before it peaks in height or bubble activity there is one

Exception with a new sourdough starter some starters just get off to a slow start so what I recommend is always watch the bubbles if it doesn’t look like it needs to be fed at 24 hours wait 36 hours wait 48 hours but if you’re still not seeing any increase in bubble

Activity after 48 hours I still recommend discarding and refeeding a new starter at the 48 hour mark the reason for that is because sometimes a new starter can become acidic you never know what the population of the yeast is in the bag of flour versus the lactic acid

Bacteria and you might just draw a bad lottery ticket that has a lot of lactic acid bacteria and not very much yeast so what happens is the lactic acid bacteria outruns the yeast and it creates vinegar basically in the starter and when it creates that acidic vinegar it chokes

Off the yeast and the yeast won’t grow so if you don’t see any activity in 48 hours like in in those middle days days four 5 six 7 that sometimes mean that the starters real acidic and it can benefit then from discarding and refeeding because you’re discarding a

Large portion of the acidity and you’re giving the the the yeast a little breathing room to actually create the yeast population so here’s the bottom line with my recommendation use that 24-hour feeding cycle as a checkpoint at 24 hours look at your starter and say does this look

More active than it was yesterday when I fed it if it doesn’t you want to give it more time now what I do is if I’m going to give it more time at that 24-hour Mark I’ll actually Stir It Up stirring your starter never hurts it and

Sometimes it can help it and a thing that likes an inactive starter is mold so if you are going to let it sit more than 24 hours Stir It Up then check it at 30 hours 36 hours 40 hours watch for that bubble activity if the bubble

Activity is increasing give it more time if it starts to decrease discard and refeed but if you get to 48 hours with no activity that means your starter might be acidic then do your normal discard and refeed and check it in 24 hours after that now some people say if you follow

Their starter recipe you’ll be baking sourdough in seven days don’t get your hopes up that is it’s possible but it is incredibly uncommon if you do everything right and you draw a good lottery ticket with your bag of flour you should have a starter ready to bake with in 10 to 14 days

That’s the range that I would suggest here’s a recent study from North Carolina State University they recently created 10 starters in a laboratory using 10 different types of flower and in that study they said that it took 10 to 14 days to create a mature sourdough

Starter some people might say 7 days I’m going with North Carolina State University laboratory scientists 10 to 14 days is a good estimate but the calendar is arbitrary what if you get to 14 days do you just declare hey North Carolina State University said your starter will be

Ready in 14 days I must be done there is a test to determine when your sourdough starter is ready for baking here it is when you give your starter a one1 feeding that’s equal parts carryover starter flour and water it should double in volume in 4 to 6 hours at a room

Temperature of 74° f or 23° c if your kitchen is cooler your starter will take longer to double it can be the exact same strength of starter but it just takes longer to double based on the temperature so for example if my starter doubled in volume in 6 hours in my

Kitchen at 74° F or 23° C the general rule of thumb is that for every 15° change in Fen or 8° change in Celsius the time for your starter to double will double in time so if it takes 6 hours at 74° fah that would be 12 hours at 59° F

Or 15° C it’s the exact same starter it’s the same strength it just takes longer to rise at cooler temperatures the fermentation process is temperature sensitive and you want to apply that concept across everything I talked about today the 24-hour feeding rule Etc if your kitchen is very cold the process

Will still work but it will just be slower so let’s say my kitchen temperature is in the low 70s Fahrenheit low 20 cels but your kitchen is 60° F or 15° C everything will take longer I might feed my starter every 24 hours you might feed your starter every 48 Hours

The temperature is is like the clock as far as the yeast is concerned now the last thing we need to talk about is mold if you are a responsible sourdough starter Creator you need to be on the lookout for mold because there is a risk of mold growing

In your sourdough starter from day one up until it fully matures let’s call that day 10 and it’s more more risky earlier than it is later so you really want to be on the lookout early on if you get mold in your starter you need to

Throw it away and start over again you can’t scoop it off the top if you’re seeing mold growth in your starter you have to assume that there’s mold growth all throughout it the tendrils from the mold will go down into the starter throw it out and start over again it’s not

Worth it you’re only worst case 10 days into it by the time you’re 10 days into it a healthy starter will naturally repel mold now I don’t want mold in my kitchen and I definitely don’t want to eat mold so I’m always on the lookout for it but

Some people when they’re creating a starter are hypervigilant let me put it that way about mold growth I mean they will look at their starter and they’ll see one bubble that looks different than another bubble and say oh my gosh is that mold they’ll see some discoloration

In their starter and say I need to throw this away it’s gone moldy you know how to find out if it’s mold mold actually looks like mold it’s the gray fuzzy stuff that grows on cheese and on bread that’s what you want to look for in your

Starter and let me just say it is not subtle when it’s in there you’ll know it it’ll be gray and fuzzy and it’ll grow really fast and the areas where it typically grows are on the sides of the jar where it’s semi liquid and semi-dried out so you always want to

Scrape down the side of your jar and it’ll grow on the surface of your starter if your starter sits for a long time and it starts to get dried out on the surface those are the two most common places that you’ll see mold and as I said you’re more likely to see it

Early in the process versus late in the process now what I’m describing here is the classic mold the gray fuzzy stuff unmistakable but some other people will say you really need to watch out for red mold and pink mold and yellow mold and orange mold those are really dangerous

As well they are absolutely but let me just tell you something about sourdough starters when you mix a souro starter with whole wheat which I recommend using 50% whole wheat whole wheat is made from organic hard red whole wheat flour emphasis on red if I mix something that’s red with water

What color does that make pink so if you look at your starter and you say oh my God my starter is pink you put a red thing in your starter it’s going to look pink I’ve seen so many people throw away perfectly good starters because it has a

Little pink Hue to it the pink comes from the flower now there is a type of pink bacteria or it’s really red bacteria when you see that it will be slimy streaks throughout your starter it is unmistakable it’s not subtle it’s not a hint of pinkish color that’s from the

Red hole wheat that we put in there it will look red and it will look scary and you’ll know it as soon as you see it the same thing you’ll find with a yellow bacteria which people call yellow mold it’s not mold it’s a type of bacteria

When you see that it will be bright yellow it will look like somebody took a highlighter and highlighted the inside of your starter jar that’s yellow bacteria you need to get rid of that so if you see red slimy bacteria or yellow bacteria that looks as yellow as a lemon

Those are the two types of bacteria that you don’t want to see those are incredibly uncommon I participate in social media groups where people post hundreds of pictures a day is my starter moldy is my starter moldy the vast majority of the time it’s not the vast

Majority of the time that it is it’s the gray fuzzy type that’s unmistakable and the rare case that it’s yellow or red bacteria you’ll know it when you see it there’s a group on Facebook called the souro starter support group there are 425,000 members in that group if

Creating a sourdough starter was really as simple as putting flour and water in a jar I don’t think that group would exist and anybody who thinks it is that simple come join me in that group for a couple days and get a harsh dose of reality and I hope what you’ve learned

In this video is that the main reason people are struggling is because a lot of the popular advice is bad advice here’s a summary of what we talked about in this video with the red flags on the left and proven methods on the right now some people ask the question why is

It so difficult to create a sourdough starter I mean what did people do back in ancient times I mean it can’t be that difficult right it actually is kind of tricky and I used to think the same thing but then I thought back to ancient times when I realized that commercial

Yeast wasn’t created until 1822 that was roughly 200 years ago so prior pror to 200 years ago from the beginning of time anybody who ate leavened bread had a sourdough starter and anybody who baked bread had a sourdough starter everybody had a starter and you would give your

Starter to your friends you’d give your starter to your family there are probably there were probably generations of people who never knew a person who created a sourdough starter from scratch because that would have been crazy everybody had a sourdough starter it was the only way you could make bread so I

Would speculate there are more people on earth now let’s say in the last 12 months creating new sourdough starters from scratch then ever created a sourdough starter from scratch in the history of human civilization because that was the only way to make bread and everybody had one

And if you had one you gave it to somebody else so now if you need a Sourdough starter you can buy one which I highly recommend I mean there’s no shame in buying a sourdough starter you can go on the King Arthur website you can buy a fresh jar of sourdough starter

Get it delivered delivered to your house feed it one time and you can be baking in 48 hours I mean it’s good to go you can buy dehydrated sourdough starter so if you’re just getting started with making sourdough bread I actually recommend that you buy one or borrow one

Or ask a friend for a sourdough starter so you can get started baking and if you really love it then you can create your own starter at any time and then you don’t feel like you’re under so much time pressure to get it done real quickly because you’re still baking

Bread with your old starter thank you for sticking with me on this long video I know how frustrating it can be when you’re trying to create a sourdough starter you’re reading a hundred different things on the internet you don’t know what to believe I hope this helped you in some

Way I obviously couldn’t cover everything here so check out my other videos related to starters and in particular check out the tools and the frequently asked questions that I have on my website at the sourdo journey.com there’s a lot more information out there good luck on your sourdo journey and

Good luck with your new sourdough Starter A