Sourdough Starter Without Feedings or Discards

To Store After Baking

To Revive the Night Before

Pantry swaps

Method

1. After you take out the starter you need for a bake, leave about 1/8 to 1/4 cup of active starter in the jar – roughly the size of a golf ball. It does not need to be an exact measurement.
2. Add a generous amount of fresh flour straight into the jar – enough that the mixture becomes very dry, thick, and almost unmanageable. More flour than you need is fine; it feeds the culture while it sleeps.
3. Make sure there is extra dry flour underneath and on top of the starter, then press everything down firmly with a fork or spoon.
4. Put the lid on the jar and return it to the refrigerator. It keeps for 1-2 weeks this way; 6 weeks is possible in a pinch, and readers have reported forgotten jars surviving for months.
5. The night before you want to bake – Tuesday night for a Wednesday loaf – take the jar out of the refrigerator.
6. Add 1/4 to 1/2 cup of filtered or bottled water and stir until it is incorporated; a lumpy texture is fine. The flour cap rehydrates and feeds the culture as it wakes up.
7. Leave it on the counter overnight. By the next day the starter should be ripe, active, and bubbly; use the float test if you are unsure.
8. Use about 1 cup of starter in your recipe. If some remains in the jar, pack it with flour again and refrigerate. If you used it all, pinch off a little of your very active dough before it goes into the loaf pan or Dutch oven, put it in the jar, and pack it with flour the same way.
9. Optional boost: to make the starter extra active and bubbly, pour off some of the revived starter, add equal parts flour and water, and let it sit out another day before baking. This is the one time you discard anything.

Notes

Servings: 1 jar of starter, kept 1-2 weeks refrigerated (up to 6 in a pinch). The starter is an ingredient, not a finished dish, so per-serving macros cover about 1 cup (130 g) of revived starter – the amount a typical bread recipe uses. Per cup: ~240 kcal, 7 g protein, 50 g carbs, 1 g fat, 2 g fiber. Macros are summed from USDA per-100 g values for the flour at roughly 100% hydration; fiber varies with your flour choice.

The method is deliberately loose: the leftover starter is “about the size of a golf ball” and the flour is “a generous amount” – enough to make the mixture very dry, with extra flour underneath and on top. The water range (1/4 to 1/2 cup) and the leftover range (1/8 to 1/4 cup) come from the companion blog post, which also covers reviving a long-stored starter (spoon out 1 tbsp of dry starter, add water and flour, leave it on the counter for 12-24 hours) and switching back and forth between this method and daily countertop feeding.

A starter kept 6 weeks or longer can turn pungent and very sour; revive it 2-3 days before you want to use it with 2-3 feedings with discards. If you are not certain your revived starter is strong, add a little instant yeast to your recipe – it is a natural part of the sourdough culture anyway.

Source: Anja Eckert (Our Gabled Home), “No More Feeding or Discarding: Simplify Sourdough Baking Now” (YouTube, 2020-07-07, 8:37). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POD2gRL799Q – companion post: “Maintaining Sourdough Starter: No Feeding, No Discards” (ourgabledhome.com, 2020-07-06). https://www.ourgabledhome.com/easy-sourdough-starter-no-feedings-no-discards/