How to Feed & Maintain your Sourdough Starter
You’ve done it! You’ve created a living batter filled with wild yeast. Now let’s look at how to feed and maintain your sourdough starter so it stays healthy and ready to bake when you are.
If you haven’t made your starter yet, start here: How to Make Sourdough Starter from Scratch.
This post is part of my broader approach to sourdough baking. If you’d like a deeper look at feeding, maintenance, troubleshooting, and recipes, visit the Sourdough Baking Guide.
Table of contents
My Approach to Maintaining a Sourdough Starter
I tend to have a fairly relaxed attitude toward sourdough maintenance. Starters are resilient, and they don’t need to be handled with kid gloves to survive.
There are many ways to feed, maintain, and use a sourdough starter. Below, I’ll show you the method I use at home, which is flexible, forgiving, and well-suited to most home bakers.
As long as your starter is fed periodically and given time to become active before baking, it will usually do just fine.
At the end of this post, you’ll find a step-by-step feeding guide with exact ingredient amounts and instructions. First, though, let’s go through the hows and whys.
Where to Store Your Starter
Room Temperature vs. Refrigerator
Since I don’t bake every day, I keep my starters (I have two) in the refrigerator. For most home bakers, refrigeration makes long-term maintenance much easier.
Storing a starter in the refrigerator significantly slows fermentation and reduces how often it needs to be fed. I recommend feeding your refrigerated starter about once per week when you’re not baking.
If you bake daily, you may prefer to keep your starter at room temperature, where it will need to be fed every day. Otherwise, the refrigerator is your friend.
When to Feed Your Starter
How and when you feed your starter depends mostly on your baking schedule. If you’re a when-the-mood-strikes baker like me, I suggest keeping your starter in the refrigerator and feeding it about once per week when you’re not baking.
When you’re ready to bake, you’ll need a fed and active starter.
If your starter has been fed within the last two to three days and has been refrigerated, you may be able to use it without feeding. The dough may ferment a bit more slowly because of the cooler temperature, but the starter can still perform well.
As you get to know your starter, you’ll develop a sense of when it’s active enough for baking. When in doubt, feed the starter and give it time to become fully active before mixing your dough.
How to Do a Float Test
To test for yeast activity, drop a small dollop of starter into a bowl of water. If it floats, it’s ready for baking.
If you plan to bake and your starter needs feeding:
How far in advance you feed your starter depends on how long your recipe takes.
- If you are making a two-day recipe, take the starter out of the refrigerator early in the morning on the day you want to mix the dough. Feed it right away and it should be ready by early afternoon.
- If you are making a one-day recipe, take the starter out of the refrigerator the night before and feed it. It should be ready to use first thing in the morning.
Understanding Discard
If you continually feed a starter without discarding any, you’ll quickly end up with more starter than you can reasonably use.
Discard is simply the portion of starter that’s removed before feeding.
Discard doesn’t have to be thrown away. Even if it’s not active enough to bake bread, it can be used in many other recipes as a flavor and texture enhancer.
If you bake less frequently, you may find yourself discarding a lot of the starter just to maintain it at 12 oz. If that’s the case, a smaller starter might be a better fit.
Maintaining a Smaller Starter (Low-Waste Option)
Maintaining a smaller starter follows the same principles as maintaining a full-size starter—the only difference is the amount you keep on hand.
Here’s how it works:
- Reduce the overall amount of your starter from 12 oz to 3 oz.
- To maintain your small starter all the information outlined in this post still applies. The only difference is that you discard 2 oz of starter at each feeding.
- The remaining 1 oz of starter is mixed with 1 oz of water and 1 oz of flour.
- When you’re ready to bake take the entire 3 oz of unfed starter and feed with 3 oz of water and 3 oz of flour. You now have 9 oz of starter. Once the starter is active, use 8 oz in your recipe. You will have 1 oz left to continue the feeding cycle.
Common Questions About Feeding and Maintaining a Starter
Honestly, I’ve gone longer than a month without feeding my starter and I haven’t killed it yet. Give it a feeding and see if it wakes up. If it’s alive, keep feeding it until it is reliably doubling in size within 4-5 hours.
If you go more than about 2 weeks between feedings, you might want to give the starter 2-3 feedings before using. A starter that hasn’t been fed for weeks will be out of balance and sluggish.
If your starter was fed a day or two before, it’s possible to use the starter straight from the refrigerator. Give it a float test to make sure it’s active. The dough may take a little longer to ferment since the temperature of the dough will be colder. Use warmer water (about 110-120°F) to mix the dough to speed up the process.
It’s called “hooch” and don’t worry, your starter is still alive. Just stir that water back into the starter before feeding. You might need at least 2 feedings to completely revive and rebalance the starter.
To maintain your starter at 100% hydration it is best and most accurate to weigh your ingredients. If you’re just a little bit off every time you feed, eventually, your starter could be thrown out of balance.
No problem, use the amount of starter called for in the recipe. Then weigh out 4 oz of the remaining starter for feeding and discard the rest.
Yes, If you continually feed the starter without discarding, you’ll end up drowning in starter.
Yes, even if the discard is not active enough for baking bread, you can add it to many other recipes as a flavor and texture enhancer.
Unless you’re going away for an extended time, your starter should be just fine for a couple of weeks in the refrigerator. If you’ll be gone really long-term, put the starter into the freezer or dry it. Frozen or dried starter will need several feedings to rejuvenate.
Feeding Your Sourdough Starter: A Quick Reference
Below is a simple reference guide showing how I feed my starter each time.
If this guide was helpful, a 5-star review is always appreciated.
How to Feed Sourdough Starter
Video
Ingredients
- 4 oz unfed sourdough starter (see note)
- 4 oz all purpose flour
- 4 oz water (room temperature)
Instructions
- Weigh 4 oz unfed sourdough starter into a clean container. Discard the extra starter (see note)
- Add 4 oz all purpose flour and 4 oz water and mix until combined. Set aside at room temperature.
- The starter is ready to use when it has doubled in volume and a small spoonful floats when dropped into a bowl of water. This generally takes 4-5 hours but the time can vary based on dough temperature and room temperature.
- If you do not plan to bake with the starter on the day it is fed, refrigerate 3-4 hours after feeding.
- Feed refrigerated starter weekly. If you go longer than a week without feeding, you may want to give the starter two feedings before using.
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I have a starter that is bubbly, is nearly overflowing the jar on day4 which seems early to me. Do I continue to feed? And for how long? Or is it time to do a float test and be able to bake or refrigerate until I am ready? Thank you for your help.
I would give it a few more days. Even though is it bubbling you want to give it a few more days to get the nice yeasty aroma. You want the right balance of bacteria and yeast before baking with it. Have you read through my How To Make A Sourdough Starter post? You’ll see day by day photos and notes on the activity and smell.
Eileen, your site is great. Like many people I recently created a starter. I made your overnight cinnamon buns and was so thrilled when they rose and filled the pan without added commercial yeast. I’m confused about the term “100% hydration “. I made the sourdough bloodies ( they’re in the oven). You state you had good results from a starter that had been in the fridge a week. The recipe calls for 100% hydration starter. I don’t know if I was supposed to feed it or not before using. Thanks for any clarification.
100% hydration refer to how the starter is fed. The percent expresses the relation of the amount of liquid to the flour. So 100% means the starter is fed with equal weights of flour and water. If you have 80% hydration that would mean you have 80 percent flour to water, e.g. 8g of water and 10g of flour. The Sourdough Blondies use the “discard”. That is the stuff you throw away when you need to feed your starter. “Discard” recipes like the blondies give you the opportunity to use up that stuff rather than throw it away. Since my starter had in the refrigerator, unfed, for a week the flavor was pungent and sour. I like how that comes through in the blondies.
Absolutely love reading your tips and I will surely try your recipes too. I have just started my yeast starter with 4tbs flour and 3 tbs water and it’s been 6 days already. I did the float test and it was successful. It’s tripled in size and very happy . But I’m a bit confused on how to carry on feeding my yeast from now on. I intend to bake in 2-3 days and would use 3/4 of the yeast
mixture . I would leave a 1/4 in the jar and
would you be able to tell me how to proceed to keep it active . How much flour and water do I use and also can I keep it on my kitchen counter as I intend to bake on week ends. .
Thank you ever so much!
Read this post about growing your starter and you can also read this post about keeping a small starter.
So glad I found your site! Great resource.
How do you know if your starter is out of balance?
By out of balance I mean that it’s not made up of equal weights of water-flour (100% hydration). But there are plenty of folks who keep a wet starter that is more water than flour and some people keep a stiff starter that is more flour than water. If you have a wet or stiff starter you just need to account for that when mixing the dough. Since my recipes are all written for a 100% starter you would need to adjust the ingredients to accommodate your starter. Do you already have a starter? Did you make it or did someone give it to you? If the starter has the texture of a very thick pancake batter it’s probably a 100% hydration starter.
Thanks! I was recently given my starter (it’s been in her family for years) and I assumed I should feed 1:1:1. But it’s become watery, doesn’t double and separates within 24 hours. I read your page and I think I’ve unbalanced it. It still bubbles but isn’t as active as before.
Do you feed 1:1:1 by weight or by volume? 1/2 cup of water is 4 oz but a 1/2 cup of flour is 2.5 oz. So if you use volume measure you will have a looser starter. Nothing wrong with that, but it may need to be fed more often.
Thanks for your reply! It rises about 25% from what I can see. It failed the float test though. Do I continue feeding it everyday in the hope it will rise more?
I would keep feeding it until it’s quite active. Are you using unbleach ap flour for feeding? You can try to give it a little whole grain rye or wheat flour. Sometimes the starter likes the whole grain for an extra boost.
My starter has finally doubled earlier this evening! hooray. But I can see it collapsing as it doubled a couple of hours ago. Do I need to feed it again to keep it active until i’m ready to bake, which is some point this weekend?