So You Got A Piece of Margaret, Now What? Pt. 1

AN INTRODUCTION TO SOURDOUGH STARTER

Congratulations!  You’re the proud parent of a sourdough starter.  All you have to do now is keep it alive.

Some basics:

A sourdough starter is a mixture of flour and water in equal parts that over time has become a living environment for wild yeasts and lactobacilli (lactic acid) bacteria.  The lactic acid in your starter is what contributes to the mildly tangy flavour found in sourdough bread.

Once you’ve developed an active starter, you can replace dry or cake yeast in your baking recipes with your natural leavening agent.

If you’re building your own starter from scratch, this can take about two weeks.  However, it is common for bakeries to share a piece of starter with customers. Margaret, Mu’Dough’s starter, Is mature and ready to use, so you can skip the wait time of building and just dive right into the baking!

What if I don’t want to maintain a starter, I just want to bake with it? 

Sure!  The starter you received from us should stay refrigerated until 5 hours before you’re ready to incorporate it into your recipe.  Just take it out of the fridge and leave it on your kitchen counter, near the oven for 5 hours.  It should at minimum, double in volume.  Now, you’re ready to bake.

You may also decide to give it a refresher feed, if you’ve left it in the fridge for a week or more.  You can do this by feeding it equal parts flour and water and waiting again for it to double or triple in size. We’ll go over that in Part 3! In the next post, we’ll discuss the tools you’ll need to maintain your starter!

Name your starter! 

We recommend naming your starter because, well, it’s alive and also by naming it you’re more likely to take care of it!