Barb at King Arthur

April 29, 2020 at 9:33am

In reply to by Mike (not verified)

Hi Mike, I'm sorry to hear you're struggling with your sourdough starter, especially when you and so many others are having trouble finding flour! The first thing I would recommend is maintaining a smaller starter, which will ease some of your concerns about your dwindling flour supply. It really isn't necessary to use vast quantities of flour in order to create or maintain a starter, so now's a great time to scale it all down. Just be sure that the jar you use is an appropriate size for your smaller starter. The starter shouldn't be spread too thinly in a large jar, and there should be sufficient head room above the starter for fermentation gases to collect. If you're maintaining the 60g illustrated in our smaller starter recipe, then an 8 ounce Mason jelly jar works perfectly. And it may well be that switching to an appropriately sized jar will reveal more rising than you thought was going on, especially if you currently have your starter stored in a wide bowl or Tupperware container. And after putting so much flour and effort into your starter there's no need to toss it. Try giving it a feeding, letting it sit out for 4 hours or so, and then refrigerating it until you're ready to tackle it again. You didn't mention the consistency of your starter, but if it's very liquidy, this may also be making it more difficult to see the kind of rising behavior we speak of. Look for a thick, but stirrable pasty consistency right after feeding. I hope this helps! Let us know how it goes. 

Barb

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