We’re so glad you asked! Sourdough starter is the combination of water, flour and bacteria from your environment. Crazy, right?! As your starter grows and matures, it creates a little colony of good bacteria. When you “feed” your starter, you’re adding equal parts flour and water to continue the growth of your little bacteria colony. It’s a living thing - you might as well name it!

We’ve got way more on this here, but essentially you just mix flour and water together and over the course of a few days of “feeding” it with those things, bacteria from the air enters the game and creates a completely natural leaving agent.

Many types of flour will work, though we’ve found the best results while using whole wheat flour to feed our starter. You can use whole wheat, bread flour or even all purpose flour - but you’ll want to make sure it’s unbleached.

Listen, our ancestors made sourdough and we highly doubt they had filtered water! However, it is recommended that you use either distilled or filtered water, simply because it eliminates the risk of putting yucky chemicals into your starter. If you do use tap water, we’re not saying it won’t work - we’re just saying that you might see better results using filtered or distilled water. ;)

YES! Make sure you’re not using cold water. Warmth is what your starter needs to activate the bacteria, cold temperatures cause the bacteria to go dormant. That being said, you want to kick start activity in your starter by using at least room temperature (or even warm) water. If you don’t care to warm the water before adding it to your starter, room temp works just fine.

If you’re starting from scratch, we’ve come to learn that you’ll want to feed and care for your starter for at least two weeks before it’s healthy and active enough to bake with. There are recipes out there that swear you can do it in just seven days - we’ve yet to find the truth in that. We’re just being real with ya! Good things take time.

A jar, a whisk, spatula or spoon, a rubber band or hair tie (or marker) to mark rise progress and something to cover it with like a tea towel, plastic wrap or a jar lid.

If you’re just starting out, check out our Sourdough Starter Jar Kit on Amazon - we’ve carefully chosen our favorite tools and curated the perfect kit with everything you need in one box!

After you’ve established a healthy, active starter, you’ll need to feed it at least once every 24 hours if you’re storing it on your counter. If you want to take a break from baking, you can feed your starter and put it in the fridge with an airtight lid for up to a week (sometimes two) before feeding it again.

Your starter is ready to use when it’s at least doubled in size, bubbly on the sides and top and doesn’t have a “dome” shape on the top anymore. (This means it’s still rising. Wait until the top is flat for maximum rise in your loaves.) You can still bake with it even after it’s begun to fall a little - just not drastically.