How to Make a Sourdough Starter in Kentucky: My 14-Day Low-Waste Method (20 g)

If you’re in Kentucky and about to make your first starter, I’m here to share my failures and my wins. My kitchen gets super hot and super cold, probably just like yours. Which makes creating your first sourdough starter in Kentucky sound tricky. Below I’ll share the flours I use, the regular kitchen tools (not everyone can go buy a scale right off the bat), and what I learned along the way.

I thought I could do this in 5 days. HAHAHA! Nope.

Quick answer: In my 65-75°F Kentucky kitchen, it took 14 days to make a starter from scratch. I fed it a 50/50 blend of King Arthur organic white and rye flour, and I used only 20 grams at a time so there was almost no waste. The real rise started on Day 7, and it floated on Day 14.

Meet @ChuckSour, my starter, on Day 14 in my Kentucky kitchen, with the temperature ranging from 65 to 75 degrees.

What You’ll Need to Create Your First Sourdough Starter in Kentucky

The ingredients are just flour and water. If you are like me and making a sourdough starter in Kentucky, the water may influence how your starter grows. If you are not on a well there seems to be a lot of chlorine in the city water. For this reason, I use filtered water.

I went down a rabbit hole and found a great Serious Eats article on flour types and their 14-day feeding experiment. It helped me choose a 50/50 blend of King Arthur Organic White and Rye. You don’t have to use organic that is just my choice. My husband influenced the rye too, since he loves rye bread.

Tools:

• A jar. I like a Ball jar with the measuring marks on the side so I can see when it doubles. Later I moved to a Weck jar.
• Measuring spoons
• A spatula and a spoon for scooping
• A kitchen scale that reads in grams, if you can get one (no scale? the spoon amounts below work too)
• A rubber band to mark the starting level (if your jar does not have lines)

What Is a 1:1:1 Ratio?

It’s equal parts starter, flour, and water by weight. I used 20 grams of each. I wanted very little waste at the start, and I’ll be using plenty of discard in recipes later.

Ratio and amount are two different things. The ratio (1:1:1) controls how the culture behaves. The amount (20 g, or 40 g later) only controls how much you end up with. You can scale up without changing the ratio.

No scale? Use Measuring Spoons

If you are a math geek you will like this, fractions are not my thing so I ths took me a minute to figure out.
Check your flour bag’s nutrition label. On mine, 1/4 cup of white is 30 grams, which works out to about 7.5 grams per tablespoon. The Rye is 1/3 cup at 30 grams. One tablespoon would weigh 5.625 grams, so 10 grams is equal to 1 tablespoon and (roughly) 2 teaspoons.

The FDA standardizes a tablespoon at 15 mL, and a tablespoon of water weighs 15 grams, so about 20 grams of water is 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon.

Insight: I tested my entire Sourdough Starter in Kentucky using this tbsp and tsp measurement method so you could see how it turned out. I also weighed the flour on my scale to make sure my weights worked out as described by tbsp and tsp.

One feeding, in measuring spoons (about 20 g each of flour and water):

• Water: 1 tbsp + 1 tsp (20 g)
• King Arthur organic white flour: 1 tbsp + 1 tsp (10 g)
• King Arthur rye flour: 1 tbsp + 2 tsp (10 g)

Rye is a little less dense than all-purpose, so it takes slightly more volume to reach the same 10 grams. Not all flours weigh the same, so check your labels. If you stay consistent with your measuring, you’ll hold the 1:1:1 ratio.

My Day-by-Day Sourdough Starter in Kentucky Schedule

My discard rule, in one place:

• Days 1-10: the discard goes into the compost
• Days 11-14: I cook it into a cast-iron pancake for the hens
• After Day 14, once the starter passes the float test and has been doubling on schedule, the discard goes into recipes for us

(The “why” is in the discard section below.)

Day 1: Mix and wait
Stir 20 g flour (10 g white + 10 g rye) and 20 g water together in your jar. Mark the level with a rubber band, or use a jar with measuring marks. Cover loosely, set it somewhere around 70-75°F, and leave it alone for 24 hours. It’s not much to look at yet, but the process has started.

Day 2: First feeding (this is where the third “1” comes in)
Keep 20 g of your Day 1 mixture and discard the rest. Add 20 g flour and 20 g water. That’s your 1:1:1. I put my discard in a small jar for two reasons: I wanted to show you how little waste 20 grams makes, and I use the discard (see below). This is the process I used -following the Serious Eats example- and documented and it worked as you will see. Lot’s of bakers don’t do this step. They just stir day 2. The choice is yours.

Day 3: Don’t panic at the first rise
You’ll likely see a real rise today, and then watch it fall again. That’s normal. It’s usually an early bacteria at work, not the yeast that will eventually raise your bread. Keep going: 20 g starter, 20 g flour, 20 g water.

Days 4-6: Keep feeding, keep watching
Discard and feed once a day on the same schedule. Things may look quiet or inconsistent, and that’s still the culture sorting itself out. Stay consistent even when it isn’t exciting.

Day 7: The real rise begins
This is when mine started reliably doubling overnight, every time. My kitchen held at 75°F. Now watch the clock. If the starter starts to fall before 8-12 hours, or you see liquid on top, switch to feeding every 12 hours. I did not have to do that step, I just feedabout the same time every day.

Days 8-10: Build consistency
Keep discarding and feeding. I use a checklist and a timer. You’re watching for reliability now, not just activity: doubling on roughly the same timeline each day.

Day 11: The Sourdough Starter Discard is ready to cook for the hens and save in the fridge
This is the day discard can start going to the hens if my discard jar in the fridge gets too full before I can bake. I just pour it in the cast iron, cook it, cool it, and feed it to the hens.

Days 12-14: Confirm it
You should see a strong, reliable overnight double and a pleasantly sour, tangy smell. I ran the float test on Day 12 because it was so bubbly, and it sank. On Day 14 it floated. I let Chuck run the full 14 days for documentation and for my own confidence, even though the signs showed up earlier.

How Do I Know My Starter Is Ready?

I see rhythm first, and the float test is the final check. My Day 12 starter was clearly active and still sank, so a sinking spoonful doesn’t mean failure. The float test is especially useful for beginners because of that false rise on Day 3, which can make a brand-new starter look ready when it isn’t.

What I look for:

• 🌱 Reliable doubling, then falling, on a predictable schedule. Mine didn’t start until Day 7, but still sank on the day 12 float test
• 🌱 A pleasantly sour smell and tangy taste. Strong tang is expected, because the rye in a 50/50 blend drives acid production.
• 🌱 Staying steady when the kitchen changes. Mine held its overnight rise even when the kitchen dropped from 75°F to 70°F. That’s a sign of an established culture, not a fragile one.

What I Do With Sourdough Starter in Kentucky Discard (and Why It Changes)

Days 1-10: into the compost. While the starter was still establishing, I kept the discard in a jar. When the jar was full, I mixed it with water and sent it to the compost. Early on, before a starter has turned properly acidic, the balance of microbes is still unsettled. That acidity is what eventually makes a mature starter self-protecting. A week-old starter hasn’t built it up yet, so I’d rather be cautious than cook with something still finding its footing. It’s not that anything is guaranteed to go wrong. It’s just not a risk I take with my family’s food. If bad luck can hit in an odd way, I feel like I carry a bullseye!

Days 11-14: dinner for the girls and treats for us. Once my starter was reliably doubling and smelling properly sour, every feeding’s discard got cooked into a cast-iron pancake for the hens. It’s one of my favorite small rituals on this homestead. What’s overflows my discard ja feeds the birds instead of the trash can. Bloom, then peck. Nothing wasted.

(Chicken people: if you’re curious what else goes into a healthy flock, I’ve written more here → [Best Chickens for a Kentucky Homestead].)

The ripe discard I don’t give to the hens goes into the recipes I keep coming back to: pancakes, biscuits and gravy, tortillas, and muffins. Here are my favorites → [My Best Sourdough Discard Recipes: Baked with Intention].

A quick note on safety: this is the cautious practice that works for our home, not a medical or food-safety rule. If you’re ever unsure about a starter, trust your nose and your judgment over anything you read online, including this.

Temperature: The Kentucky Problem

My house is drafty all year. It’s too hot in summer, and in winter there’s ice on the windows and it gets downright CHILLY. I fought with this for a while. The top of the fridge helped, but when it hit zero outside I needed a warmer spot.

This is where the silliness happened: the microwave trick. Boil a cup of water, set it inside the microwave, put your starter jar in beside it, and close the door. Leave the microwave off. The hot water warms the little space like a mini proofing box, and you get instant warmth.

I cover both the heat and the cold in my full temperature post → [link to temperature post, add when published] and I hope some of those tips help your kitchen.

Why Even Have a Sourdough Starter?

You don’t have to be a prepper or a full-blown homesteader to want sourdough. For me, it’s one more way to control what goes into our food. I choose the flour, I control the salt, and I skip the long list of additives in some packaged breads. Those have their place, but I control what I can.

I’m a nerd so I think there is something fascinating happening in that jar. Flour naturally contains microorganisms, and once you add water, wild yeasts and lactic-acid bacteria can grow and interact as the mixture ferments. [Purdue University link] Every time you feed it, you’re maintaining a living microbial community.

• The yeasts produce carbon dioxide, which helps bread rise.
• The lactic-acid bacteria produce acids and other compounds that contribute to sourdough’s characteristic flavor.
• Together, their fermentation changes the dough’s structure.

Insight: A starter doesn’t automatically make every loaf healthier. The nutritional characteristics of sourdough depend on the flour, the recipe, and the fermentation. What your starter gives you is the living culture that makes sourdough fermentation possible.

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