How I Keep My Sourdough Starter Alive

Whether I mailed you this starter or you grew your own, here is what it is and how I keep mine. It is a jar of flour, water, and the wild yeast and bacteria that raise your bread, and it is tougher than it looks. You do not have to feed it every day, you do not have to watch it, and you are not going to kill it by accident this week. Here is how little it really takes.

The day it arrives

Travel makes a starter sluggish, so do not read a slow first feed as a bad sign. Start by getting it to room temperature. If there is dark liquid on top, that is hooch, and it is normal: I stir mine back in to keep the hydration where it should be, though you can pour it off if you prefer. Once that is sorted, give it a feed using the amounts below, keeping about 20g and discarding the rest, then mark the level on the jar and leave the lid loose. It usually wakes up within a feed or two, so if it looks flat on the first day, that is fine. It is just hungry and a little jet-lagged from the trip.

How I feed it

The starter I keep is a 100% hydration one, which just means equal parts flour and water. It is the easiest to start from, and you can always take it stiffer or wetter from there. I feed it 1:5:5 by weight: one part old starter, five parts flour, five parts water, stirred together. So 20g of starter gets 100g of flour and 100g of water. That happens to be the same ratio Maurizio Leo of The Perfect Loaf uses, and it is slow on purpose. A bigger feed like this takes longer to peak, which buys you more time between feedings and less fuss. If you want a faster rise, use equal parts (1:1:1). It will be ready sooner and run out of food sooner.

The amount of old starter is a starting point, not a rule. Some weeks I use as little as 10g because that is all I have left, and it works fine. More flour and water per part of starter means slower and longer between feeds. A warmer kitchen means faster. You do not need to hit the grams exactly.

I feed half whole wheat and half all-purpose flour. The whole wheat brings more of what the yeast eats, so the starter is more active and more forgiving. Plain all-purpose or bread flour works too. A little whole grain or rye just gives it more life.

I keep about 100g going. When I want to bake, I build a separate levain off that, which is just a portion I feed up for that one bake, so the jar itself never runs down.

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Where it lives: the fridge

The fridge is its home, not a punishment. My routine: feed it, stir it, let it sit out until it has just started to rise, then put it in the fridge. The cold slows it almost to a stop, so an occasional feed is plenty.

Here is the part most guides bury: you do not have to feed it daily, or even every other day. I refresh mine roughly once a week, sometimes longer, sometimes less, and it is fine. Two to three weeks between feeds is easy for an established starter. Past a month it gets very sour and sleepy, but it is almost always still alive.

The trade-off, and the fix

Keeping it this relaxed has one side effect worth knowing: it drifts more acidic. The longer it sits unfed and cold, the more sour it gets. You will smell it, sharper and more vinegary, and it will rise a little less eagerly. That is not damage. The sourness is just where the starter landed, and it walks back easily.

Feed it a couple of times at room temperature, keeping a small spoonful and discarding the rest, and the fresh flour and water dilute the acid and bring the lift back. If it ever goes properly sour and sluggish, there is a full walk-through in how to fix an acidic starter. The short version: catch it on the way up and feed it big.

Using it to bake

There are two ways I use it, and which one depends on the bake.

The careful way is for a loaf I really want to show off. A day or two before, I take the starter out, feed it once or twice at room temperature, and use it once it has risen and looks alive. For a big bake I build the whole levain the night before, though the starter that builds it still comes straight from the fridge. When I need 800g of levain for eight loaves, I give that cold starter a full feed and let the levain rise to its peak overnight before I use it.

The everyday way is simpler. Once you know how your own jar behaves, you can pull it straight from the fridge and bake with it cold, especially if it was fed recently. It works a little slower and gives a little less rise, which is a fair trade for not having to plan a day ahead. Pizza is the easiest case of all, since I do a long, slow rise anyway. That long rise gives the cold starter time to catch up, so it does not need to be bubbling and risen the way it would for bread. Start with the careful way, and move to the cold-and-go way as you get a feel for your starter.

The normal weird stuff

A dark gray or brown liquid on top is hooch. It is alcohol from a hungry starter, and it is harmless. I stir mine back in, which keeps the hydration where it should be. You can pour it off instead if you want a milder starter, then feed.

A hungry starter can smell sharp, sour, boozy, even like nail polish. That is all normal. A flat, sunken look after a stretch in the fridge is normal too. None of that means throw it out.

If you forgot about it

A neglected starter almost always comes back. As long as there is no fuzzy mold and no pink or orange streaks or film, a hooch-covered, sleepy-looking starter just needs a few meals. Pour off the liquid or stir it in, keep a spoonful, and feed it at room temperature once or twice a day. The first feed will be slow. By the second or third it is usually back. A starter that looks flat and smells like paint thinner is almost never actually finished. Neglect does not end a starter. Only mold or that pink or orange does.

Quick answers

What flour? Whatever you bake with. Unbleached all-purpose or bread flour is fine. A little whole wheat or rye gives it more life. I feed half whole wheat, half all-purpose.

What water? Room temperature. If your tap is heavily chlorinated, let it sit out a while or use filtered.

What is a stiff starter? I also keep a stiffer one at 60% hydration, which just means less water, about 60% of the flour weight, closer to a 1:5:3 feed. It is kneaded like a small dough instead of stirred, ferments more slowly, and is even more forgiving if I miss a feed. The 100% one is simpler to start with, so that is what I share.

Special jar? No. Any clean jar with a loose lid.

That is really it. Keep it cold, feed it when you are going to bake, refresh it when it goes sharp, and use it. It is hard to kill, and it wants to work.