Gifting, Sharing and Sending a Sourdough Starter — Gartur Stitch Farm (2024)

FAQs

Gifting, Sharing and Sending a Sourdough Starter — Gartur Stitch Farm? ›

You can easily share your sourdough starter with friends and family - whether you're gifting, sharing or sending a starter, the easiest thing to do is take 20g of sourdough starter and place into a small jar and then add 20g of flour and 20g of water. You now have a small sourdough starter to gift to your friend.

You can easily share your sourdough starter with friends and family - whether you're gifting, sharing or sending a starter, the easiest thing to do is take 20g of sourdough starter and place into a small jar and then add 20g of flour and 20g of water. You now have a small sourdough starter to gift to your friend.

For most locations in the US, standard shipping is adequate. Sourdough starters are considered liquids and are perishable, but conform to the guidelines set forth by USPS. Other mail carriers, such as FedEx and UPS are fine to use, as long as expected shipment times are no longer than 5 days.

I wipe the top and rim of my starter jar every time I feed, which helps keep most of the jar clean. Transfer your sourdough starter to a new, clean jar whenever your current jar becomes overly crusted with sourdough starter. I typically do this once every two weeks.

You can either split your starter into a new jar for your friend and feed both as normal ( about 100g of starter and 100g each of water and flour) or spilt some off and give them the discard to feed up. Generally, you don't need more than about 50g of starter to pass on to really get a new starter going.

Maintaining A Sourdough Starter:

Maintenance is fairly simple. Like anything living, it requires food and water. The location you keep your starter in will determine how you maintain it. Leaving it out on the counter, it will need to be fed equal parts water and flour every 12-24 hours.

Experts recommend feeding a starter twice daily. And at each feeding, you hold onto 1/2 cup of your original starter, discard the rest, and then add its same weight in water and flour. With this schedule, you'd discard almost a cup of sourdough starter every day.

Sourdough starter can be stored at room temperature or in the fridge. If you're feeding and making bread with your starter regularly (once a week or so) you can leave it out at room temperature. If you're going away for a bit or if you don't use it that often (once a month or less), store it in the fridge.

Fed sourdough starter refers to a starter that has been fed flour and water (preferably by weight). You should feed the starter equal or greater than its weight after discarding a portion. You should wait at least 2-4 hours or until the starter is at its peak before you use it in your baking.

Do you have to discard sourdough starter every time you feed it? ›

Do I have to discard my sourdough starter? It would be best if you discarded some portion of your starter each time you feed it unless you want to continue to let it grow. Eventually, you need to discard the used “food” (flour and water) that's been used to sustain your starter during the last fermentation period.

You'll want to cover your sourdough starter, but only to stop things from falling into it and to keep it from forming a skin on top and drying out. Otherwise, remember that your starter is alive and needs to breathe a little bit. A lid is fine, so long as it's not completely air-tight.

I keep my starter jar very clean by scraping down the sides and wiping the rim every time I feed it, so I transfer it to a clean jar once every few weeks. If you keep a very messy starter jar you may want to transfer it to a clean jar more frequently. The only thing that can really kill your starter is mold.

It's really easy to dry out your sourdough starter (you'll find full instructions on how to do this here) and then you can pop it into a plastic zip loc or vacuum sealed bag and mail that to your loved ones. It will easily fit in a letter sized envelope, so postage cost will be minimal.

For long term storage, dry AND freeze. Freezing a wet sourdough starter will last for about two weeks before it will go bad, but drying and freezing will keep the starter healthy much much longer.

Once you are able to dry your sourdough starter out you can store it indefinitely. You also reduce the risk of losing your starter to mold or neglect. Whatever happens, you'll always have a back up to reactivate, should the worst happen to your starter.

If you don't want to discard sourdough starter daily, scale back your feedings by 1/4 cup amounts. Still feels like you're baking too much? You can further reduce your feedings to a weekly basis if you keep your starter in the fridge rather than on the countertop.

You can easilly scale it up or down depending on how much active starter you need, just keep a 1:1:1 proportion with feeding. So if you need less, use 50 grams starter, 50 grams flour, and 50 grams water.

From a practical perspective, it's akin to nurturing countless pets, as the starter is home to millions of thriving microbes that rely on routine care and nourishment.

At this point, it's best to revive some of your backup starter, get a new sourdough starter going, feed some discard, or get starter from a friend. 140f will undoubtably kill the yeast in your starter and prolonged exposure to temperatures above 120f will harm your starter.