How To Reactivate a Dried Sourdough Starter

There’s been a lot of hype around sourdough in the last few years, and it’s worth it! Try your hand at this simple cooking venture and gain all the benefits fermented foods provide.

Sourdough starter has risen in popularity in the last few years for a few different reasons. First, the fermentation breaks down the gluten, making it an option for gluten-free foodies (or anyone just wanting a slice of bread). Second, it’s an incredible alternative to yeast. In fact, we were driven to sourdough around 2020 when I was unable to find instant yeast in my grocery store. Today, the sourdough starter has officially become my go-to source for yeast! Finally, it’s so easy! There is some nuance to tending and nurturing a sourdough starter. But when it becomes a part of your routine, you’ll wonder why you didn’t start using one sooner.

Quick Links

How Do I Reactivate Dried Sourdough Starter?

How Do I Get A Dried Starter

Make Your Own Sourdough Starter

10 Sourdough Starter Tips – Do’s and Don’ts

What is sourdough starter?

Sourdough starter is a leavening agent that uses naturally occurring yeast and bacteria to make baked goods rise. It’s a fermented mixture of flour and water. The bubbles you see in sourdough starter are the gases from the organisms feeding on the flour.

What is a dry sourdough starter?

A dry sourdough starter is a sourdough starter that has been dehydrated. The draw to dehydrated starter is that it’s shelf-stable and a great replacement in the event your main starter goes bad. This can happen for several reasons.

Fermented foods can sometimes contaminate each other when placed too close together. So let’s say you’re making milk kefir and a sourdough starter. Some will encourage you to place both fermented foods on either side of the room to prevent infection, which leads to mold growth and death of your fermented food.

A dehydrated sourdough starter is also believed to be the dormant form of the wild yeast and bacteria in your active sourdough starter. Which is incredible! You would think that dehydrating and storing sourdough starter would mean it was an old starter, but that’s not the case!

A dry sourdough starter is also a great way to boost the food in your long-term storage. So long as you follow the general rules of keeping it out of light, heat, and water, it should keep great within your rotation schedule.

What’s the oldest start you’ve ever heard of? I’ve heard everything from 200 years old to 10 years old! My oldest sourdough starter was 2 years old.

How do I reactivate a dried sourdough starter?

You reactivate a dried sourdough starter the same way you would create one. Combine your dried sourdough starter and water until very thin paste forms (if you want more exact measurements, get a food scale! Check out the links below for a recommendation and a few other sourdough starter must-haves). Feed with flour and water 8-12 hours later and check for signs of gas bubbles. This is a surefire sign you’re sourdough starter is waking up!

Another 8-12 hours after your first feeding, discard some of your starter and replenish with fresh flour and water. A trick some will use to confirm a sourdough starter is rising is to wrap a rubber band around their glass jar to physically see the starter rise above the rubber band. This trick also instills confidence that we know our ratios are right!

So how do I get a dry sourdough starter?

You can get a dry sourdough starter with a little help, a little patience, and a regular starter.

Create your own

If you’re looking to have a sourdough starter in just a few short days, combine a few tablespoons of water and a few tablespoons of flour in a clean, glass container (if you want more exact measurements, get a food scale! Check out the links below for a recommendation and a few other sourdough starter must-haves). A mason jar would work just fine for this. Stir until you form a thin paste or something like the consistency of pancake batter. Add flour and water as needed to create this (although the 2 tbsp of water and 2 tbsp of flour should get you there).

Keep your container at room temperature. You don’t have to store your sourdough starter in a dark place. In fact, the best way to encourage growth is in a warm spot!

For the first feeding (about 8-12 hours later), dispose of half of your sourdough starter and add another 2 tbsp flour and 2 tbsp water. Again, alternating the ratios until you get a pancake batter consistency. Repeat this process 8-12 hours later.

After about 3 or 4 days, you should see the beginnings of a mature starter. Lots of gas bubbles are a surefire sign everything is going well.

This is a great project to begin before you go to bed. Feed before bed and feed again when you wake in the morning. As you grow your starter to be a mature starter, the feedings will wane. Right now, we want to establish a healthy starter!

When you are sure your sourdough starter is rising (you can confirm this by wrapping a rubber around your glass jar and physically seeing the starter rise above the rubber band), it’s time to attempt baking with it. Try your hand at sourdough bread. Enter into a baking journey and try something like donuts and cake with your sourdough discard.

If your baked goods are turning out like they would using other forms of yeast, you know your starter is ready to be dehydrated. However, you want to make sure you don’t kill all that good bacteria!

If you don’t have a dehydrator, you can dehydrate your sourdough starter in an oven. However, some recommend dehydrating at less than 100 degrees Fahrenheit! If you’re using a dehydrator, your heat setting should also be the lowest possible. Other tips include keeping your sourdough starter in the oven after you turn it off to encourage the starter to properly dry out. Or, you could purchase a dehydrated sourdough starter from a friend.

This post contains affiliate links. That means when you click on a link and make a purchase, I make a commission at no extra cost to you. For more information about my disclosure and privacy policy, visit this page.

Purchasing Your Sourdough Starter

There are quite a few resources available to you for purchasing sourdough starters. While online is always an option, I encourage you to reach out to a local bakery, friend, or even pizza parlor to see if they have a sourdough starter they’d be willing to part ways with. An established, local starter like this will accomplish your goal of getting started quickly. However, it will also give you a potential resource to look to for sourdough questions!

5 Sourdough Starter Tips

If you’re a busy mom like me, you want to nourish your family with the best foods possible. But you also don’t want the process to be so over-involved that you never get started! Here are a few tips I’ve learned along the way when caring for my own sourdough starter.

1) Have a feeding schedule. When you have an established starter, that could be every morning while you’re coffee is brewing. Or every night before bed.
2) A mature starter will survive being put in the fridge. In fact, if you don’t plan to use it every day, it’s actually the best place for it! The same thing happens to a refrigerated starter as a dehydrated starter – the wild yeast and bacteria go dormant and wait for their next feeding.
3) Routinely change your sourdough starter container. Alternate between two jars or rotate through the jars you have. This is an extra step to keep your sourdough starter clean.
4) This is a skill developed with a lot of patience. From creating a sourdough starter to baking with one – I’ve never had a project take less than twelve hours.
5) Sourdough starter truly can replace conventional, instant yeast. It’s up to us to find those recipes that work for our family and use them! Don’t be afraid to try new recipes!

5 Sourdough Don’ts

1) Don’t store your sourdough starter in an airtight container. The bubbles in a sourdough starter are gases put off by the wild yeast and bacteria in your sourdough starter. If there’s no way to let those off, there’s a chance your container will pressurize and even explode. I store my sourdough starter in a glass mason jar with cheesecloth and a lid. See the links below to snag your own setup!
2) I wouldn’t encourage you to dehydrate your sourdough starter before going through the whole process of creating it, feeding it, and baking with it. That’s a great way to experiment and get a feel for how active your sourdough starter is.
3) Don’t think that just because you mess up that your sourdough starter is beyond repair. A mature starter is incredibly forgiving. (Psst – there’s nothing saying you can’t just start over! Give yourself grace!)
4) Don’t ignore signs of disease and distress. Mold or fruit flies in your sourdough starter are signs something is wrong. Properly store your sourdough starter from the beginning or simply start over.
5) Avoid metal, if you can. Sourdough starter doesn’t typically react with stainless steel, but there is speculation the stainless steel will leech toxins into your dough. However, the yeast in the sourdough starter WILL react with copper and aluminum. You can avoid this by simply using a glass mixing bowl and wooden spoons.

Check out these other great blog posts!

Are you wanting to make healthier swaps in your kitchen? Check out “How to make Healthy, Affordable Kitchen Wwaps” for a few ideas of things that won’t break the bank. Instead of making sourdough baked goods, would you like to start making your own beauty products instead? Try my DIY Beeswax Lotion Bar Recipe or my Lavender Sugar Scrub Recipe!

Thank you for stopping by The Learning Life! If you want to know a bit more about us, head on over to Meet Parker and Sierra. You can also let me know your thoughts on sourdough starter by finding me on Facebook and Instagram!