The Goldilocks Zone
Warmth is the throttle on your starter. Too cold and it crawls. Too hot and it burns through its food and turns harsh. Between 75 and 82°F, wild yeast and good bacteria work in balance, and your starter rises on a schedule you can actually plan a bake around.
The Sourdough Start Up Kit
Everything in this guide, in one box. The jar, the tools, and the booklet, matched to each other and ready on day one. Start with the right jar and the right tools, and the routine in this guide falls into place from the first feed.
- 32oz borosilicate starter jar with measurement marks
- Starter spatula and dough whisk
- Stainless dough scraper for clean divides
- Boule banneton with linen liner
- Printed Start Up Guide booklet included
Seven Days to a Living Culture
Flour, water, a clear straight-sided jar, and a few minutes a day. Tap each day as you finish it. Most starters get dependable in 10 to 14 days, and behavior matters more than the calendar.
One Simple Ratio, By Weight
Discard down to a small amount of starter, then feed it equal parts flour and water. Tell the calculator how much starter you're keeping and it does the math.
On the Counter
Feed at or shortly after peak. At 75 to 82°F, a 1:1:1 starter usually needs feeding about every 12 hours. Need a longer stretch between feeds? Use a bigger ratio instead of skipping.
In the Fridge
Cold slows everything down, so one feed a week keeps a stored starter healthy. Or skip the fridge shuffle entirely: hold your jar at 41 to 45°F in the Sourdough Home and feed every 5 to 7 days, then warm it up when a bake is coming.
Don't toss the discard, bake with it
Every feeding leaves you with a jar of good, tangy discard. That is not waste, that is the start of something: pancakes on a Saturday morning, crackers for the week, flatbreads, banana bread, and more. The Recipe Pantry keeps the whole discard collection in one place, every recipe tested and written the way I teach.
Browse the discard recipes →Pick the Right Jar
Your starter is only as steady as the jar it lives in. Get the vessel right and half of your "what's wrong with my starter" moments never happen.
Straight sides, no shoulders
A shouldered jar traps starter under the lip, hides the true rise, and makes stirring and scraping a chore. Straight sides and clear glass let you read the bubbles and the fall at a glance.
Fill it one third, vent don't seal
Fill no more than a third of the jar after feeding, so it can double or triple without pushing the lid. Set a clean solid lid on top, or screw it on loosely enough that gas escapes. A loose solid lid beats cloth: less drying, fewer fruit flies.
Two jars beat one
Feed into a clean jar each time and wash the old one while the fresh feed gets to work. Your starter never sits in yesterday's residue, dried crust never gets a foothold, and you always have a spare ready.
Three Steps to Mixing Dough
One bigger feed before your bake does both jobs: enough starter for the recipe, at peak, right when you need it.
Check the recipe
Find how much starter your bake calls for. That number drives everything else, so get it before you feed, not after.
Scale the pre-bake feed
Increase the starter, flour, and water so you end up with enough for the recipe plus about 20g leftover to keep your culture going. Use the calculator in Step 3 with a bigger starting amount.
Time it, then bake
Feed several hours before you plan to mix. Once it has at least doubled, it's ready to go into your dough. Bake near peak, not after the decline.
Is My Starter Dead?
Most "is my starter dead?" moments are nothing. Pick what you're actually seeing and I'll give you the call.
Watch: Why your starter isn't doubling
Run the diagnostic above, then watch along while I walk through the most common reasons a starter stalls, and the fixes, one by one.
Your Starter's Insurance Policy
Ten minutes of drying protects years of culture. Every serious starter deserves a backup, because accidents, vacations, and one dropped jar happen to everybody.
The dried cracker method
1. Spread a thin layer of active starter on parchment paper.
2. Let it air-dry completely, then snap it into cracker pieces.
3. Store the fully dry flakes in an airtight, labeled container in a cool, dark place. A piece tucked in the freezer keeps even longer.
To revive it
1. Soak a few grams of dried starter overnight in filtered water.
2. Begin daily equal-parts flour and water feeds.
3. Within days it's bubbling and ready for the 1:1:1 routine again.
Sourness Is a Dial, Not a Destiny
Most recipes skip this part: your starter shapes a lot of your bread's flavor. Slide the dial and see how the handling changes.
The Workhorse and Its Cousins
The 100% hydration starter in this guide is the everyday workhorse, but the same wild culture kept at different consistencies shines at different bakes.
Classic Liquid Starter
Equal parts flour and water. The starter this guide teaches: easy to read, easy to feed, perfect for lean doughs and daily baking.
Best for: everyday sourdough, batards, boules.
Read the Starter Guide →Stiff Starter
Half the water, twice the patience. A firm, doughy culture that ferments slower and favors milder, yeastier flavor with serious lifting power.
Best for: enriched doughs, milk breads, sweet rolls.
Explore in the Bread Authority →Pasta Madre
The lievito madre of Italian tradition: a tight, low-hydration mother dough with a gentle, sweet profile. The gateway to panettone and pandoro.
Best for: panettone, brioche, festive breads.
Unlock the Secrets of Pasta Madre →Yeast Water
Natural leavening fermented from fruit, no starter jar required. A whole different road to wild yeast, and the subject of my Yeast Water Handbook.
Best for: experimenting, mild sweet doughs.
How to Keep Yeast Water Alive →Go Deeper, Free
Everything else we have on starters, gathered in one place. All of it free, all of it road-tested by the Baking Great Bread at Home community.
Watch
Read
The Tools That Walk the Guide With You
This guide is the map. These are the two pieces of gear that make the map easy to follow, both from our sponsor.
Sponsored by Brød & Taylor. I recommend these because I use this system in my own kitchen teaching. Links go to Brød & Taylor's store.
Sourdough Start Up Kit
Everything in this guide, in one box. The jar, the tools, and the booklet, matched to each other and ready on day one.
- 32oz borosilicate starter jar with measurement marks
- Starter spatula and dough whisk
- Stainless dough scraper for clean divides
- Boule banneton with linen liner
- Printed Start Up Guide booklet included
Sourdough Home
Hold any temperature from 41 to 122°F, heating and cooling as your kitchen changes around it. Your starter stops depending on the weather.
- Heats and cools, degree by degree, 41 to 122°F
- Fits a jar up to 1 quart, or up to four small starter jars
- Feed twice a day or once a week, your choice
- Fewer feedings, less discard, always ready
Your Starter Is Alive. Now Let's Make You a Better Baker.
Keeping a starter alive is the first skill, not the last one. The feeding rhythm you just learned is the foundation under every loaf that follows. The real question is what you build on it, and that part goes faster when you are not figuring it out alone.
That is what we do inside the Crust & Crumb Academy: structured lessons, a Saturday Bake-Along every week, and real coaching on your actual bread. Post a photo of a loaf that went sideways and you will get help reading it, not judgment. Bakers at every level, all working on the same thing you are.
The Academy is where bakers come not to get likes, but to get better.