Stop Maintaining Multiple Jars of Sourdough Starter ... Do This Instead!

Stop keeping multiple jars of sourdough starter. You don't have to feed your discard!

Read on to find out why feeding your discard is actually more wasteful than ditching it or using it for other things.

Now I mean this the best of intentions and sourdough love - stop keeping multiple jars of sourdough starter.

You really only need one.

Now hear me out before you start yelling at me through your screen ...

I often have people message me with photos of multiple jars of starter and ask me to tell them which one looks like it's the healthiest.

Or tell me that they are feeding three different jars with three different types of flour.

Or worse - they keep making more jars of starter from their sourdough discard. Stop!

Now I'm all for experimenting, seriously, nobody loves a bit of trial and error more than me. But maintaining multiple jars of sourdough starter is a bit crazy and it can become wasteful and expensive!

Concentrate on developing one super strong and bubbly starter that will stay with you throughout your lifetime.

If you're looking for my easy instructions on making a sourdough starter, you'll find them here.

Make One Strong & Healthy Sourdough Starter

Sourdough starters take time to mature and develop. While they can rise bread from around two weeks old, you won't fully see what they're capable of for a good few months at least.

When it's mature, a good sourdough starter will have a fuller flavor, peak within 2-6 hours of feeding and be able to produce a light, airy crumb worthy of only the best butter.

You can read more about how to tell if your sourdough starter is ready here.

Getting it to this point takes a lot of feeding, nurturing and care.

If you are doing this for three or even more jars, it's going to take a lot of flour and time. These resources ultimately cost you money (and sometimes your sanity).

Put your effort into one fantastic sourdough starter. Or consider buying one!

While you're building your starter, you can use the discard to bake some wonderful treats - or even use your discard in your chicken feed or on your compost. This sourdough discard bread recipe is my favorite way of using discard.

Making A Sourdough Starter for a Friend

If you want to make a sourdough starter for your friend at the same time as yours then don't actually make two. That's way too much work.

Make one fantastic sourdough starter, let it mature and develop into all its bubbly goodness.

Then when it's ready, put half of it in a jar and give it to your friend ... or whoever else wants some. Sharing your sourdough starter is such a rewarding process!

You could even dry it and mail it to them if you need to. You can direct them here for instructions on how to activate their dried sourdough starter.

Your friends and family will appreciate receiving a mature starter, rather than one they have to keep feeding. They'll be able to bake beautiful sourdough bread straight away! And all of this results in much less waste.

This easy wholewheat rye sourdough was made using a sourdough starter fed with All Purpose flour.

Different Starters For Different Flours

Want a rye, spelt and white starter. Great. Just make a really awesome, bubbly starter then you can create offshoots from the mature starter. These are called a "levain".

Did you know that you can bake any type of sourdough from one type of sourdough starter. Now that might sound strange, but let me explain.

Say you want to bake a Rye Sourdough, but your starter is fed with All Purpose Flour.

It's fine, you can bake a Rye Sourdough with an All Purpose Starter. And vice versa - you could bake a white flour sourdough with a Rye Flour starter.

When you have a lovely, mature sourdough starter you can pretty much turn it into anything you like.

Create an offshoot fed with rye for a particular bake, create a Pasta Madre or even a chocolate sourdough starter. But you only need to maintain one mother sourdough starter to do this.

Always keep a back up of your "mother" sourdough starter for some insurance - incase something goes wrong. You'll find many techniques of preserving your sourdough starter here.

You can read a full guide on the difference between a levain (or offshoot) and a sourdough starter here.

The Pantry Mama says:

April 19, 2023 at 4:02 pm

Using discard doesn't always have the same health benefits as using a fed starter, this article explains everything you need to know about this. You still need to use baking powder in muffins because they are a "Quick" sourdough recipe where you're not waiting for the sourdough starter to activate (which will take hours). Also, a muffin is different to bread. You want a tender, cake like crumb, rather than a gluten structure like bread, so using baking powder is the answer here in terms of leavening, rather than using the actual sourdough starter for this purpose. In muffins, sourdough discard adds flavor, rather than leavening.

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Brandon S says:

February 24, 2024 at 5:22 am

It can slightly increase health benefits as your starter discard is fully fermented and the starches and sugars have been processed by the wild yeast. But you probably aren't letting the thing you are baking fully ferment. Baking powder reacts with acids to create gas in your non yeasted breads. In this case, your baking powder is activated by the lactic and acetic acids that your sourdough discard has developed.

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Have you used Gluten Free flours to make sourdough starters?
I have looked for years to find sourdough bread starter recipe. Thanks for your advice and expertise.
Bonnie

I appreciate this post but I have myself even more confused now. I have 2 jars of discard, one was intended to be my starter that I pull from. But I pretty much ended up putting all my discard into both of these jars. Are they both useable as starter, or do I just need to start over from scratch? I just want a simple process and not a lot of waste. I have been taking some out of the fridge on Thursday, feeding it Friday morning, then making a levain Friday night. Leftover levain goes back in the jar. Not sure if any of this is correct! Any suggestions would be great. Thanks!

Hi, Mama! Newby here! Insofar as not maintaining many starters, which I have, do I dump them all together, or what do you suggest? This is a fantastic article! Glad I stumbled upon The Pantry Mama! Also, do you have a recipe for a chocolate starter? Thank you so much for sharing all of your knowledge!