How to Bulk Up Your Sourdough Starter

one of my most commonly asked questions answered...

Happy Tuesday friends! I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend and Monday. Today, I want to address one of my most frequently asked questions: “how do you get your starter so big?”

Let me start by saying, you do NOT need to keep a lot of sourdough starter on hand to make bread. As a general rule, I try to keep about 25-50g "back-up" starter in my refrigerator then I just feed it a lot when I need to bulk it up to make multiple loaves of bread. This article will hopefully help you with the simplest way to do this.

First, we must understand sourdough starter ratios. In general, your sourdough starter is made up of equal parts flour and water - this is known as 100% hydration because you have equal amounts of each. This is also referred to as a 1:1:1 ratio. The ratio simply is the proportions of unfed starter, to the amount of flour you feed it and water.

Example: a 1:1:1 ratio would be equal parts of everything (25 grams unfed starter: 25 grams flour: 25 grams water). If you want to increase your amount of starter, all you have to do is increase your starter feeding ratio - I often feed my starter a 1:10:10 ratio (25 grams starter: 250 grams flour: 250 grams water) to really bulk it up. Keep reading for more details.

How to Increase Your Sourdough Starter

In order to "bulk-up" or increase your sourdough starter, you need to first decide how much you want to end up with, then divide that by two. For example, if you have 50g of starter and your end goal is to have 200g starter, then take 200/2 = 100. This will give you the amount of water and flour you'll need - so in this case, you'll need 100g flour and 100g water. Now just add the 50g of starter you have to the 100g flour and 100g water and you'll end up with about 200g of starter (and most likely a little extra - what to do with that below!).

Place any remaining starter in the fridge until you're ready to bake again, then feed it the ratio required to get to the amount you need.

Example broken down further:

• 50g starter

• add 100g flour

• add 100g water

• ** this will result in about 250g starter that you can store in the fridge for later or feed again

How to Increase Your Sourdough Starter Even MORE

Let's say you only have 10g starter and you're still trying to get to 200g. In this case, you're just feeding it a higher ratio - 1:10:10. So you'd still feed it 100g flour and 100g water, but you're only adding the 10g starter, making it the 1:10:10 ratio. And with a ratio that high, keep in mind that your sourdough starter will take much longer to rise - because the yeast and bacteria have a lot more food to eat through!

Make sense?

Also, something to note, the maturity of your starter matters when trying to increase it -if you're using a very small amount of sourdough starter to build a larger one, it's ideal for your starter to be more mature. When your starter is young, you need to continue regular (smaller) feedings to ensure the yeast and bacteria continue building their little colonies.

Aren't sourdough starters amazing?! And to think they are all unique and different, just like us! I hope this short post helps, and if I have confused you at all, please leave a comment of message me - I’d be happy to help you!

Oh, and later this week for paid subscribers, I’ll be sharing my sourdough starter guide - it has everything you need to know to make a sourdough starter + how to properly maintain it.