Day 1:
Add ½ cup of tap water room temperature in a 1-quart canning jar wide mouth.
Add 1 cup of unbleached all-purpose flour.
With a spoon stir the flour water mixture well.
Loosely close the jar to prevent bugs from getting in.
Put the jar on the kitchen counter where it is not going to be moved around.
Cover the jar with a kitchen towel or cloth napkin to protect from sunlight and bugs.
Let the starter mixture rest on the kitchen counter for 24 hours.
Day 2: 24 hours later
Take the 1-day old sourdough starter and observe it for few seconds.
Then stir it with a spoon.
Scoop ½ cup of it to a clean wide mouth caning quart jar.
Add ½ cup room temperature tap water.
Add 1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour.
Mix well with a spoon.
Loosely close the jar with its lid.
Move the jar to a quiet area of your kitchen counter.
Cover with a kitchen towel or cloth napkin.
Let it rest for 24 hours.
Day 3: 24 hour later
Repeat day 2 process.
Every day repeat day 2 feeding process until your starter doubled in size within 12 hours.
Each time you take it to feed it, before you stir, look at it to see how it looks.
After a few days, you might start seeing gas bubbles in the mixture.
Day 12
By day 12 or so, the sourdough starter might start to double in size within 24 hours. Then you know that when you use the discard to mix with flour and water, it will rise. The sourdough starter is getting ready for you to bake with.
Day 14: or day it doubles is size within 12 hours:
Take the jar and if the starter doubles in size or doubles in size and falls back in, stir it.
Scoop ½ cup of the sourdough starter to a clean jar.
Feed it with ½ cup room temperature tap water.
Add 1 cup of unbleached all-purpose flour.
Mix it well.
Loosely close the jar with its lid.
Move the jar to a quiet kitchen counter.
Cover with a towel.
When it doubles in size or after 24 hours, move it to the refrigerator.
The remaining sourdough starter left in the jar, or the sourdough starter not fed or the sourdough starter discard, add it to a mixing bowl. Add flour and water to make a dough for sourdough pizza or sourdough bread. (Would you please check our sourdough bread and sourdough pizza recipes for more detail.)
Your sourdough starter is ready. Keep it in the refrigerator when you do not plan to use it daily. Feed it once a week using the feeding process above. After it doubles in size on the kitchen counter, move the jar to the refrigerator. When you take it out of the refrigerator once a week to feed the remaining sourdough starter that you didn’t feed, use it to make a sourdough pizza dough and a sourdough bread dough.
What do you need to make sourdough starter?
You need wheat flour and water.
Best flour for sourdough starter
Whole wheat flour
Unbleached all-purpose flour
Bleached all-purpose flour.
All 3 types of wheat flour listed above are good to use. Any one of these 3 flour types you have on hand or cook with can be used to make sourdough starter with success.
We made our first sourdough starter in 2015 using whole wheat flour. After the starter was ready to bake with, we switched to unbleached all-purpose flour to feed the starter as that is the flour we cook with.
In 2022, when unbleached flour became unavailable at the grocery store, we purchased bleached all-purpose flour to feed our starter and to bake with. We made videos on how to make sourdough starter using bleached all-purpose flour. The starter worked and we baked sourdough bread with it. We used bleached flour to feed our sourdough starter made in 2015 from 2020 to 2021 or so until we were able to stock up on unbleached flour for our cooking. Our starter was just fine.
Now we will demonstrate you can use unbleached flour to make sourdough starter not just to feed it.
What kind of water do you use for sourdough starter?
You can use filtered water from your fridge door water dispenser.
You can use your kitchen tap water if you cook with it.
You can use filtered water purchased from the store.
We used filtered water from our fridge door to make sourdough starter with success when we used bleached flour in 2020.
We used tap water to make sourdough starter with success when we used unbleached flour in 2022.
We used filtered water from the fridge door to feed sourdough starter without problem.
We now use tap water to feed our sourdough starter without issue either.
Do you use warm or cold water for sourdough starter?
You use room temperature water. If it is on the cold side or warm side that is fine. Just don’t purposely warm the water.
How much flour do you need to make sourdough starter?
You might need about 10lbs of unbleached all-purpose flour to make the sourdough starter from day 1 to when the starter is ready to bake with.
How long does it take to make sourdough starter?
Expect about 14 days on average. In warm weather, it might take you less than 14 days.
In a cold season, it might take you more than 14 days.
In 2020, when I used all-purpose bleached flour to make sourdough starter, it took about 14 days.
Therefore, I would estimate 14 days on average as the time frame from day 1 when you mix flour and water in making sourdough starter to the day it doubles in size.
The next criteria to keep in mind is when your sourdough starter mixture doubles in size, your sourdough starter is ready.
What container should I use for sourdough starter?
You can use canning quart jar wide mouth.
You can use a glass bowl of about 7 cups size.
You can use 4 cups size glass bowl as it is the same size as a quart jar.
A glass bowl is easy to clean its bottom if your hand can not reach the bottom of a wide mouth quart jar.
I personally use a quart jar when making sourdough starter as the jar has measurement lines on the jar making it easy to know how much the starter rose between feedings.
What supplies do you need to make sourdough starter?
You need a tablespoon, preferably one with a long handle when using a canning jar.
You need a 1 cup size measurement cup.
You need ½ cup size measurement cup.
You need 2 canning quart jars wide mouth.
How to feed sourdough starter?
To feed sourdough starter, you need:
½ cup of starter
½ cup of water
1 cup of flour
Scoop ½ cup of sourdough start to a clean glass jar.
Add ½ cup of water.
Add 1 cup of wheat all-purpose flour (whole wheat, unbleached flour, or bleached flour).
Stir well and loosely close the jar.
Put the jar on the kitchen counter away from the sun.
Once the starter doubles in size after about 8 hours or so, if you will use it, you can scoop ½ cup to feed and use the remaining starter to bake with.
If you are not going to use the leftover starter, put the fed starter after it doubles in size in the refrigerator.
Feed it once a week by repeating the above process.
What is the ratio of flour to starter?
To make sourdough starter, you need:
½ cup of water.
1 cup of flour.
To feed sourdough starter, you need:
½ cup of starter
½ cup of water
1 cup of flour
You start making sourdough starter by mixing ½ cup of water to 1 cup of wheat flour on day 1. Then you feed it once a day by scooping ½ cup of the starter and mixing with ½ cup of water and 1 cup of flour. You keep doing that daily until the starter mixture doubles in size within 12 hours.
Any starter discard can be tossed in the trash or put in the garden or compost pile.
How to store sourdough starter on the counter?
Loosely close the sourdough starter jar with the jar’s lid.
Then put the jar on a quiet area of your kitchen counter.
Cover the jar with a kitchen towel or cloth napkin to prevent bugs from getting in the jar or protect it from direct sunlight.
If you will not bake with sourdough starter daily, there is no need to feed your sourdough starter daily. Store your sourdough starter loosely closed in the refrigerator and take it out once a week to feed and let it rest on the kitchen counter for 12-24 hours or until the starter doubles in size. Then you return it to the refrigerator. The sourdough starter discards not fed, use it to make sourdough pizza dough or sourdough bread dough. Sourdough starter left in the fridge for a week, when its discard is used to mix pizza dough or bread dough, expect the dough to take a little longer to rise. Let it rise for 12 hours on the counter before baking the dough.
Can you make a sourdough starter with unbleached all-purpose flour?
Yes, you can make sourdough starter with unbleached all-purpose flour.
Can you make sourdough starter with any flour?
Yes, you can make sourdough starter with whole wheat flour, unbleached all-purpose flour, or bleached all-purpose flour. Just make sure it is wheat flour.
Can you feed sourdough starter with any flour?
Yes, you can feed sourdough starter with either whole wheat flour, unbleached all-purpose flour, or bleached all-purpose flour.
How to use sourdough discard?
While you make sourdough starter, the sourdough starter discard can be put in the garden or compost pile or trash.
For food safety purposes, the sourdough discard during the sourdough making doesn’t have enough wanted cultures in the flour mixture to make the discard safe to use since it has been at room temperature for 24 hours.
After the sourdough starter doubles in size around day 14, the starter discard can be used to make sourdough pizza dough or sourdough bread dough and you will not waste flour from that point on.
How to use sourdough starter?
You can use sourdough starter to make the following:
Sourdough pizza
Sourdough bread
Sourdough bread crouton
Conclusion: How to make sourdough starter with unbleached all-purpose flour and tap water?
The video explains how to make sourdough starter with tap water and unbleached all-purpose flour.
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