Description
No fuss, Gluten Free Sourdough Starter adds a delicious new dimension of flavor to your baked goods. Enjoy!
Ingredients
Choose Gluten Free, Non-GMO & Organic Ingredients.
- Superfine Brown Rice Flour – start with at least a 3 lb bag (1.3 kg)
- Warm Filtered Water
- Bonus ingredients: 1 large red cabbage leaf with white powdery appearance, torn into 3 pieces OR several local grapes OR 1 T (15 ml) unflavored Kombucha or SCOBY water
Instructions
Equipment: Digital scale (preferred,) Large glass bowl or container with loose fitting lid, Measuring cups, Sturdy spoon
Note: The amount of flour and water is listed by weight using both metrics and ounces. Metrics are listed first followed by ounces. Example: grams or milliliters/ounces.
Daily Diary
Use this daily diary as a guide to help you make delightful starter. If you do not have a large bowl use less than the amount listed here by weight – just use equal amounts of each. The key is to be patient enough to allow the starter to mature. The surface needs to crack and dome before it’s ready to use. You should see the starter rise and bubble. Also, you want to move through the stinky phase into the earthy, distinctly sourdough smell phase. Be patient! No worries. It’s all good.
Day 1: In a large glass bowl or one gallon glass container with wide mouth, blend together 113g/4 oz of superfine brown rice flour with 118 ml/4 fl oz of warm (not hot!) filtered water. Fold in bonus ingredients if using. If using Kombucha, remove 1 T of water and add 1 T of Kombucha to the measure cup before mixing with the flour. Loosely cover the bowl with a tea towel and allow mix to sit at room temperature (about 68 F/20 C). If your home is cooler, place bowl in a warm area such as the top of your refrigerator. Try not to disturb the yeast party going on for at least 24 hours.
Day 2: After 24 hours, remove the bonus ingredients (cabbage or grapes) and begin feeding your starter 118 ml/4 fl oz of warm filtered water + 113g/4 oz of superfine brown rice flour every 8 hours (use 6 am, 2 pm and 10 pm as guide times.) Stir to completely incorporate flour and water. Keep loosely covered and store in a warm area of your home where it will not be disturbed between feedings. (If you miss a feeding – don’t freak! It will be OK). Your starter may remind you of wet play-dough.
Day 3: Follow directions for Day 2.
Day 4: Hang in there! Feed schedule is the same as Days 2 and 3. At the first feeding, remove 227g/8 oz of starter and discard. Continue to follow directions for the previous few days. If you accidentally skip a feeding, again – don’t freak. It will be OK. In our experience (yes! we have forgotten to feed the starter,) it takes a bit longer to mature.
Day 5: Your starter should smell nice and ripe (pungent and sour are more appropriate descriptions!) Also, bubbles should appear around the edges and on the surface if they haven’t already. Continue with Day 4 directions.
Days 6-7: Follow directions for Day 4. During these days, your starter should start to appear cracked on the surface and bubbly underneath. A dome will start to rise in the center. Once the dome appears, your starter is mature and you are ready to start baking! If your starter is overflowing the bowl, it’s OK to remove more than 8 oz (227g) at the first feeding. Use your judgement; however, I would not remove more than 2 C (454g/16 oz).
Maturity
When your starter matures, you are ready to bake and will need to use it within 24 hours or refrigerate. When we first refrigerate, we will reduce the amount to about 3-4 cups, feed it, (either a total of 4 oz or 8 oz depending on how much we plan to use it, and then refrigerate.) We generally keep about 4 cups (907g/32 oz) in the refrigerator at a time. Be prepared to bake up a storm with the discard. We make pancakes and bread and store them in the freezer.
Using Your Starter
These instructions make a starter that is 100% hydrated, which means that there are equal parts flour to water. This makes substituting starter in a recipe fairly straight forward. See the note about hydration below. Take care to stir your starter before measuring. The top is very bubbly and airy. The bottom is more solid. You need to stir to even out the blend and correctly measure.
Notes
Maintenance: If you are not baking with the starter within 24 hours, begin the once a week feeding schedule (57g/2 oz flour + 59 ml/2 fl oz warm water.) If you use it more frequently, double the amount. After feeding, allow to sit at room temperature loosely covered for a few hours before refrigerating.
Using after refrigeration: Pull the amount of starter needed from the refrigerator at least 12 hours before baking, and place it in a warm, protected area. Replace the amount of starter removed from the refrigerated container with half water and half flour. Optional – but we have the best results when do follow this: Allow the yeast to activate in the starter, which means leave at room temperature for an hour or two before returning to the refrigerator
Trouble Shooting: If the sourdough starter that you removed from the refrigerator does not appear mature or does not start to rise or puff after a few hours, you will need to feed the entire batch and wait for it to mature before you use it. If you don’t see any action, continue with a room temperature feeding schedule every 8 hours as outlined in Day 4 above until you see a cracked and domed surface. It’s important to note that we have only had to feed it once when this happened, 4 fl oz of water and 4 oz of flour, before it started to show signs of maturing and we left it alone until ready to bake.
Hydration: This recipe makes a balanced sourdough starter at 100% hydration. This means that you will substitute equal amounts of flour and water in whatever recipe you want to adapt. For example, if you want to use 8 oz of starter, you will need to reduce the amount of liquid in a recipe by 4 fl oz (113g) and reduce the amount of flour by 4 oz (113g).
Weight Measurements: We break down the weight of our water and flour into either 2 oz (57g) or 4 oz (113g). You can use whatever amount you want. These amounts are easy for us to remember to use consistently. Also, you may want your sourdough to have a different percentage of hydration, so your weights may vary and not be equal. So far, for all of our recipes on Flour.Farm, we use sourdough starter at 100% hydration; therefore, we replace with equal amounts of flour and water. If this changes – we will distinctly note it in the recipe.
Keywords: gluten free sourdough starter