Fifty grams of starter, 50 grams of flour, 50 grams of water. That is the whole feeding: keep a little starter, discard the rest, stir in equal weights of fresh flour and water, and cover it loosely. Feed it daily if it lives on the counter, or weekly if it lives in the fridge.
The ratios and timings below follow King Arthur Baking's published maintenance guide. The 1:1:1 ratio (starter to flour to water, by weight) keeps about 150 g of starter going, roughly 2/3 cup. A scale matters more than any other tool here. Starter changes volume as it rises and falls, so cup measures drift from one feeding to the next.
Before the first feeding
Our Orange Blossom Sourdough Starter arrives as a culture you revive, and the rehydration steps are on the package, by QR code. Follow those first. The routine below is for afterward, once the starter is rising and falling on a regular rhythm. The starter sits in our Orange Blossom collection alongside the perfume and marmalade, and its lineage goes back to a 1930s culture from a home kitchen in Whittier. For how Californians leavened bread before packaged yeast, see how Californians baked before packaged yeast.
The label lists just organic wheat flour and wild yeast. We'd feed it a wheat flour to keep it close to the culture you bought, and there's research behind that choice. A study published in Microbiology Spectrum in January 2026 fed identical starters all-purpose, bread or whole wheat flour for a month and found the flour type shifted which lactic acid bacteria dominated, even though the same yeast genus took over in every jar (Taheri et al.). Switch flours and you gradually get a somewhat different starter.
How to feed a sourdough starter
- Stir the starter down and weigh 50 g (a scant 1/4 cup) into a clean container or the same jar.
- Discard the rest, or save it for a recipe that calls for discard.
- Add 50 g (a scant 1/4 cup) of lukewarm water. Tap water is fine unless it smells strongly of chlorine.
- Add 50 g (a generous 6 tablespoons) of unbleached all-purpose flour; organic, if you want to match the flour the culture was grown on.
- Mix until no dry flour is left on the bottom or sides.
- Cover loosely. A crock lid or a loosely screwed mason-jar lid works; a towel lets it dry out.
The amounts and the tap-water note match the starter recipe, and the towel warning comes from a feeding explainer. Want more starter for a big bake? Keep the ratio and scale the numbers: 113 g each of flour and water feeds enough starter for a recipe that needs 227 g.
Should a starter live on the counter or in the fridge?
Two schedules cover most home bakers. Pick by how often you bake.
| On the counter | In the fridge | |
|---|---|---|
| Who it suits | Baking several times a week | Baking now and then |
| How often to feed | Every 24 hours (every 12 to push it harder) | About once a week |
| After feeding | Leave it at room temperature | 1–2 hours on the counter, then back in the fridge |
| Ready to bake | 6–8 hours after any feeding | After a day or two of room-temperature feedings |
| The catch | Daily discard | Needs planning ahead of a bake |
The fridge timings also appear in a 2026 feeding-schedule post. Cold slows fermentation to a crawl, so a refrigerated starter can go a week between meals.
Counter-keeping has one more advantage: you never have to guess. A starter fed on the same clock every day peaks at about the same hour every day.
Waking a refrigerated starter for a bake
Cold starter is alive but slow. For a Sunday-morning loaf, that schedule post takes the starter out of the fridge on Thursday morning and feeds it then and again at bedtime. On Friday it gets two more feedings at room temperature, one in the morning and one before bed. The dough is mixed Saturday morning with starter fed roughly six to eight hours earlier, at that Friday bedtime feeding.
What you're waiting for is a starter that doubles, or even triples, in the 6–8 hours after it's fed. That is "ripe": risen and bubbly, just starting to sag under its own weight. Mix your dough then. Before you do, set aside 50 g and feed it, then return it to the fridge so the next bake starts from a healthy jar.
What's wrong with my starter?
Liquid on top. That layer is hooch: alcohol plus water, given off by yeast that has run out of food. Clear, gray, brown or black, it isn't spoilage. Pour it off or stir it in; either way, it means the starter is hungry.
Pink or orange streaks, or fuzz. Throw the starter out and start again. King Arthur's troubleshooting guide treats an orange or pink tint or streak as a sure sign the starter has gone bad, and says the same of visible mold (part 1). This is the one problem not worth trying to fix.
It barely rises. Check the temperature before anything else. If your kitchen sits below 68°F, find a warmer spot, such as a turned-off oven with only the light on. Just write yourself a note: yeast dies at 140°F, and a starter forgotten in an oven that gets switched on for dinner won't survive.
It rises and collapses too fast. Warm kitchens do this, and an over-eager starter can overproof your dough. Lower the share of starter in each feeding, so it has more flour to get through before it peaks (sourdough FAQ).
You forgot it for weeks. It's probably fine: in a King Arthur test, two starters left unfed at room temperature for a full month were rising well within four days of twice-daily feedings, once the dark hooch was poured off (part 2). Missing a feeding, feeding the wrong amounts, or using a metal spoon won't kill a mature starter either.
What to do with the discard
The discard is unfed starter. Use it in pancakes, waffles, cake, pizza or flatbread, or anything written for "discard" or "unfed" starter. It doesn't need to be fed first, so it can go straight from the jar into the batter.
If the pile still grows faster than you can use it, keep a smaller starter. The ratio stays 1:1:1; only the grams shrink, and you set aside less each time you feed.
Photo by Thomas de Fretes on Unsplash.
