Stairway to Leaven

The care & feeding of a sourdough starter

Almost all of my baking uses a starter, so if you want to follow along at home you’ll need to build one of your own. It’s easy, and as Andrew taught us during quarantine, you only need small amounts of flour to start it and keep it going. You then use larger quantities of flour to build it up prior to making bread, and take the small amount left over and feed that a little bit each day until you want to bake again.

If you keep your amounts small, you can keep your starter thriving with minimal waste. But excess sourdough starter can be a powerful tool in the kitchen: see the Korean-style pancake I made with it here, or read my guest post at Andrew’s about the wicked crêpes you can make with it. So depending on how some of these techniques fit into your cooking practice you may want to err on the side of more starter rather than less. If you haven’t yet taken the sourdough plunge, it’s easier than pie—and an excellent gateway drug.