Sourdough Starter Recipes Archives

The Sweet Stiff Sourdough Starter Recipe

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Ingredients

Ingredients / Starter Composition

	starter	flour	water	sugars
Feeding Ratio	1	1	30% – 50%	16% – 50%
	120g	120g	40g – 60g	20g – 60g

When you want to leaven something you really don’t want to be sour (like, let’s say, burger buns or croissants), you need to transform for regular starter it into a sweet starter.

Most of you are using a liquid starter –which is a starter that’s fed equal parts flour and water.

A sweet stiff starter is something different –you use less water to flour and add sugar as well.

This has many benefits, bigger ovenspring, longer fermentation –but really, we use a Sweet stiff sourdough starter because it results in a sourdough bread that isn’t sour.

Let’s make a Sweet Stiff Sourdough Starter

Let’s use a starter feeding ratio that has the minimal amount of sugar. Once you get the hang of this, you can increase your sugar ratio if you want. The more sugar you add, the stickier and tackier your stiff starter will be

	starter	flour	water	sugars
Feeding Ratio	1	3	.33	.16
	40g	120g	40g	20g

Here’s a beginner friendly sweet stiff starter

REMEMBER:

With baker’s percentages, we are not comparing the ingredients in relation to each other, we are comparing it to the FLOUR!!!

How To Make The Sweet Stiff Starter

Simply combine all the ingredients and wait for it to triple in size. This takes 8-12hrs for me at 77F –longer if you are feeding a very small amount of starter.

A totally different kind of gluten-network

👀 Wow, just look at the gluten-network of this sweet stiff starter.

It’s totally different from the sourdough starter you would normally use to leaven an artisanal sourdough bread.

The gluten network of a sweet stiff sourdough starter looks exactly like the gluten network of an enriched dough. Because, that’s exactly what it is.

Take a moment and think with me here…

Your dough is essentially one gigantic sourdough starter. When you make a sourdough dough –what do you do? You mix the ingredients together to make the dough right?

Well another way to think about it is, that you are taking those dough ingredients and feeding the sourdough starter with it.

And so your dough is really one gigantic feeding.

And when you think about it that way, that the sourdough dough IS a sourdough starter, then it’s easy to think that, duh, the starter has the same gluten network as the dough.

In this case, the sweet stiff starter is so webby, so sticky, JUST LIKE an enriched dough (ie. sourdough brioche)

Normal Sourdough Dough

Flour, Water, Salt

Enriched Sourdough Dough

Flour, Water, Salt PLUS

Fats (eggs, milk, butter, yogurt, oil, etc.), and
Sugars (sugar, honey, syrup, juice, etc.)

This is the gluten network that makes brioche so fluffy and pillowy.

It’s so webby and sticky and cool to play with.

Kind of a hassle to scrape out.

Best to work with wet hands and wet tools.

How to use a Sweet Stiff Sourdough Starter in recipes

Generally, we use a Sweet Stiff Sourdough Starter for enriched doughs

But you can use a Sweet Stiff Starter in ANY sourdough bread recipe,

You can swap the regular sourdough starter and use your sweet stiff starter instead.

Why would you want to do it?

IF you really didn’t want that bread to be sour, you’d use a sweet stiff starter.

However much regular starter that bread recipe calls for, you would need to use the same amount of sweet stiff starter

Important:

Since we are using a STIFF starter, the fermentation time will be different. Pay attention to your dough. Here are some recommended readings that talk more about that…

How to really master baking sourdough bread

Why Are Flour Type and Hydration Ratios Important? And What Does It Mean For Your Sourdough Bread?

Believe it or not, the gluten-free starter is arguably the best starter.

A few weeks ago I posted on here a “battle of the starters” experiment.

The winners were a tie between

1) the gluten free starter – organic wild rice, and

2) my 100% organic rye starter

Well, color me surprised.

It didn’t look like or behave like the other starter, but the glove doesn’t lie.

The GF stater was so inflated, so bloated, I couldn’t believe it.

I was intrigued by the gluten-free starter —I mean, I never would’ve thunk it.

It was the first to come to peak and the glove 🧤 was very very inflated, suggesting a very high CO2 output.

Using a GF starter for country sourdough.

I fed my GF starter organic forbidden rice and used on a mini-loaf today and lo and behold, it leavened the bread really well.

So there you go. A gluten-free starter will leaven a regular dough, not just a gluten-free dough.

It does a really good job at it too.

What can you you feed your Gluten-Free starter?

You can feed a starter anything you want. You can start/feed your GF starter with anything gluten free.

As a general rule, you want a really active/robust starter —which is even more important in GF baking since there is no gluten for the bacteria and yeasts to feast on.

You’re substituting the food source —instead of gluten, the bacteria and yeasts are eating quinoa, buckwheat, rice, potato starch, sugar, honey, etc.

I feed my Gluten-free starter whole-grain rice flour at 1 : 1 : 1 ratio.

I buy fancy organic rice from my local health food store and use my mill to grind it at home.

If you don’t have a mill, you can use a coffee grinder or just use already ground brown rice flour from the store —no big deal.

Rice Flour vs. GF all purpose flour

Wild Rice Starter no longer at peak —you can tell because you can see a line from where it started to sink back down.

I like to make my GF starter with organic wild rice, and not an “all purpose” GF flour blend. And that’s because the ideal characteristics and composition of your dough is different from what you want for your starter.

For example, whether it’s gluten free or not, you want to feed your starter the most nutrient-dense food source. This usually means the “whole” version of whatever you’re feeding it —whole wheat, rye, rice, etc. and extra points if you grind it yourself. Rice is easily ground in a coffee grinder.

If you feed your starter the “white” version of your flour, it will live, and it will leaven your bread, but it will never be as robust and active as a starter being fed the “whole” version of that flour.

But why don’t I just use a GF all purpose flour blend for my starter?

An all purpose GF flour blend is formulated to give you the right characteristics for airiness and fluffiness. It’s formulated to mimic white bread, which means it lacks the nutritional benefits of what I just covered above.

You would be much better off starting and feeding your GF starter the whole version of a naturally gluten-free product. I use organic wild rice only for my GF starter.

I buy it at my local organic health food store.

Here’s how I feed and keep my GF Starter:

Gluten-Free Starter Recipe / Starter Composition

	starter	flour	water
Feeding Ratio	1	1	1
Brown rice flour	50g	50g	50g

How To Make A Sweet Stiff Sourdough Starter