How To Activate Dried Sourdough Starter

Want to rehydrate a dried sourdough starter? Whether you’ve purchased a dehydrated sourdough starter or have some of your own dried starter, it’s really easy to reactivate it and get it bubbly and ready to bake with in just a few days! No matter where your dried sourdough starter came from, the process to rehydrate it is really quite simple. You’ll be baking sourdough bread within a week!

What is a Dry Sourdough Starter?

Dry sourdough starter refers to a sourdough starter that has been dehydrated to make it better for long-term storage. Drying the starter removes the water but preserves the beneficial lactic acid bacteria and wild yeast colonies. It’s kind of like they are suspended in time!

Activating a dried sourdough starter can take much less time than starting a sourdough starter from scratch.

If you are dehydrating a sourdough starter yourself, it’s best to wait until your starter is at least a few months old. That way, when you activate it, it will be bubbly and ready to bake with in just a few days. If you’ve purchased your dehydrated starter from a reliable source, you can be sure it is already a healthy, established culture. 

Generally, the amount of starter you receive in a package is quite small – around 20 to 50 grams of starter. You really only need a tiny amount to start the process of activation.

What You’ll Need

• Digital Scale – essential for weighing everything accurately.
• A clean glass jar (16oz Mason Jar is perfect). If you want to feed into a clean jar each feed, 2 jars are necessary.
• Paper Towel & Rubber Band OR plastic lid – you can use either of these to cover your jar while your sourdough starter is rehydrated. I prefer a plastic lid just sitting on the jar, but you can use ei
• Flour – all purpose flour is fine.
• Water – good quality water, use slightly warm water if your kitchen is cold.
• Spatula – A silicone jar spatula is great for stirring your starter.

How To Rehydrate a Dry Sourdough Starter

The following feeding schedule can be used for any dried sourdough starter, whether it’s been left as flakes or ground into a powder. It’s best to keep your sourdough starter at room temperature during this process. 

• DAY 1 – MORNING – Starting with a clean glass jar, add 10g of dried sourdough starter to the jar. Add 50g of warm water and stir it together until the starter is completely covered and coated by the water. Now add 50g of flour and stir in well. This is the first feeding and is designed to wake the dried starter up! Cover with a paper towel or loose lid and leave in a warm spot to ferment for approximately 24 hours.
• DAY 2 – MORNING – Discard all but 50g of your starter (you could just place 50g of the starter into a clean jar and get rid of the rest). Add 50g of water and 50g of flour to your mixture. Give it a really good stir to move things around. Cover with a paper towel or loose lid and leave for approximately 12 hours.
• DAY 2 – EVENING – After 12 hours, discard all but 50g of your starter (you could just place 50g of the starter into a clean jar and get rid of the rest). Add 50g of water and 50g of flour to your mixture. Give it a really good stir and cover, just like day 1 and 2.
• DAY 3 – MORNING – Discard all but 50g of your starter (you could just place 50g of the starter into a clean jar and get rid of the rest). Add 50g of water and 50g of flour to your mixture. Give it a really good stir. You’ll need to repeat step 3 every 12 hours until your starter is bubbly and doubling consistently. If your starter was strong when it was dried, it may already be doing this. If not, just keep going. You want your starter to become bubbly and consistently doubling after each feed. You can read more about understanding when your sourdough starter is ready to bake with. 

Once your sourdough starter is bubbly and doubling consistently, you’ll need to move it into ongoing maintenance mode. You can use this guide to learn how to feed a sourdough starter. 

Best Tips for Rehydrating Sourdough Starter

While activating dried sourdough starter is a relatively easy process, there are a few things that will ensure you have success and produce a healthy starter.

• Flour – Make sure you use the same flour consistently through the process. If you wish to change the flour you’re using, try to wait until the starter has started doubling consistently. White flour like bread flour or all purpose flour is perfect. You could also use whole wheat flour if you prefer.
• Timing – Try to keep the timing of your feeding consistently 12 hours apart. Feeding the starter twice a day is important to get the starter going.
• Temperature – You should keep the starter warm (if possible) to speed up the activation process. Starters do best between 24ºC – 28ºC. Check out these tips for keeping your starter warm.
• Consistency – Depending on the flour you’re using, your starter may feel a little thicker or a little runnier. Ideally, you want it to be like warm peanut butter. In general, your sourdough starter will thin out a little as it ferments, so don’t stress too much if it feels a little thick. Try to keep to the same equal flour to water ratio. If you feel the starter is too runny, use these solutions to fix a runny sourdough starter.
• Storage – Once your starter is doubling consistently you can choose to store your sourdough starter in the fridge or feed it daily and store it on the counter.

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