Chef John's Sourdough Starter

I named my starter "Abreadnego" because it's going in "the firey furnace. *Ba-dum-ching!*

Awesome video and no problem on the starter. On the 10th day said starter rose over double. I used bread flour and whole wheat flour and tap water. I baked a small loaf that was sooo good. My only question is how to store it. Once a day feeding if left refrigerated and once a week feeding if left unrefrigerated. What is proper technique for both?

I did all this and my sourdough starter is a champ. Named him Lievito Corleone. Unlike some of the drier starters, this takes on a really lovely lactic/acetic balance that makes a subtly sour bread. Or maybe it's just the bacteria in my house (?). It took 10 days to be ready to bake - went through a very acetic acid period for about the next 4 days. I switched his feedings to a white whole wheat and he's happy as a bubbly clam. Thank you!

Don’t throw out or waste the part that you need to take out! Just pour some olive oil in a pan and fry it up. Add some chopped chives or green onions, Italian herbs, and coarse sea salt. It’s delicious!

My start is about 4 months old now. It takes a bit of watching and getting the hang of the timing but once you do, this makes some amazing bread. The flavor is unique and changes with the timing of the rise (longer rise = more sour). I use this in Chef John's no-knead artisan in place of the commercial yeast (remove yeast, add 75g start, stir the start into the warm water before adding to the flour) and it is delicious. For feeding, i use 50g/50g flour/water (this is 1/3 cup with my flour and sifting method). Keeping a living start 24/7 eats through some flour. PS. I named mine Ichibod Grain. oh yes, i did. enjoy that.

Mine turned out really good. When it came to discarding I would often put it in another bowl and continue feeding both. I ended up having three starters going at once. It was good as I did have one of the starters not do so well and one did go bad but having two or three on the go just meant I didn’t have to restart. Worked really well. I also found feeding roughly at the same time every day worked well. I’ve experimented with other starter recipes and attempts. Also don’t forget it in the fridge. Sounds easy enough but when you’re time poor it’s easy to do. Set a reminder if you have to.

On day three and is coming along great.Naming mine Sir Loafsalot

Today I have to make new starter because I messed up my initial one by adding BREAD MAKING ingredients to it. YIKES. This recipe is spot on. I used it to make so many loves of bread that I didn't even bother to count. So easy, just takes some time. I know I'll have no problem making new starter. Breadmaking, here I come in 10 or less days. :) A French exchange student stays in the home for the school year. She finds this bread IRRESISTIBLE! She said it taste like home.

My little pet is doing really well. Haven't named it yet. Very excited to make sourdough for my family. Thanks for the straightforward recipe/tutorial. I came across many on the internet but it's great to see one that's accessible to even the beginner bread maker.

So far so good. I made bread on day 9 and refrigerated the rest of the starter. Prepping to make bread again in 2 days, so the starter is out of the refrig and will feed it for 2 days again.

This starter was easy and created a great bread! My only issue (user error most likely) was that by day 6 or 7, removing 140 was basically all of the starter. Luckily I used it that night for bread but I basically had to remake it from scratch since 100 grams was almost all of my starter. Not sure what I did wrong here. Otherwise, easy and smelled great!

What do you do with the half you keep removing in step 3

This is my first attempt at anything NOT in a bread machine. hahaha! I was a bit intimidated, but I just followed the steps and never missed a feeding of my "Yeast of Burden". There were a few times where I thought I messed up and it wasn't going to work...but kept pushing along. My starter took an extra day or 2 to finally start rising nicely. I made my first loaf of sourdough bread using Chef John's Sourdough Bread recipe on this site. OHMYGOODNESS - I DID IT!!! It's AMAZING! I got a little over-anxious and took it out of the oven a couple of minutes to early..AND I sliced it still warm —because after 15 days...I couldn't wait an extra 20 minutes! Oh - and I just used regular all-purpose flour because not any store ANYWHERE has any other type right now. Seems EVERYONE is baking. I didn't have the banneton so I followed the alternative directions provided.

I quit buying bread and bake all my own. I wanted a starter that was developed naturally, not started with yeast. I have two, one with bread flour and one with wheat and rye. Both are just what I wanted. Chef John has provided many techniques that I use daily in my kitchen.

Love this starter, great directions! Just one thing, mine never doubled in the 10 days.

Great flavor when I made the sourdough bread.

I used rye flour for my first three feedings to "jump start" my starter, then switched to all-purpose flour. It is happy and active and makes great bread!

It took about 2 weeks to ripen. I had to switch jars half way through because there was a little mold starting at the top of the jar, but the starter was fine.

Took me at least 3 weeks to get this thing going! I was getting bubbles & hooch but not enough rise. Once the weather warmed up that really helped. You need to keep this warmer than the recipe calls for.

Just started my starter, thank you for the weights, gave me a reason to use my food scale. For those that think grams are difficult if you read through Chef John does explain. A gram is a weight in the US too! (unless we start taking medication by the 1/2 cup, yikes!). I think I'll keep it simple and name him Bob. I did use rye flour day one, and plan to feed with white flour cause I have alot more of that on hand. For ease of feeding I weighed out flour in sandwich bags for the next 9 days. Looking forward to some tasty carbs!

This worked perfectly and the bread from this starter is delicious!

I have had experience with sourdough before, and I decided to try out this recipe when my other starter went bad. I made a whole wheat starter and one with AP flour (this is what I had used previously). The AP was ready to use the next evening (starter is ready if you spoon a little bit into a cup of water and it floats) while the Whole Wheat took a couple of days. This is a good recipe and I will definitely use again.

Easy to follow instructions with excellent results. I saved the discard to make something savoury or sweet.

I made this as directed, and now having it saved in my fridge for the time when I feel brave enough to attempt the Sourdough bread recipe.

I made this with smaller measurements and didn't actually take any out - I figured flour is cheap so I experimented. Still worked great and I used our well water. I started this process about 2 weeks ago and I'm baking my second batch of bread right now.

I love this very easy starter. It's what I use now. The only changes I did make is using whole wheat for my flour. Make sure you follow the weight requirements.

worked awesome!!!

Very robust sourdough starter. It actually took 12 days to be ready for bread. I initially used unbleached white flour, but now feed a white/ whole wheat equal portions blend.

I just finished the starter, and it'S bubbly and smells wonderful after ten days. Ready to make bread today.

I must be doing something wrong because my starter doesn’t rise at all after feeding, even after ten days. I’m pretty good in the kitchen, used a scale to measure the flour and water, and used bottled water. Super bummed. My scale is not digital, so maybe the amounts I added weren’t exactly equal.

I just started making this. I have been using half whole wheat half all purpose flour. I did notice that doing the weights that the consistency wasn’t quite right. Too thick. So I added more water so it looked like the video. Was up to 85-90 g water and 70g flour mix

Great recipe! I was very frustrated with a different (well known) method that was just not taking off. After going through half a bag of flour, I pitched it and tried Chef John's method with great success. Just a few days to go before it will be strong enough to bake my first loaf, but after about 6 days, it's well on it's way.

poor directions!

This is very easy to make, yet unfortunately wastes all the good flour (since you have to toss 1/2 every day). Yes, I used some of it to make bread on day 3 and 5, yet you still have waste, but that's just the way it is. I'll have to see how it holds up in my fridge over a longer period of time.

It made me this pizza a forgot to take pic of it

Several years ago I attempted sourdough... and, of course, we all know real/authentic/primitive/whatever you want to call it sourdough begins with a starter. I've seen starters that call for commercial yeast (which kind of defeats the point in my opinion) and I've seen starters that call for all sorts of extra or special ingredients to make it rise (which.. also kind of defeats the purpose in my opinion). I really just wanted a basic, plain starter - flour and water.

Years ago when I tried creating a starter I went to a very well known, popular flour manufacturer's website for the instructions. Every batch I tried ended up going rotten.

Fast forward a few years and my husband innocently asks me "Hey, do you think you can learn how to make sourdough bread? Like, real sourdough bread?"

Since my previous attempts had been so awful I decided to look elsewhere for the instructions for a basic, authentic starter. I followed Chef John's instructions and based on the advice of a reviewer here ended up taking some of the "discard" and feeding it too. I ended up with three starters (just in case).

It look my starters a LOT longer than the 10 days (I know that's an estimate) to get them where they needed to be. We've had a spring this year though where it was summer (with tons of humidity, low 80s) during the day and winter (low to mid 30s) at night.... so I am sure that was partially the reason it took them so long.

Gradually the weather began to stabilize and then we finally found some unbleached whole wheat flour. I swapped from feeding them unbleached white bread flour to unbleached whole wheat and really saw a huge increase in activity.

I noticed that several reviewers on Chef John's Sourdough bread complained about the dough being too runny or too watery. Had I gone by the estimated (I know that he had to put something down for timing and that it varies wildly and he stresses this in his video) 10 days on the starter mine would have been an utter failure as well. (And I'm not saying that's what happened in their cases.... I don't know the details.. I am just stating a thought that I had while looking at my starter about two weeks into this...that the resulting dough would have been too thin and watery).

As long as the starter was good and developing I didn't see any point in being impatient so I didn't really want to attempt the bread until I was happy with the starter. I had read elsewhere that really a starter needs a full month of feeding before using.... I'm sure that's entirely subjective.. but even after several weeks my starters all looked too thin and runny (even though they were doubling in size).

So, I kept at it for a full month before attempting to bake anything. Basically... I waited until larger bubbles were visible on the sides of the clear containers in the starters themselves and once the starters felt like biscuit dough and were very thick when trying to stir (the whole wheat helped here too with getting a thick starter... I use white unbleached bread flour in the bread recipe itself).

Since ultimately I decided I wanted bigger starters what I ended up doing was just combining two of the three starters, mixing it together, discarding half and then feeding back at those adjusted proportions.

So, I went from three to two starters. I then did the same thing with the other starter (took the discard from the smaller starter and fed it for several weeks until it looked good, combined the two starters, discarded half and feed again using adjusted proportions). What I've ended up with are two large starters. I just decided it would be better to have a backup (just in case something happens to one of them) and I also wanted enough starter to be able to use in recipes that call for a larger quantity.

I could have just began my starter (from the very beginning, day 1) using more flour and water obviously however.... I just wanted to explain that you can do this even if you began/started out with a smaller quantity as I did.

Chef John's simple yet detailed instructions on sourdough starter creation were simple enough but he made sure to include some key points. The first time(s) I attempted sourdough starters I was using instructions from that very well known flour manufacturer. They didn't seem to think it important that things like water that had been dechlorinated and unbleached flour were important to mention. They also advised to use a "scant cup of flour" to begin the starter with. I get trying to keep it simple but I also think maybe, just maybe they should have stressed or at least just mentioned how vitally important keeping everything balanced and in proportion is to creating a successful starter.

Thank you, thank you, thank you Chef John for explaining things in a way that makes sense. I've literally gone from feeling like this form of bread making was completely out of my reach to having enjoyed several loaves from your fabulous sourdough bread recipe in just over a month!

This makes a lovely starter! It took me a while to get rising properly, probably because my thermostat is set at 62 degrees. To fix this, I added a little rye flour (about 10-15%) to my bread flour and increased the time between feedings. I did a three day rotation: feed in the morning, feed at night the next day, skip the third day, feed in the morning again, ect. After a few days, my starter was doubling and tripling in size between feedings. Just some hints for those who are trying to decrease their electrical bill!

I literally just started my starter, with 1/2 whole wheat & 1/2 AP flour. I've decided to name him 'Seymour' because I want to remember to "FEED ME SEYMOUR". (OK... I know it was Audrey's line but if it helps me remember!) More later... Day 3: He's making bubbles & smelling funky, like Chef John said. It was hard to throw out 1/2 of him, but...

tried it twice both times no rise at all , followed the recipe gospel but no luck . advice welcome !!

I have to say that the combination of the flours that Chef John used in the beginning of his video threw me off, however I did use all purpose flour only and so far - day 3, it 'looks' OK. Hey, if it doesn't work, whats the harm, I'll just start all over again, until I get it right! Thanks to Chef John, I am on my way to making sourdough bread!

Makes a wonderful starter!!!