How to Rehydrate Mr. Maddie
Here are your step by step instructions on how to rehydrate your sourdough starter (lovingly named Mr. Maddie after our Fox Hound who lived to be 18 years old) and start to bake fresh sourdough goodies. It may also be a good time for you to find a unique name to call your starter. It brings me great joy to wake up after feeding my starter and exclaiming "Oh Mr. Maddie what a good boy you are and how your have grown!". You may have someone or something that brings you as much joy and love as much as we did for Mr. Maddie. If so, please change his name once you start feeding or continue to use Mr. Maddie with fondness knowing he was a gentle soul who spread love and lived and a long and happy life!
How to Rive Dried Sourdough Starter In 5 Days
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Day One Early Morning: Combine 5 grams finely crumbled dried sourdough starter in a small glass jar. Add 25 grams filtered water. Stir until starter is mixed in the water. Cover with loose lid and allow mixture to sit for about an hour at room temperature.
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After the hour, add 20 grams of bread flour (I use King Arthur brand) and stir until well mixed. Cover with lid and store at room temperature overnight.
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Day Two Morning: Combine 10 grams of your starter (discard the rest), 25 grams of bread four and 25 grams of filtered water in your jar, mix well. Cover with loose lid at room temperature overnight.
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Day Three Morning: Combine 10 grams of your starter (discard the rest), 25 grams of bread four and 25 grams of filtered water in your jar, mix well. Cover with loose lid at room temperature overnight.
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Day Four Morning: Combine 10 grams of your starter (discard the rest), 25 grams of bread four and 25 grams of filtered water in your jar, mix well. Cover with loose lid at room temperature and check back in roughly 12 hours. (A helpful guide is to put a rubber band around the jar once you feed it, then you can gauge how much it is rising).
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Day Four Evening: Roughly the 12 hours later, You should start to notice small bubbles on the surface and see signs that the starter is starting to slowly rise. Continue to let rise overnight.
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Day Five Morning: Your starter should have nearly doubled in volume and there will be small and big bubbles throughout the mixture. If the starter had doubled you can do one more feeding and get to baking! I like to use a 1:1 feeding ratio for this first loaf.
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Day Five Morning Feeding for Baking: Save 25 grams of you newly rehydrated starter and combine with 25 grams bread flour, 25 grams filtered water. (Discard the rest and after this if you have left over starter you can save for discard recipes). In approximately 4-6 hours this starter should have doubled and you can now add to your favorite recipe for bread or other goodies. *See notes on my favorite basic Sourdough Bread recipe to the right side of this page.
Favorite Basic Sourdough Bread
My basic recipe which I scale up as needed for multiple loaves:
50 grams active starter
350 grams water
500 grams bread flour
8 grams of pink Himalayan salt
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My Sourdough journey started with a lovely book called The Soughdough Whisperer by Elaine Boddy. This is basically her Master Recipe. I highly suggest getting and following along with this book as your guide to understanding the basic principles of baking with sourdough starter. It is very clear and uncomplicated. There is such an overwhelming amount of "social media" advice on sourdough that can complicate and confuse the simplistic, wholesome everyday baking of fresh, healthy and delicious sourdough bread.