Now that you have a ripe sourdough starter culture ready to use whenever you want to make bread you will also need to know how to look after it. Don’t stress it’s very easy.
It’s basically a Tamagochi for 30+ year olds!
So first things first.
Leave only 70g of sourdough culture in the container you made it in and feed that 70g of rye flour and 70g of water. It’s a 1 - 1 – 1 ratio. Do this right now even if you’re not making bread tomorrow.
This is the feeding you will do from now on if you want to make a loaf of bread. You need to feed it 8 to 12 hours before you make the bread. This will insure you have a ripe and ready to go starter culture.
With the rest of the culture from your first original batch I would recommend freezing it as a back-up in case your original culture dies in the future and you don’t have to start the process all over again.
Freezing it does not kill the yeast and bacteria they just go dormant until woken up and fed again.
I have mine frozen in ice cube trays then I transferred them into a zip lock bag. So if my starter does die I can take one cube out of the freezer, feed it and it’s ready to go in 12 hours again. As appose to starting a whole new batch that will take 7 whole days to make from scratch.
If you are going to make bread once a week I would strongly recommend you keep your sourdough starter in the fridge. This will stay alive in the fridge for 1 week until you need to feed it again. The feedings keep the yeast alive and healthy.
You need to feed this once every week minimum, even if you’re not baking bread.
There are plenty of ways to use up access sourdough culture which you will find builds up over time. A great way to use it up is in Pizza dough's, cakes, pancakes, waffles, crispy flat breads and even thickening sauces. Yes even sauces.
I'll put some recipes up soon on what to do with left over sourdough culture. In the meantime I would love to hear what you do with yours.
Hope this helps, Happy baking and all the best.
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