28 April, 2020
Dried Starter Diary: Day 1
Another video! (I hope these really help some people, because I hate listening to myself talk. Oy.) Your first day with your dried sourdough: Mix mix everything together, and leave it to sit out on the counter. Really, that is all you do on day 1. Watch the video if you don’t believe me!
For anyone who doesn’t want to (or can’t) watch the video, it’s just steps 1–4 from our Sourdough Starter Care & Feeding page (with a whole lot of exposition in voiceover, courtesy of me being afraid of leaving any chunks of silence in the video):
- Dump your starter packet into a jar. Your first container can be pint-size (literally), but you’ll want to scale up later.
- The video features a 16 ounce Talenti gelato container. They’re perfect. They even have a line printed on the side approximately where your starter level is after you mix it.
- Mix in 100ml 80ºF water. The better you mix it now, the quicker the yeast will rehydrate and magically come back to life.
- Mix in 100g flour. Whatever flour you have is fine, as long as it’s not self-rising flour.
- This step seems like it takes forever in the video. But you really want to be sure that you’re not leaving any hidden pockets of dry flour in there.
- Put the lid back on the container loosely, and leave it out on the counter.
- No, really. Just leave it sitting somewhere obvious. Maybe on a shelf, or in the middle of your cutting board or kitchen table, or wherever you can set it to ensure you don’t forget to check on it.
And that’s all there is to day one. Later today, I’ll be posting the video for day 2. It’s shorter, and much more boring. Because all you do on day two is wait, and maaaaaybe mix a couple extra tablespoons of water into the jar.
