How To Rehydrate Dried Sourdough Starter

Are you wanting to rehydrate your dried sourdough starter? Here is a post with simple and easy-to-follow instructions, perfect for beginners. At the bottom, I will redirect you to my other post for care instructions for active starter.

From my understanding, there isn’t an expiration date on dried stater. With that being said, I encourage you to keep a small dried amount (after you hydrate what you just received) as a backup in your pantry or cupboard for later down the road if you find yourself without an active starter or accidentally kill it. No shame in that I have almost killed my stater by leaving it in the oven on ‘warm’ multiple times. But alas, she’s still kickin’.

Plan Ahead – this needs to have 5-7 to hydrate before you plan to bake any bread.

Tools Needed

• Organic Un-Bleached All-Purpose flour (Organic is ideal but at minimum use un-bleached)
• Filtered water (filtered is ideal but tap is fine if that is all you have)
• Kitchen scale. Here is a good scale from Amazon if you don’t have one.
• Glass jar or cup with lid or plastic wrap to cover
• A warm environment. Your countertop will be 100% fine if that’s best for you. If you have a convenient warm spot in your house the starter will do the best resting there, although not necessary.

Day One

First, you will want to place all of the dried starter into a glass jar or cup. I like about 16oz to leave room for growth later on. You can do this anytime of the day or at night before you head off to bed! Add 25g of warm water and mix. Cover, and let sit for at least one hour. If it takes you a few hours to do the next step, that’s fine!

After at least one hour, add 20g of flour. Mix, cover and let sit for 24 hours in a warm area if possible.

Day Two

It is OKAY if you don’t see bubbles, it’s not fully alive again yet. Now, thoroughly combine 10g of your starter mixture (discard the rest. I don’t recommend keeping it at this point as it seems to add a lot of stress for beginners) with 25g flour and 25g warm water. Cover and let rest for another 24 hours in a warm place if possible. You will repeat this every 24 hours for four days.

Day Three

Look at you, you’re doing it! Now onto day three, you’ll repeat the SAME steps as Day Two. Combining 10g starter (discarding the rest) + 25g flour + 25g warm water. Cover and let rest in a warm environment for 24 hours.

Day Four

Stay patient, we’re almost there! Moving into day four, you’ll complete the same steps as before. Combine 10g starter (discarding the rest) + 25g flour + 25g warm water. Cover and let rest in a warm environment for 24 hours. You may start to see bubbles forming as it rests.

Day Five

You did it! Your starter should smell sweet and have plenty of bubbles! After sitting for a while they may have dissipated and that’s okay. This just tells us it needs more flour and water! At this point, your starter is active and ready to be fed up for a recipe! You can follow my other post How to Care For Your Sourdough Starter – The Simple Way for care instructions from here on out.