Easy Gluten-Free Sourdough Starter Recipe
Some gluten-free flour, water, and a little patience are all it takes to make a sourdough starter at home. Within as little as a week of tending to your living, breathing starter (aka your new pet), you can have a thriving culture that has the ability to provide fresh sourdough bread loaves, waffles, and even pizza dough for as long as you keep it alive and well.
Join Sadie as she shows you how to make a gluten-free sourdough starter from scratch. She uses buckwheat flour in this example, but you can use any flour you have lying around, including rice, sorghum, or cassava flour.
And although everything that we do at Bread SRSLY is gluten-free, you can apply the same techniques shared here using a wheat or rye flour too.
Making a Gluten-Free Sourdough Starter
Sourdough making is a rewarding project for curious home chefs and baking enthusiasts, and feeding the starter makes a fun task for kids. Let us know how your sourdough experiments turn out by tagging us on social media (@breadsrsly and #breadsrsly).
Today we are making a gluten-free sourdough from scratch. It takes about a week to start and becomes an ongoing process of caring for your starter.
You’ll need gluten-free flour. If you aren’t gluten intolerant or celiac, you don't have to use gluten-free flour - this recipe will work equally well with wheat flour.
I recommend using a flour you don't particularly care about, so use this as an opportunity to do a pantry clean-out. I found some buckwheat flour that I'm never going to use, so I'm using that. You can use any kind of gluten-free flour for this.
Making the Starter: Day One
Step 1:
Add 2 tablespoons of your gluten-free flour into a glass jar. No need to be precise — you can just shake it off. Yeast is not picky.
Step 2:
Add two tablespoons of water to the jar and mix. Cover and let sit.
That’s all you need to make a sourdough starter. Mix that all together. You’re going to make a nice little slurry — not too thick — because you want it to be able to stretch a little bit.
What you’re trying to do is invite some yeast and bacteria into the jar. This is like rehousing a bee swarm or something. You are providing an atmosphere they really like: wet, somewhat warm, and full of sugar and protein. They will find it, and they will want to set up their home. And once they do, they’re going to start eating and reproducing.
Your starter should become more full of yeast and bacteria. And grow over time.
That’s it — you just started your very own sourdough starter. I hope you’re pleasantly surprised by how simple that is.
But it is a multi-step process, so we’re going to come back a little later and talk about the next step.
After 8 Hours: Day One
After about eight hours, you might have already gotten some yeast and bacteria in your bowl or jar. There’s no way to know this if you don’t have a microscope, but we’re just going to hope that we did. Now we’re going to grab a fresh bowl and do the same thing over again.
Step 3:
Mix two tablespoons of water with two tablespoons of flour in your bowl.
Step 4:
Then, add two tablespoons of your original mixture into the new mixture.
Step 5:
Cover and wait another 8 hours.
The rest of it? Do whatever you want — throw it out, paper mâché with it, throw it into your pancake batter — knock yourself out. That’s why we’re using flour we don’t particularly care about.
Another 8 Hours Later: Day Two
Step 6:
After another eight hours on day two of your sourdough starter, take a new jar, add two tablespoons of flour, two tablespoons of water, and two tablespoons of the previous mixture.
Step 7:
Cover it. Eight hours later, you’re going to do the same thing — or overnight when you wake up in the morning.
This process takes the yeast and bacteria we already caught, gives them a fresh source of food, and encourages them to reproduce more, making a really strong sourdough starter.
We’re going to do this twice a day:
- Add two tablespoons of flour into a jar
- Add two tablespoons of water
- and add two tablespoons of the previous mix
- Throw out the rest. Continue this process of feeding your starter twice a day for one week.
After a Week: Maintaining Your Starter
In about a week, we’re going to have a sourdough starter that’s bubbly and sour, maybe smells a little sulfur-y, and is perfectly ready to turn into bread dough.
To maintain your starter after the first week of activation, all you have to do is keep it in the fridge and feed weekly, maybe even less! Keeping it in the fridge essentially slows down the fermentation process. Make sure you feed it on some consistent basis. If you see liquid start to form on top, that's when you know it needs to be fed. Starters can be revived after a long period - say you go on vacation. So don't stress too hard about it!
Enjoy the process. Go find that flour you don’t care about. I hope you all have the beginnings of a thriving sourdough starter.
Comment on our video attached to this blog with any questions about creating a gluten-free sourdough starter!
Recipes Using Your Sourdough Starter
After that first week, you can use your sourdough starter for tons of baked goods. The best way to use your starter is by swapping out the yeast in any of your favorite recipes for your starter. Don't be afraid to experiment. The fermentation process of your sourdough starter aids in digestion and the health of your microbiome, making it far worth to make!
For easy recipes for your sourdough and your starter discards. Check out this easy sourdough pizza recipe and sourdough pancake recipe!