Having Trouble with Your Sourdough? This might be why! 

Thanks for watching! If you want to make your very own starter with just flour, water, and air, check out this video! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-mOm6OOH2Hxw.html

Thank you so much for your videos, we have been bread making fools while hiding from the Covid. Your recipes are really easy and have helped an old married couple who never made bread have a really good time. Great Video!!!

I did the water on the counter and that was the trick! Plus I always keep my container of starter on a cork pad ( a oven hot pad) to keep it off the cold marble counter top! By the way I LOVE your sourdough crackers with the discard. (Honey, lime, chipotle, rock salt was a mixture my grandson wanted to try)

I have watched many videos on starter, and I love your no-nonsense approach tips that just makes sense. I have not heard many of these from anyone else who is putting videos out there. Thanks for the tips I will surely try them.

This is the best video on this topic that I have seen. New subscriber! You explain things well and your home is real and beautiful and lived in. I wish I had found you sooner but I'm looking forward to learning from you and making better bread. I'm going to share this to everyone I know is interested in this. Thank you.

I use an organic Rye starter and it's brilliant!

So excited! My recipe book arrived yesterday!!

Old vid, but good stuff Jill. I've been making sour dough for at least 20 years. A couple years ago, someone else bought flour and it wasn't my regular brand. My starter did nothing. I looked at the bag and they bought bleached flour. ARRRG. Fortunately we have whole wheat. I ground some to flour and fed the starter. It took a week, but I saved my starter. Also, I never discard starter. My starter stays in the fridge. I make bread each week. Pull the starter out the day before, feed it the morning of and by noon or 1 it's ready. Take what I need and back in the fridge 'till next week.

Great advice! Love the mess, nothing compared to when I bake though.

Day three of my starter. It looks good so far. I started it with wheat and rye then feeding all purpose. Great video

i keep my starter in the microwave above my stove-top. I keep the light on low setting and it just perks away. Maybe someone already mentioned this, i have read the comments, definitely do the water thing for the chlorine. Also, I never throw out my extra started, I just fire up the grill at breakfast or whatever and make dollar size pancakes, a crumpet of sorts, let it cook on one side, med until all the bubbles have popped on the top side, then flip, if you flip to soon, you may get a soggy crumpet without holes to fill up with butter, jam, syrup, whatever is your fav addiction, Nutella?

Very helpful. Thank you.

she nailed it on the use the right flour and use the right water part

Well Done! Thanks!

I have a very active starter, but it is thin. I'm going to try adding a little more flour to make it look as thick as yours. It seems that if the starter is thin, I am weighing the water weight in the starter, and not so much the flour weight.

lol I love it, “eyeballs aren’t calibrated yet”

I will try this to try my starter because I have used your recipe twice and the bread have not grown so much and it’s super dense to the point where is really hard to cut it. I want to make the bread that is soft inside.

I’ve been baking with a starter for over 5 years. So I don’t waste (discard) anything, I start with only 10-20 grams and feed 1:1:1 with that amount. Then I keep adding until I have enough to bake (setting aside ~20 gms in the refridgerator for future baking). It’s a great method so I don’t need to discard or use the discard in other recipies I never intended to bake in the first place. Excellent videos!

I love everything in this video.

I'm new at this. The other day my s.d.s had a weird "skin" on it, I have noticed this happening when it's really humid ( we were expecting a bad storm) It smelled bad too and a few days before it looked and smelled fine. I threw it out, will start over but will go back to whole wheat flour instead. I'm more about learning than baking at this point. (I have my sourdough starter near the stove.) Thanks for your helpful hints

Thank you for the video. What do you do if your starter starts to get the smell of vinegar?

The puppy grew over night!

Thanks for the reminder about the coffee cake. I need to make that again!

I’ve had great success with fresh ground whole wheat flour.

Thought most tap water is treated with chloramine now, which takes weeks to dissipate, compared to chlorine which does.

Great video I need patience lol😊

Do you have a cookbook of sourdough recipes like the crackers you mentioned?

Oh my gosh! I love your videos! They have taken me - a person who has never made a loaf of bread - to a pretty decent sourdough bread maker! I laughed out loud when you said, "your eyeballs aren't calibrated yet"!! I understood exactly what you meant. Thank you! A quick question - after the first rise the top of my dough has lots of dried out patches on top. I've been pulling it off. What would you suggest?

Hi Jill. Thanks for your video. I started making sourdough in the spring and was pretty successful. Then I moved from Nashville to Spokane WA and I have been unable to get a new starter going. Seems as if it goes bad very quickly (attempted 4 times). I started with fresh flour and have even tried bottled water thinking that it was the water (very hard here). Any suggestions?

I’m discarding half and feeding every 12 hours but my starter still gets the liquid hooch layer on top indicating it’s hungry. Should I feed it every 6 hours or is that too often? It’s rising about 1 inch and falling each time, but no bubbles are evident.

My starter doubled in size on day 2. Then it deflated. Then on days 3-4 and five, i am feeding it as it should be but it is just making bubbles without growing in size. Is it dead? Or still alive?

Question: If you have to be away from home, can you freeze the starter and then revive it when you return home? These were the things I did wrong: I used tap water, I use all purpose flour (bleached), I only fed the sourdough once a day, and I had the dough too wet. Now it is very active and smells great: I use the leftover water from the teapot I used whole wheat flour for the first two days, then used unbleached all purpose flour from then on I carefully measure ratio of water and flour I feed twice a day Prepare the loafs of bread in the evening and bake in the morning

I can't get much of a rise out of the dough. It doesn't rise when it is cooking. I use bottled water and bread flour.

Where did you get your flour grinder? I would love one just like it!

Why throw out all that flour (discard) when flour is so hard to find in the first place? Using the scrapings method eliminates the waste and makes so much more sense than throwing all that flour away when the grocery shelves are empty.

This was rly helpfulllll 🙏

First 3 days my yeast bubbling very well but today 4th day it does not grow like yesterday. Instead just very little bubble but no increases in volume. Smells the same as before .. Why?

Does water on the bottom a good or bad thing

Do you store your starter with the lid on? I have been just covering the jar with a cloth to allow air exchange. Does that matter?

Can’t I just add a little bit of sugar, yeast, and water to reactivate?

Hi! Quick question for you. I started my sourdough starter with dark rye flour. On day 2, the starter double it size however on day 4, not so much and since then. There a some bubbles but not exciting. The starter is still good, right? Thanks! BTW love watching you videos of your farm. Thanks Dawna

Flour is sold out in the store and the whole wheat flour is not working well. No rye flour available.

Hello ...Firstly Thank You ...Ur tips were not just tips ...but there were a good Explanation as to why we do certain things with the Starter ...I still have 1 issue I use Wholewheat Fresh Mill Flour and the Proportion of 1:1 gets the flour mix extremely dry ...what do I do ...It does absorb more water ....pls help...Thank You

Chlorine and chloramine are different. Chloramine does not evaporate. You need to boil it per guidelines or use bottled water.

I am not seeing a lot of rise from my starter

My starter doubles but it doesn’t double until about 12 hours after feeding! Why is it so slow?

Wait.... I can’t use bleached flour?

could i jump start the sourdough starter with normal yeast? (what ever it is from the jar, active i think?) ... i mean is it the same yeast? or not really?

Unfortunately against our will our water has fluoride added to it. And that’s not something you can get out unless you have a special filter to remove the fluoride.

Hello, I need help, my sourdough starter is feeding me out of house and home , it wants to be feed every 4- 6 hours it tends to overflow How do I control this since I'm not planning to bake 24-7 help help 🤯

I lover that her house looks like a house with people living in it. Not trying to be rude. It's just that in other video's people have theses pristine sterile houses it make me feel bad about my house.

I wanted to thank you so sincerely for this video. I just got done feeding mine and was feeling super down about it. Turns out, i’m doing things right! I just forget that it’s only a week old! after seeing your pictures of freshly fed started, I noticed that mine looks the same! It’s hard when you only have a the internet for reference, and the thumbnails of most starter videos show these insanely bubbly and aged starters and you can only wonder what you’ve done wrong. Even things down to seeing the sides of your jar as messy as mine made me feel like i’m on the right track. thank you so much for this

Thank you! I'm officially a "sourdough starter addict." I finished my first week (7 days) of the starter and made pancakes this morning. Definitely the best pancakes ever. I'm making the sourdough bread next. I actually did the 1/2 cup flour and 1/4 and 1/8 cups of water for the starter. I don't know why this combination worked. Yesterday my wife called me in the kitchen and said, "your starter is overflowing." I knew it was alive!!!

I made a huge sourdough loaf on day 8 of my first starter...it turned out beautifully , (it got far bigger than any of the bakers yeast loaves I've made ) I'll never have any other bread after it. ..so good 😆😆

my sourdough starter is over 20 years old ... i don't understand why people always keep so much on hand. I literally keep 1-2 teaspoons in a jar in a refrigerator and about 3 hours before I bake with it I take it out, add the full amount required for my recipe, i.e. if it calls for 200 grams of starter I add 100 grams flour and 100 grams water to my existing 1-2 teaspoons and within 2-3 hours it is ready for baking. After that example recipe, I should have 1-2 teaspoons left over already fed for the next week in the refrigerator. If there is a week I am not baking bread, which seldom happens, I just take it out and feed it 1 teaspoon flour + 1 teaspoon water. By doing it this way over many years, I have less waste because 1) I am not using so much flour 2) I have just the amounts I need. I've made as much as 1000 grams of starter for recipes in 2-3 hours from 1-2 teaspoons.

Thank you so much. I had starter that was definitely growing well...at times. Turns out I was missing the starter part of "equal parts flour, water, and starter". I wasn't pouring nearly enough off, and it's growing far more dependably now. I also hadn't considered that I didn't have to use the poured off part immediately to cook before. So now I have one container in the fridge for pour-off to use for pancakes and such on the weekend, and the other for my core container or starter.

I have best tip ever that completely ended my sourdough problems. Stop using 100% sourdough (1:1 water to flour by weight). Start using either piece of your bread dough or keep 50% sourdough (1:2 water to flour by weight). Mixing it is a little bit more work (it is a stiff dough basically so you need to actually work it), but you can drop it in a clean plastic bag, remove all air and keep in the fridge for two weeks if you like. Using piece of your bread dough is also the way sourdough was originally kept. Just reserve 10% of your bread dough after first rise (or whatever you need for future batch of bread) to add to the next bread and put it in clean plastic bag and in the fridge.

I never discard. I just feed it everyday with flour and water. I discard by using it.😀

Can you please let me know the brand of your wheat grinder ?

Hi there… When you say you let the dough rise for 12 hours, does that include the time when you do the stretch and folds? What if you put it in the fridge overnight? Is that time calculated into the rise time?

Super helpful tip: We trained our children (and ourselves!) that BEFORE you EVER turn the oven on, you open it up and make sure it's empty! This way, there is NEVER burned anything!!! Likewise, before you take your food out, you TURN THE OVEN OFF. I was tired of finding my oven still on, hours after dinner because I inadvertently left it on! Both of these tricks work wonderful and there has been no more oven accidents!

Weigh your jar first, write it on the lid, and weigh the starter in the jar every time, subtracting the weight of the jar.

Hi! This video was so helpful!!! Oh my!!! I fed mine this morning with 1/2 cup of flour and 1/4 water, put it in the oven with the light on and it nearly exploded. Yes!!! I had to transfer it from the jar to a larger bowl. I was going to use it after one week, but now I will wait two more weeks, based on your suggestion. It makes alot of sense. Thank you so much!

I wrap my starter in a towel since it’s a chemical reaction that produces heat... my starter loves it 😊

Hi, thanks for your video. I have few questions here. 1. u use pure grain flour to feed the starter?or mix with other bread flour? is it ok just use normal bread flour? 2. is it ok just use room temperature boiled water? 3. u mentioned need about 3 weeks before the starter matured. That means or these 3 weeks just keep discarding and feeding?

Quick question, you said not to use it for bread for about three weeks. Do you keep it on the counter and feed it everyday for those three weeks till it is ready for bread making?

Thanks for this great video, Jill! I was worried about my starter, which I named Linda, because it was taking a really long time to form bubbles or grow. I ended up moving it to a warmer spot and now it’s bubbling up and acting how it should. Thanks again!!

You should never put your wheat berries into your NutriMill Harvest until you FIRST turn on the grain mill. It can overwork the motor.

Thanks for the tips! I see changes I need to make, including adjusting my patience. 🥖

sometimes I set my starter or dough on a lukewarm waterbottle covered in a tea towel. i've got the coldest house on the planet.

I am going on 7 days on my sourdough starter. When I feed my starter this morning I made a nice pancake with the pour off. This time I noticed the pancake rose nicely in the pan and when cooked it was nice and fluffy, the best pancake I ever ate. I still am waiting for a 4-6 hour doubling so I can make some bread. I do have a lot of bubble activity and a nice smell from my starter. I think I am on the right track. Thanks Jill for your informative video. Now that I am retired I have a lot more time to cook...

Btw. 1g of water = 1ml of water... the metric system is amazing.

I have my Mom's starter in my frig. She passed away several years ago from Alzheimer's and I'm ashamed to say I've never learned to feed it or bake bread. I hate to say but life got in the way and it's only now that's I've gotten older and with everything going on in the world I want to learn how. All I know is she use to feed her starter with potato flakes. What is the difference between the way you feed the starter and is there anyway possible to bring her starter back to life after all these years of being in my refrigerator, i'm talking like possibly 11 years or so. I just couldn't bring myself to get rid of it. Please help! Thank you

Where do you buy your wheat berries? And what brand of grain mill are you using?

Luke warm water....was doing room temp water...that is the problem I think.

Very helpful info! And btw, you're home is so beautiful!

Great information on sourdough starter! Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience. We often use sourdough starter for many things, especially bread. I'm often impatient on the waiting part, so thanks for addressing this! Just subscribed!!

My starter smells like cheese

Thank you for sharing ❤️💗❤️ I may not have mine in a warm enough area....going to move it now.... SENDING A BRIGHT WHITE LIGHT OF LOVE TO SURROUND THE UNIVERSE 🤗💞💖🤗 AND EVERYONE 🤗❣️❣️🤗💞💖

HELPFUL TIP > Wrap your starter jar with a kitchen towel. Brief flashback...I got to day seven and my starter still wouldn't pass the float test and I started to freak out because I was seeing activity but never enough. I literally prayed and asked God why this wouldn't work (atheists don't freak, keep reading) and got the idea to feed again and wrap my jar with a kitchen towel overnight and it worked!!! I literally had to do a victory dance. This was my second starter and was getting super frustrated that something so simple was so hard. Like you said, although I thought my starter was in a warm location, it just wasn't warm enough. Try this trick and see if this helps. Good luck all! (Side note, I folded the sides of the towel so it didn't go passed the lid to allow gases to exchange and used the wall to prop the towel up and prevent it from falling.)

I had a starter, I started it on Monday. I woke up this morning it was completely overflowed all over our counter and smelled like… stinky sock. It wasn’t a pleasant sight/smell at 5:00. So not knowing if this was normal I chucked everything and restarted… is it because my house is SO WARM with the Woodstove. Why did it smell so awful?

How do you feel about storing it in the fridge once its mature?

Lots of good information here, but unfortunately all the bobbing and weaving with the camera made me motion sick and I had to turn it off. (Why do RU-vidrs do this? Ugh. Keep the camera stationary please.)

Jill! I love watching your videos. I just moved to Montana from Los Angeles. You have really inspired me! Although I don’t think I will be homesteading as you, which by the way, if I was 30 years younger I would be doing it. Instead I will be creating a veggie garden and creating my own composting for the very first time! In the meantime, I have been trying to create sourdough starter for the last 2 months failing every time. I’ve tried all of your tips but I still fail. Needless to say I’m frustrated. Please HELPPPP! And I keep creating hooch! Lol. My big guess is that maybe it’s not in a warm enough place? I’ve tried the oven with light on with a pan of boiling hot water underneath. I’ve tried bringing it upstairs and leaving it on the bathroom counter with the door closed trapping heat. Still no go. 😔 you make it all look so dang easy. I’ve done your artisan easy bread recipe a few times with smashing success. Any other advice you can offer? Oh and I have been using natural spring water too. Signed frustrated baker. 🤗👩🏼‍🍳

try adding a pinch of sugar to your starter, yeast loves sugar

Great info, but if your municipality uses chloramine instead of chlorine for disinfecting the water supply, leaving your water exposed to air for a few hours isn't going to clear it like it will with chlorine. Chloramine (a combination of chlorine and ammonia) is used in many municipalities (more than 20% of US households) precisely because it is an effective disinfectant for days after exposure to air, whereas chlorine becomes ineffective after just a few hours. Unfortunately, chloramine is MUCH more damaging to copper pipes than chlorine, but that is another side issue. Anyway, if your drinking water is purified with chloramine your only solution for healthy starter growth may be buying distilled water, or using chemical filtration, such as the Brita system.

Where do you get your whole wheat and what brand is your mill? So far I am 2 - 10 (W vs. L) for attempts. "Make something out of your sourdough starter everyday." personally, I could cry; so many duds. My oven temp might not match my dial placement, also i learned that my scale is wonky but I've seen others not use a scale and they end with wonderful looking bread (experience/video magic?).

Why do you have to use grams, when most people watching use ounces? Don’t you want us poor idiots to understand what you’re talking about? You said most sourdough bakers use grams. Well, big whoop! I’m a sourdough baker & I use ounces. Yes, I wish they’d (the U.S.) started teaching grams, etc., back in the 70s when it was talked about, but they didn’t. So, if you want the average person to know what you’re talking about, then save the “grams” for your sour friends! Oops! I meant sourdough friends!

Hello Newbie here a brand newbie lol ..I need some help. Iim still on my making starters stage actually I'm on day 8 I have two that are day 8 & 2 that are day ten..ya I made several because I'm bound determined to get at least one made right 😂 I just need help with the air bubbles along the sides..most of mine are made with 50g of whole wheat & 50g's of bread flour and 100g of water but two are made with 1 cup flour & 1 cup water and they all are doin their rising part and they all past the float test one does float but when I took a second spoon to test out of same jar it did not so weird cuz my first spoon out of the same jar it floated beautifully..another issue I have is I am not seeing the beautiful air bubbles or the air pockets along the sides but I do have all the bubble action on top and they all doubled in size so tht tells me their all active and ready from wht I've learned but I do not want to use for bread until I see all the beautiful air bubbles along the sides because EVERY SINGLE ONE I SEE OR EVERY VIDEO I WATCH FOR RESEARCH they all have those beautiful air bubbles or airy pockets all along the side of the starters can someone PLZ PLZ help me what do I need to do to get those I know tht is what helps make your bread so beautiful and airy..so sorry for such a long post but I needed you to k iw what I was and wasn't doin thank you I enjoyed watching your video

There is a lot of good information and a lot of "optimization " Optimization is the process of doing something as well as possible that should not be done at all. I recently retired from teaching a sourdough class at a university. The start, which I gave the class, came from a San Francisco bakery and is 170 years old. The class also got 4 bowls to bake and cover the bread The start is kept in the fridge until it is below 1/2 cup. Then it gets 1 cup filtered tap water, no chlorine, and equal AP flour. Counter rest at room temperature for 8 hours, until bubbles on the top. The bubbles are CO2 and that says it is ready to make bread or go back in the fridge. The bread is 1/2 cup of start, 2 cups filtered water and 4 cups of bread flour. Mix with a rubber spatula, 5 turn and folds with 20 to 30 minutes between, shape, rest 4-5 hours room temp until about doubled. Slash the top and bake at 475F for 20 minutes covered, 12 minutes uncovered. The baking bowl and cover are inexpensive stainless dog water bowls not cast iron, expensive Dutch ovens. They do not need to be preheated. Simple and the bread is great.

I just mastered making a successful starter. After 3 failed tries it finally doubles in size. I baked my first sourdough recipe after using my recently fed starter(within 6 hours of being fed), I even did the float test. My starter was floating. However, my sourdough bread barely had any rise even though I followed the directions for the recipe and did all the stretch and fold correctly. I made sure any liquid wasn't over 110 degrees. What could have gone wrong,

Hey Jill! My starter is on day 17. It was doubling with small feeds of 1T each water and flour. So on day 13 I gave it a bigger feed. 1/4c starter to 1c each flour and water. I've done that for 3 days now. The next morning it is bubbly, but very thin and it is not growing at all. My flour is unbleached organic and my water is either filtered or tap that's sat out. Do you know why it's not growing?

Also, I’m like 1000% more sanitary than this I make sour beer and sterilize all my utensils while wearing gloves. I use exact measure with scale and no matter what I do day 5- 6 I get mold every time. I know bacteria ( lactobacillus/Leuconostoc) very well and cannot successfully get a non infected starter.... it’s very frustrating people say this is rare but it’s 5 time now for me using 5 different flours.

ok, I started my starter like you said.... it was going very well for 5 days....now it is separated??!!! Did I kill it or what can I do?!!

Where do I get they wheat berries mill? I just love it!

My neighbor bought me your cookbook and my mom bought me your spiral bound yearly planner (they didn’t even plan it) so I had to look you up! Diving in the books! I now listen to your videos while I milk my own cow lol. Keep up the education!

Make 2 starters. keep the mother in the fridge. feed it weekly. the child starter should be used when baking 6-8 hrs before baking take and use the mother starter to seed your child starter. The reason for this is simple. Most bread recipes require the sourdough starter to be at its peak. its the fastest way while maintaining a supply for other baked goods

Ok, I’m ready to give up! I’ve tried all purpose flour, didn’t work. Switched to whole wheat, and it doubles in size after feeding, but when I do the float in water to see if it’s ready, it sinks!! Every time! It’s been over 14 days and it still sinks. Is that a fool proof (pardon the pun 😉) method of testing for a mature starter?

I had started a sourdough starter over a week ago, probably almost two weeks ago….it did great at first, rising and bubbly then actually smelled sour. I was so excited but then it just quit rising and quit bubbling. I fed it more often,,,,then when that didn’t help I tried not feeding it as much,,,,all the while discarding and feeding,. Finally it lost it’s smell and wasn’t bubbling or rising either. I finally threw it out.

I've tried to make a starter many times throughout the years and they never, ever, ever, ever work for me I have no idea why??? Ive used different types of flour, different containers and different amounts of feedings and they never work 🤯 it's so angering!