You just got your first sourdough starter and it was sent to you from a friend of yours, or maybe you
got it from Carl's friend sent to you for free, or maybe you ordered it online from, say, eBay or
someplace else.
What they're going to most likely send you, if you're buying it in the mail or getting it sent to you
in the mail is something that looks like this.
OK, what this is, is this is a starter that someone had dried and then frozen.
OK, now I've this is my own homemade starter that I've dried and then froze.
It's very easy to do.
And I like to do it just this way.
I always have a backup in case my starter dies for a reason or I want to share some with share some
with somebody.
You amazed at how many people would love to learn how to use sour dough, but they're afraid of actually
making their starter themselves.
And this makes it incredibly easy to start your own starter.
So I'm going to show you how to do that.
So first things first.
You're going to turn on your scale, get a nice, clean container again.
I normally use glass, but I use plastic for the videos.
Just because it makes you makes a lot less noise.
And I really am just looking for, you know, me personally.
I use about five grams.
That's also because I make my own.
So I always have extra.
If you're ordering it online, the pieces might be much smaller.
You may not have as much.
Depends on what you have.
Look, it's OK to use less.
The more you use, the more quickly it's going to colonise.
And the more success you're going to have, the less you use, the longer it's going to take in, the
more time you're going to have to feed it before it's ready.
So there we go.
We're at our five grams.
Now, what I'll do is I'll take my water now.
OK, we're out the five grams, what I'll do is I'll take my water, make sure I zero it out and I am
going to put in approximately 30 grams.
Of water, OK, it's OK if it's a little bit over and I'm going to go ahead and zero my scale.
I mean, go ahead and take 30 grams of my whole wheat flour, all purpose flour mix.
And I'll put it in approximately 30 grams.
OK, and it doesn't have to be perfect, but we'll try to get it fairly close, OK, and then what we'll
do is just give it a nice mix.
And so what's going to happen is the water is going to get absorbed by the flower.
And as that frozen starter starts to warm up those microbes that are inside the starter, they're going
to start activating and coming alive.
OK, so I always like to clean off the edges of my container, and now what I'll do is I'll go store
this and in a warm place right now, it's about it's fall time where I am.
It's just about to get to winter time.
So I have two places that I like to store this.
The first is I'll put it on the top shelf of a cabinet that's just above my toaster oven.
It tends to stay just slightly warmer because we do use that fairly often in other places.
I put it is sometimes my boiler room if it's really cold outside, because then this way it stays a
little more of a constant temperature in there and it's warmer than than the rest of the house.
So I just go ahead.
I'll leave this here and we'll come back tomorrow and take a look to see how it's changed.
This should take two to three days to get ready for us to use.
Again, it depends on the temperature.
The warmer it is and the more and the warmer the water that you use, it will go a bit faster.
But for the first day, I don't really worry so much about what temperature the water is because I'm
the starter is frozen.
So even if I put warm water in the starter, the water is going to cool down pretty quickly.
But tomorrow, when I feed this for the first time and I I'm going to add warmer water so that this
way it will be able to activate a little bit faster.
One thing I forgot to mention is when you cover this, just make sure that you cover it lightly.
We're not trying to give it a complete seal, so I'll just take my cover and I'll place it on lightly.