If you’re not baking every week and don’t want to feed your starter every day, you can keep it in the fridge. It is best to feed your sourdough every week. Even if you feed it and then return it back to the fridge without using it. This keeps it in good health long term.

If you forget to feed the sourdough in the fridge, don’t panic. The low temperature of the fridge will make your starter inactive. It can sleep in your fridge for a long time. Generally up to 6 months. We have heard of people managing to store it in the fridge for over a year without feeding! However we always recommend as stated above that you feed your refrigerated flour sourdough weekly. It will keep it in the beast health and produce the best results when baking.

Sometimes some of the mixture can separate, leaving a layer of liquid on top (grey brown). This is normal, simply drain off and discard any liquid before use. You can also stir the liquid back in if you wish. The liquid is often very acidic. Leaving it in the sourdough starter will make a much more sour tasting product when baked with. If you like your sourdough bread with a tang, we recommend leaving the liquid rather than discarding it.

To use Sourdough that has been in the fridge, simply repeat the activation process. It will usually need 48 hours and a couple of feeds to become fully active again. You will need to prepare for this additional time when baking. For example, we take our sourdough out of the fridge Friday morning and feed it. We then feed it again Saturday morning and bake with it Saturday afternoon.

Technically, you can use any type of flour with our sourdough starters. However, we have what are known as heirloom varieties of sourdough. This means that for generations they have only ever been fed with a specific type of flour. When you introduce a new type of flour, you also introduce different types of naturally occurring yeasts and bacteria specific to that type of flour. This changes the original profile of the original sourdough and that process can never be undone.

Sure, you can simply remove an amount of sourdough starter from the mother culture and then mix that with whatever flour type you want to use for baking. For example: The rye starter works very well with spelt flour. As long as you ensure your Sourdough mother itself remains fed on the intended type of flour, your free to use whatever flour you wish to use for baking.