Sourdough made simple

How to make your own starter

By Liz Crain

April 22, 2008

Every sourdough-starter recipe is different, but most need weeks of sitting and feeding before they’re ready for baking. Breadchick, of the food blog The Sour Dough, recently posted a step-by-step guide — with photos — to her super-easy Sourdough Starter on Training Wheels.

Although Breadchick writes that some may criticize her starter for containing a pinch of yeast and sugar in the seed mixture — many sourdough diehards feel that a true starter should contain wild yeast only — she adds,

Nothing breeds curiosity and the desire to learn more about bread baking than success at bread baking. I firmly believe the reason so many people are scared to death of baking with yeast, any type of yeast, is because they have tried before and failed or have heard horror stories about how hard it is to make bread. I think that is sad. Even sadder is that there is this whole group of bread bakers out there who pride themselves on ridiculing and talking down to beginners.

Breadchick’s starter recipe is easy to maintain and very stable, two characteristics uncommon for most sourdough starters. And since she’s been blogging about this particular starter since mid-March, you can join in on the discussion and find out how her readers’ sourdough starters are doing.

If you take a peek and still feel like it requires too much time and effort, you can always purchase a sourdough starter and skip all the starter steps. Whatever gets that homemade bread baking.