{"id":760,"date":"2022-05-06T06:09:09","date_gmt":"2022-05-06T06:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aloland.v.paler.net\/2022\/05\/06\/low-stress-no-waste-sourdough-starter-maintenance\/"},"modified":"2025-04-30T15:14:33","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T14:14:33","slug":"low-stress-no-waste-sourdough-starter-maintenance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alo.land\/pt\/low-stress-no-waste-sourdough-starter-maintenance\/","title":{"rendered":"Low stress, no waste sourdough starter maintenance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Baking sourdough bread necessarily involves obtaining and maintaining a starter culture. After experimenting with several ways of doing it, I settled on the lowest effort yet still effective one I found: the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thefreshloaf.com\/node\/40918\/no-muss-no-fuss-starter\">NMNF (&#8220;No Muss No Fuss&#8221;) starter<\/a>, courtesy of <em>dabrownman<\/em> on The Fresh Loaf.<\/p>\n<p>The author&#8217;s details in the recipe are worth studying, but to summarize:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It&#8217;s a stiff starter using whole rye flour. I normally use freshly milled rye but it also worked with store-bought whole rye flour.<\/li>\n<li>Building it involves 3 stages. Precise temperature control is not critical but is useful if aiming for a particularly sour taste (see details in the recipe link above).<\/li>\n<li>The first 2 stages are 4 hours apart. The starter should double in size 4 hours after the second feeding. If it does not (this happens when the starter was in the fridge for too long), remove the amount fed in stage 2 (water+flour) and restart from stage 2.<\/li>\n<li>Once the starter rises 25% in volume after the 3rd feeding, store it in the fridge in a covered container. I normally refresh it after about 2 months.<\/li>\n<li>To bake, I use about 10-15g of the starter (roughly a large scoop with a teaspoon) to make a preferment with whatever flour I&#8217;m using for that particular bread.<\/li>\n<li>An incremental preferment build as described in the original recipe is not necessary but can be useful if aiming to precisely control taste and\/or to make the starter last a longer time when baking often.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The ingredient feeding amounts for each stage depend on how much starter you want at the end:<\/p>\n<p><!--kg-card-begin: markdown--><\/p>\n<table>\n<thead>\n<tr>\n<th>Stage<\/th>\n<th>1st<\/th>\n<th><\/th>\n<th><\/th>\n<th>2nd<\/th>\n<th><\/th>\n<th>3rd<\/th>\n<th><\/th>\n<th>Total<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>Feed<\/td>\n<td>Seed<\/td>\n<td>Flour<\/td>\n<td>Water<\/td>\n<td>Flour<\/td>\n<td>Water<\/td>\n<td>Flour<\/td>\n<td>Water<\/td>\n<td><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Grams<\/td>\n<td>10<\/td>\n<td>10<\/td>\n<td>10<\/td>\n<td>20<\/td>\n<td>20<\/td>\n<td>40<\/td>\n<td>16<\/td>\n<td>126<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><\/td>\n<td>8<\/td>\n<td>8<\/td>\n<td>8<\/td>\n<td>16<\/td>\n<td>16<\/td>\n<td>32<\/td>\n<td>13<\/td>\n<td>101<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><\/td>\n<td>6<\/td>\n<td>6<\/td>\n<td>6<\/td>\n<td>12<\/td>\n<td>12<\/td>\n<td>24<\/td>\n<td>10<\/td>\n<td>76<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p><!--kg-card-end: markdown--><\/p>\n<figure class=\"kg-card kg-gallery-card kg-width-wide kg-card-hascaption\">\n<div class=\"kg-gallery-container\">\n<div class=\"kg-gallery-row\">\n<div class=\"kg-gallery-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/alo.land\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2025\/04\/stage1-1.jpg\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1886\" loading=\"lazy\" alt><\/div>\n<div class=\"kg-gallery-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/alo.land\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2025\/04\/stage2.jpg\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" loading=\"lazy\" alt><\/div>\n<div class=\"kg-gallery-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/alo.land\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2025\/04\/fridge.jpg\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" loading=\"lazy\" alt><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><figcaption>Starter after fermentation is complete in stage 1, 2, and 3. I put it in the fridge after I took the 3rd picture.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Happy baking!<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Baking sourdough bread necessarily involves obtaining and maintaining a starter culture. After experimenting with several ways of doing it, I settled on the lowest effort yet still effective one I found: the NMNF (&#8220;No Muss No Fuss&#8221;) starter, courtesy of dabrownman on The Fresh Loaf. The author&#8217;s details in the recipe are worth studying, but [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":750,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1229,1232],"tags":[80,9,1231,607],"class_list":["post-760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-homestead","category-recipes","tag-homestead","tag-permaculture","tag-recipes","tag-sourdough"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alo.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alo.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alo.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alo.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alo.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=760"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/alo.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32587,"href":"https:\/\/alo.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760\/revisions\/32587"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alo.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alo.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alo.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alo.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}