We’re so glad you asked! Sourdough starter is the combination of water, flour and bacteria from your environment. Crazy, right?! As your starter grows and matures, it creates a little colony of good bacteria. When you “feed” your starter, you’re adding equal parts flour and water to continue the growth of your little bacteria colony. It’s a living thing – you might as well name it!

We’ve got way more on this here, but essentially you just mix flour and water together and over the course of a few days of “feeding” it with those things, bacteria from the air enters the game and creates a completely natural leaving agent.

Many types of flour will work, though we’ve found the best results while using whole wheat flour to feed our starter. You can use whole wheat, bread flour or even all purpose flour – but you’ll want to make sure it’s unbleached.

If you’re starting from scratch, we’ve come to learn that you’ll want to feed and care for your starter for at least two weeks before it’s healthy and active enough to bake with. There are recipes out there that swear you can do it in just seven days – we’ve yet to find the truth in that. We’re just being real with ya! Good things take time.

YES! Make sure you’re not using cold water. Warmth is what your starter needs to activate the bacteria, cold temperatures cause the bacteria to go dormant. That being said, you want to kick start activity in your starter by using at least room temperature (or even warm) water. If you don’t care to warm the water before adding it to your starter, room temp works just fine.