Gluten-Free Rice Sourdough Starter: how to make it, maintain it, use it

If you are new to the idea of sourdough baking/fermentation, read What is sourdough and why would I bake with it?

Creating your own sourdough starter can be intimidating at the beginning. It can seem also intimidating to maintain, as most people suggest a bakery-like approach to feeding starters once or twice a day, which can seem expensive and time-consuming to the casual bread baker. However, by my own experience, once they are mature, starters need way less attention and can be fed once a week. If you don’t want to take only my word for it, please watch this video by “Bake With Jack” (if you have seen some of his videos, clearly he has years of experience as a professional baker).

On top of it, if you eat gluten-free you are probably already intimidated by baking gluten-free bread in general. I was intimidated too! Read my article You should start baking gluten-free bread! to learn about my experience finding out I was affected by coeliac disease and why you should start baking gluten-free bread. Read All you need to start baking gluten-free bread and pizza for advice on ingredients and equipment.

Let us get to it! Here is how I made my main sourdough starter, and how I maintain it.

How to make a gluten-free rice sourdough starter from scratch

To start you will need:

• 100g brown rice flour (but you can use any other whole flour);
• [OPTIONAL] ½ tsp of honey;
• 100g of filtered water (if it is cold in your kitchen, warm it up to 26C-30C)

1. Mix well water and honey in a clean jar. Add the flour and mix very well.
2. Cover with cling film, perforating it a few times (we need some air to go through), and leave the jar in a dark place (e.g., inside a cabinet in your kitchen).
3. After 48h, remove the first layer of dough on top if it is dry. If it is wet (sometimes it develops some liquid on top), just pour the liquid out of the jar or mix it in.
4. Add 100g more brown rice flour and 100g more filtered water. Combine well and put it back where it was, covered by the perforated cling film.
5. After 24h, remove the first layer as in step 3. Combine well the rest. Keep only 100g of starter, discard the rest. Add 100g brown rice flour and 100g filtered water, then mix well. This is called a “feeding”. The important principle is to discard part of the starter and always add the same amount of flour as of the weight of the remaining starter (e.g., 100g flour for 100g starter).
6. Repeat step 5 every day for at least 7 days, but it could take up to 9-10 days.
7. The starter will be ready to bake when it increases by at least 50% in volume in 3 to 4 hours after the feeding. Starters made with wheat generally double or triple in volume, but I found that gluten-free starters tend to grow less because they retain less gas if no binder is added.
8. After 7 to 10 days, your starter will be ready but “young”. Get rid of the cling film and cover it with the jar top, without screwing it (so air can push out of the jar when the starter rises). I suggest you keep it at room temperature and “feed” it once a day for a while longer so that it stabilises and becomes mature (you will taste it in your bread: acidity will reduce and the yeast will work more consistently). If you feel like you are wasting too much flour, feel free to scale it down to 25g starter (to be fed with 25g flour and 25g water). If any mold or pink/orange streaks appear on top of the starter, toss it and start from scratch, maybe reducing water by 20%.

How to maintain/feed your mature gluten-free sourdough starter

As you saw in the paragraph above, getting a starter going can be expensive in terms of flour. But once it is mature, I am a supporter of a no-fuss, as-efficient-as-possible approach.

Feeding your starter is as simple as it follows.
Ingredients:

• 50g of brown rice gluten-free sourdough starter.
• 50g of filtered water.
• 50g of brown rice flour.

Method:

1. Take 50g of brown rice gluten-free sourdough starter. Discard the rest (or bake with it!).
2. Add 50g of filtered water. Mix well.
3. Add 50g of brown rice flour. Mix well.
4. Cover the jar loosely and put it in its dark warm spot. Wait for 3h-4h for the starter to increase in volume.
5. When the rising is done, close the jar well and put the starter in the refrigerator. Feed it once every 5/6 days.

• When baking, just take from the jar the amount of starter you need, put it in a different jar and feed it. Put the original “mother” starter back in the refrigerator.
• Of course, if you bake a lot, you might have to feed it before the 5/6 days are gone because you are running out of it, but you’ll be happy to do that!

How to bake with your gluten-free sourdough starter

When baking with sourdough, you need first to take a bit of starter and feed it. That will ensure you have a just-fed, active, ready-to-reproduce and feed again, yeast army! The yeast are not even alone! They share the jar with lactic acid bacteria and enzymes, that will be happy to convert starches to sugar for the yeast to eat!

My approach to prepare the starter is very simple, but what is important is that you learn to look at your starter and understand if it is ready by visual and textural clues. Your gluten-free sourdough starter generally goes through the following phases:

• For the first 1h to 2h, the yeast will reproduce and create more yeasts. You will not see much bubbling.
• As the yeast reproduces and the oxygen within the dough is consumed, the yeast will finally start converting sugars to alcohol and create gases as a by-product. You will start seeing bubbles and the volume going up. The yeast has now momentum and the starter will keep growing until it reaches its peak.
• As it grows, the starter will create a sort of dome on top of it. You will see at a point the growing slowing down and finally the dome starting to collapse (see pictures below). That is the optimal moment to add your starter to your dough and keep it working!
• The yeast will do to the dough what it just did in the starter, but it will be slower because we will use a smaller initial amount (i.e., smaller inoculation) and very often we will even try to slow it down to get more flavour development and give time to the enzymes to convert starches into sugar, so the yeast can feed well.

To make 100g of sourdough gluten-free starter/levain for your bread, you need:

• 50g of brown rice gluten-free sourdough starter.
• 50g of filtered water.
• 50g of brown rice flour.

1. Take the mother gluten-free sourdough starter out of the refrigerator.
2. Extract 50g of it and put it in a jar. Put the mother starter back into the refrigerator.
3. Add 50g water to the starter, mix well. If your kitchen is cold, you can use warm water to get the starter temperature down a bit (I am thinking 26C-30C, I would not go farther than 35C, it is too hot and you might kill part of the culture);
4. Add 50g brown rice flour (you can use the flour you will use for the bread if different and if you want). Combine well.
5. Cover loosely and put it in a warm and dark spot to raise. It should be raising within 3h-4h. Then use it to bake as requested in recipes.
   However, depending on room temperature and considering it came out of the refrigerator, it could take more. Time it, learn how your starter behaves, and adjust accordingly next time.
6. You could also do a double-feeding, for example feeding it in the evening, and then again the morning after, to then use it to bake after 3-4h. Doing that will ensure your starter is at the right temperature and very active. My apartment is very warm, so I have not had any issues with rising times of starters straight out of the refrigerator.