You’ve spent time mixing flour and water and eagerly checking for signs of bubbly activity. But how to check if your sourdough starter is ready to bake with?

Read on to find out about a quick check you can do on your sourdough starter to see if it’s ready to bake with. Plus the other key signs you should be looking for to know that your starter is active enough to bake bread with.

Why do you need to check if your sourdough starter is ready to bake with?

A sourdough starter is a mixture of flour and water in which the yeasts naturally present on the flour are allowed to flourish.

The growing colony of yeast in your sourodugh starter feeds on the flour and creates carbon dioxide gas. This gas is what is needed to rise your sourdough bread dough.

However, if your starter has been left unfed (perhaps stored in the fridge) then the yeast won’t be active. No gas is being produced and, if you use the starter in your dough, your dough won’t rise.

So it’s important to check that your starter is bubbly and active before you start baking bread!

What are the common signs that your starter is ready to bake with?

When you add fresh flour and water to your sourdough starter, you add food for the yeast. In turn, the yeast begin eating that flour and producing more gas. Your starter becomes active again.

You likely kept a close watch as you developed your starter. Getting to know what your starter does after you feed it is key.

Here are three common signs to watch for when you feed your starter ahead of starting to bake bread:

1. How your starter rises and falls after you feed it.

As your yeast eat the flour and produce gas, your starter should start to rise and expand.

Use a small, narrow container (loosely covered) to see this happening more easily.

You could mark the container at the start and again 4 – 8 hours after the feed.

Find out how long it takes your starter to rise up the container.

Once the yeast have eaten the flour, they make less or even no gas. So your starter starts to sink again and eventually becomes inactive again.

Ideally, you want to use your starter at or just after the peak of its activity, when it is well risen, bubbly and full of gas.

2. The texture of your starter

What sort of texture does your starter have before you feed it? It may be thin and runny, with no bubbles.

At peak activity, your starter should be thick and full of bubbles. If you drag a spoon through it, it may feel a little like a mousse, with lots of little bubbles popping.

The bubbles indicate that the yeast in your starter is active and your starter is ready to make dough with.

3. The float test

Heads up, this isn’t a definitive test to check that your sourodugh starter is ready to make dough with.

However, you need your starter to be active and full of carbon dioxide bubbles when you use it.

And if your starter is active, it will float in water, because of all the bubbles it contains.

Drop a small teaspoon of your starter in a glass of water. If your starter has been fed, been given time for the yeast to become active and it then floats – it’s likely that your starter is ready to make dough with.

Do note that there may be other reasons that your starter is full of bubbles, or floats, so always use this test alongside the other checks noted above.

Plus make sure that your starter hasn’t developed any unpleasant smells or new growths that may be a sign that it has gone off and needs to be discarded.