My Simple Sourdough Routine: Bread, Pancakes & No Waste

My mom loved bread; she once told me that the happy place in her mind was the center of a warm loaf of bread. In one of my favorite pictures of her, she has a warm dinner roll pressed against her face – I’d love to show you, but she definitely would not want internet strangers to see her pressing bread against her face.

I, too, love bread – doesn’t everybody? For years I toyed with the idea of trying sourdough, but each time I began to investigate, I found myself overwhelmed. There is equipment to buy, special ingredients to use, ideal hydration levels to attain, and hours of timing that must be perfected to produce a single loaf.

After years of thinking that sourdough was too complicated to be worth my time, I had a key realization: bread is older than civilization itself. People have been making bread since long before digital ovens, kitchen scales, and refrigerators – early bakers didn’t even have timers or precise measuring cups.

If ancient man could make a workable loaf of bread, I can too. And so my sourdough starter was born on September 14th, 2019 – the eighth anniversary of my mom’s death.

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While I am certainly no expert, I have shared my sourdough starter with friends and family over the years, and I always caution them to keep it simple! You can enjoy homemade sourdough without letting a jar of yeast rule your life.

Here is my simple sourdough routine; I hope it helps you simplify your routine, or jump in if you’ve been reluctant!

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Feeding Your Sourdough

I feed my sourdough starter with whole wheat flour – the only important detail is that the flour you use MUST be unbleached. As long as it’s unbleached, you can use any flour you’d like!

My feeding routine is as follows:

• Add 4 ounces (114g) of flour and 4 ounces (114mL) of lukewarm water to my sourdough starter. (This is a 1:1:1 ratio.)
• Mix thoroughly and push down on all sides.
• Place lid on very loosely; do not tighten. If using a mason jar, just place the lid on and skip the band.
• Place starter in a relatively warm location. Perhaps your counter will do, or you can try the top of the fridge or inside the oven with the oven light on. Experiment and see what works best!
• In 8-12 hours, the starter will have air bubbles and the volume will have approximately doubled. That means it’s ready to be used!

This method produces about 8 ounces, 227 grams, or 1 cup of sourdough starter. I will discuss how I bake with it later, but for me this is one loaf of bread or one recipe (three servings) of pancakes.

It may be helpful to place a rubber band at the level of material right after you feed and scrape down the sides. This will help you see how much your starter has grown.

It should be noted that whole wheat starters do not grow as vigorously as starters that have been fed with white flour – so don’t be worried if yours doesn’t fully double, or if it doesn’t look like some of the images you might see on Instagram.

And on that note – you can always switch up the flour you feed your starter. I started mine with bread flour and at some point switched to feeding with whole wheat flour. I almost exclusively make bread with white flour. In short: don’t take it too seriously.

If you keep your house cold, a seedling germination mat is a great way to keep the ambient temperature at around 75°F, which is ideal for your starter. While I generally don’t recommend buying a bunch of equipment for sourdough, this $12-15 investment goes a long way and can be used for proofing and rising any kind of bread.

I do not feed my starter if I’m not going to use it. It can easily last several weeks in the fridge without being fed. It will, however, be more vigorous if you feed it more often.

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Troubleshooting & General Maintenance

If you forget to feed your starter for more than a couple of weeks, it might look a little funky – but it’s probably fine!

I have gone as much as three months without feeding my starter. To get it back into service, I scrape the clear brown funky layer off the top, and then feed it as normal. This is the one instance where I recommend discarding some of the material – after 8 hours, I discard half and feed again. Usually two feedings is sufficient to get it back to normal.

Otherwise, I never discard from my starter. Once I measure out my sourdough starter for use, I leave the remaining starter in the jar and put the lid on tightly. Then, I tuck it in the fridge until it’s time to use it again.

For more information on the Scrapings method, check out this video from Bake with Jack:

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Using Your Sourdough Starter: Bread

My go-to bread recipe is this Extra Tangy Sourdough Bread from King Arthur, but over the years I have made some small tweaks:

• I prefer to make one big loaf rather than two.
• I have a dutch oven, so I bake the loaf for 30 minutes with the cover on at 450°F, then remove the cover and bake for an additional 10-15 minutes until nicely browned on top. If you’re going to use a dutch oven, do not forget to preheat the dutch oven!!!

Unfortunately, you must cool any bread for several hours before cutting into it. Once removed from the oven, the bread continues to cook until fully cool, which helps to create that incredible texture.

The experts say to leave it overnight… but I think it’s unreasonable to smell fresh bread for hours and not get to eat it until the next day.

Store your bread on the counter. While wrapping in cloth is the most environmentally friendly approach, I find the bread goes stale very quickly, so I tend to use reusable gallon plastic bags instead.

Fresh bread tends to go stale quite quickly. Since I am one human person who does not need to eat a full loaf of bread in 48 hours, I tend to cut the loaf in half and put one half in the freezer. The thawed bread is nearly undistinguishable from fresh.

And if you do accidentally let the bread go stale – use it to make croutons! Cube it, toss in olive oil and herbs, and bake at 375°F until the desired texture is reached. You’ll find yourself letting the bread go stale on purpose…

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Using Your Sourdough Starter: Pancakes

Sometimes I don’t have 36 hours to feed, proof, rise, bake, and cool sourdough bread – but I still want to make something delicious. Enter my all-time favorite food: pancakes!

The following is my base recipe, which creates tangy, delicious pancakes with a great fluffy texture.

• 227 grams active sourdough starter
• 2 cups flour
• 2 tbsp sugar (OR honey)
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp oil (OR melted butter)
• 1.5 cups plant milk (OR regular milk)
• 1 tbsp ground flax + 2.5 tbsp warm water (OR 1 egg)

To my base recipe, I usually add any combination of the following: cinnamon, splash of vanilla, chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, fruit, oatmeal (for a really interesting, dense texture).

Important Note: Most sourdough pancake recipes call for discard. If you feed your sourdough starter before refrigerating it, you’ll need to discard some before feeding it again when you’re ready to bake. Because I use the scrapings method, I don’t produce any discard – so I simply use active sourdough starter for every recipe.

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Final Thoughts: Sourdough is a Homestead-Dreamer’s Best Friend

After many years of wishing and planning, I am four months away from closing on the 10 acre farm that will allow me to build my homestead dream.

I’ve carried this dream through rentals in three different cities. While I haven’t always been able to fully embrace the homesteading lifestyle, maintaining hobbies like working with sourdough has allowed me to feel the satisfaction of self-reliance on a small scale – which has kept me motivated towards this huge milestone of actually buying a farm of my own.

It’s also a lesson in patience. If you can smell a fresh-from-the-oven loaf of sourdough for a few hours without cutting into it, maybe you can wait as many years as it takes to buy a farm of your own and make your dreams a reality. And if it feels like an eternity away… at least you can pass the time by eating really delicious bread.

If you already work with sourdough – I would love to hear your recommended recipes! It’s probably time that I break out of my pancake-laden shell…

Talk soon,

KC