One of the biggest changes I’ve made to my sourdough process since writing The Art of Gluten-Free Bread is how I maintain my starter.
When I was writing the book, I was baking almost daily and I was constantly developing and testing recipes. I was using large amounts of starter, so I kept a much bigger quantity on hand. Most of the time, my starter lived at room temperature or spent the night in the refrigerator because I would start baking as soon as I woke up.
As I explain in the book, I typically maintained my brown rice–teff starter at a 1:1:1.19 feeding ratio.
1 part starter, 1 part flour (brown rice and teff), and 1.19 parts water.
My standard feeding looked something like this: 150 grams starter, 130 grams brown rice flour, 20 grams teff flour, approximately 178 grams water (a few grams more or less was never a problem). This gave me enough starter to bake a couple of loaves while still leaving enough to continue maintaining the culture.
After the book was published, life changed. I went on book tour, the holidays arrived, one of my children was away in college, and my work shifted in a different direction. I simply wasn’t baking as much bread anymore. It also made me realize that this is a lot of starter for most home bakers to maintain.
The idea of keeping a smaller starter isn’t new—many professional and home bakers have done this for years—but it wasn’t how I worked until recently. Keeping a small starter saves flour, reduces discard in fridge, and makes regular maintenance simpler. Having said this, if you are following my directions in the book and this schedule and routine are working well for you, keep doing what you’re doing. I’m not suggesting this is the only or best way to do it. I’m simply sharing what has been working well for me lately.
In this article, you’ll also find a variation of the Gluten-Free Oat Buckwheat Porridge Bread recipe I shared a few weeks ago, this time with apricots and walnuts.
Don’t miss my article “A Busy Person’s Guide to Gluten-Free Sourdough Baking” where I break down the schedule to turn the Sourdough Teff-Oat Seeded Roll in The Art of Gluten-Free Bread into a loaf.
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