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Easy instructions on how to make a chocolate sourdough starter. This simple chocolate variation on a traditional sourdough starter will provide you with new inspiration on your sourdough journey.

How To Add Chocolate To Your Sourdough Starter?

In order to make a Chocolate or Cocoa Sourdough Starter, you first need to have an established “normal” sourdough starter. This makes it much easier to create a chocolate one.

You will add cocoa, sugar, flour and water to your regular sourdough starter in order to transition it to a chocolate sourdough starter.

You can either use regular cocoa powder or raw cocao powder – it’s totally up to you. Either one of these will work just fine. You should however try to use the best quality cocoa powder you can.

Why Create A Chocolate Sourdough Starter?

Adding chocolate to a portion of your sourdough starter is an easy way to create a rich and decadent base to many different recipes.

You can use the cocoa starter exactly the same way you would a regular sourdough starter.

The cocoa, together with the sugar and flour, provide a food source for the yeast and bacteria. The cocoa will change the chemistry of your sourdough starter – but it will still behave in the same way.

You’ll find that using the chocolate starter in chocolate sourdough recipes will give you a much richer flavor than using your normal liquid starter.

You can also use the discard from feeding the chocolate starter in a variety of discard recipes for a hint of chocolatey goodness.

These discard cookies work really well with the chocolate starter, as do these fluffy sourdough pancakes.

I always recommend keeping a back up of your sourdough starter.

You can create a Chocolate Sourdough Starter as a once off to use in a recipe. You could also keep your chocolate starter in the fridge and feed it when you want to bake with it.

How To Store It

I find keeping the chocolate starter in the fridge the best solution. It’s not a starter I use every day and I don’t want to feed it once or twice a day. I keep the jar of cocoa starter in the fridge and just take it out and feed it as I require it.

As my starter is well established, it only takes one feed to get it doubling.

It’s up to you how you build or store your starter – you can certainly just build the chocolate starter as you need it for a recipe, this method will work just fine.

Depending on how established your starter is (and how well your first mixture doubles) you might want to do two or three feedings before you use it in a bake.

If your starter is well established, you will find it doesn’t take much to get a chocolate one going.

Flour to Use for Cocoa Starter

When building this type of starter, I chose to use a blend of All Purpose Flour and Rye Flour.

You can basically use whatever flour your starter prefers – or you can choose to use something different. I like using a little rye to give the starter a boost. The smell of the rye and the chocolate together is heaven!

You want to keep your cocoa starter fairly stiff – it seems to be happier that way. You can still use it in recipes that ask for a 1:1:1 starter – it won’t make any noticeable difference.

If you use rye or whole wheat you might notice that your starter is very stiff – it’s totally ok, it will loosen up as it ferments.

As the cocoa absorbs water as well as the flour, it may feel different to your traditional liquid starter.

How To Use a Chocolate Sourdough Starter

Adding cocoa to your sourdough starter creates the most amazing, rich jar of yeasty goodness! You can use your chocolate sourdough starter in many different recipes. I’ve listed a few here:

• Use it as the base of these Fluffy Sourdough Pancakes.

• It increases the rich chocolate flavors of this Chocolate and Walnut Sourdough Bread.

• Use it as the rising agent for this Coffee and Maple Infused Date Sourdough Bread.

• Give your favorite fruit bread a chocolate twist with this Sourdough Fruit Bread recipe.

• Use the discard from this starter to make a batch of Chocolate Sourdough Discard Bread.

Believe it or not, you can even just use your Cocoa Sourdough Starter in regular sourdough bread. Try and it and see if you like it!