Easy Sourdough Starter (Made with Yeast)

Name: Easy Sourdough Starter (Made with Yeast)
Prep time: 10 min
Total time: 10 min
Ingredients: 1½ teaspoons active dry yeast ((about half a packet, 0.2 ounces, or 6 grams)); 2 cups warm water; 2 cups flour

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If you’re ready to dip your toe into sourdough baking, you’ll need to make a starter. Here’s a super easy, no-fail way to start your starter (sometimes called a “lazy” starter), and it takes less than 10 minutes. The trick is to use commercial yeast to kick off the fermentation process.

After a few rounds of feeding, your starter will take on a life of its own and continue to thrive with the sugars in the flour and wild yeasts in the air. You’ll be able to make traditional sourdough bread loaves, or if you want to do some Amish Friendship Bread baking, you can convert a portion of your starter to make an Amish Friendship Bread starter.

Test (or Proof) Your Yeast

If you’re not sure if your yeast is fresh, check out this quick tutorial on how to see if your starter is any good. If it’s good, you can add this yeast mixture directly to the bowl, adjusting the amount of warm water to only 1½ cups since you used ½ cup to test the yeast.

Day 1: Make Your Sourdough Starter

Choose a large mixing bowl or jar that will allow your starter to at least double in size. Some experts recommend triple or even quadruple the size. In other words, make sure there is room for your starter to grow, or you’ll have a mess on your hands!

If you know your yeast is fresh, combine 1½ teaspoons active dry yeast (instant or rapid-rise yeast will also work), 2 cups of warm water, and 2 cups of flour. Stir well until all lumps are removed. This is your Day 1.

Sourdough starter ingredients in a bowl — Flour being added to the yeast mixture.

Cover loosely with plastic wrap and place in a warm area of your kitchen. You’ll see a lot of activity for the first few hours–your starter should almost double in size and then collapse on itself.

I didn’t use a large enough bowl (obviously!) but since I was nearby, I kept an eye on it. Stir your starter occasionally to make sure everything is well incorporated.

When you stir your starter on this first day, it should be spongy and springy, and reluctant to pull away from the sides of the bowl.

If using a jar or upright container, you can mark or place a rubber band around the level of your starter to help you gauge how much it grows when you’re not looking.

For the next 5 days, stir your starter regularly. If your kitchen is really warm, the yeasts in your starter might eat up all the sugars and need to be fed a day or two earlier. Sourdough baking is a science, and you’ll need to pay attention to your starter to see what it needs. Stay flexible, as everyone’s kitchen environment is a little bit different.

If you notice any hooch in your starter before you hit Day 6, you need to feed your starter sooner rather than later. This will happen if the temperature in your kitchen is warm, or if you have a really hungry starter, LOL. If this is the case, you’ll jump ahead to Day 6.

My kitchen is always 75-85° F year-round, so starters need to be fed really frequently in my kitchen. I’m more the exception than the rule, but here’s what I did: on Day 3, I had a light amount of hooch. Because I want to make sure this starter is hearty, I decided to feed it (you could just stir it back in). I reduced my starter to 1 cup and fed it 1 cup flour and 1 cup water. It got happy and bubbly within the hour. Then on Day 5, hooch again. This time, I just stirred it back in as I’m going to wait until tomorrow (my Day 6) to reduce it to 1 cup, give it a good feed, then stick it in the fridge. This is what I mean about playing it by ear and going with your gut — it’ll take some time to get to know your starter (and your kitchen), but once you do, you’ll be able to make adjustments as necessary.

For more information on how to keep your starter happy, these two posts may come in handy (the same principles apply to traditional sourdough and Amish Friendship Bread starters):

Day 6: Stir, Divide, Bake/Discard, Feed, Store

On Day 6, stir your sourdough starter and remove one cup. Place it in a new bowl or container the same size or larger (I recommend a large glass storage jar with a latch lid. Here’s the one we use.). Add 1 cup flour and 1 cup water. Stir well.

Discard or bake with the remaining starter. Most of the cakes, cookies, pancakes/waffles, scones, and sweet bread recipes in my Recipe Box can be made with 1 cup of your discard, though you may want to tinker with the sugar as the recipes work mainly with Amish Friendship Bread starter, which is a sweet sourdough starter. Don’t try a recipe that requires any kind of rise as your discard doesn’t have enough oomph to help with that.

Let the starter sit on your counter overnight. In the morning, stir well and place in the refrigerator. Never seal a starter, it needs to breathe! Cover loosely or latch the cover but don’t seal it tight.

You don’t need to stir your starter daily, though I recommend it if you can. It’s always a good idea to check in with your starter and make sure everything is going well.

Repeat the above steps once a week, allowing the starter to come to room temperature before removing one cup to bake with (or discard), and then leave your starter at room temperature after feeding before returning it to the fridge.

Take a Break From Your Sourdough Starter

If you need to take a break from your starter, you can freeze it after you feed it. Here’s the tutorial for freezing your starter.