The temperature of your starter is important to ensure that it keeps a consistent temperature throughout the entire time you’re making bread. When the temperature is too low, the dough will be too soft and will lack the flavor and consistency you desire. Too warm, and the dough will dry out and be tough, and the bread won’t last as long.
But it is also important to keep the starter’s temperature between the recommended and “optimal” temperature for the specific recipe youre making. This is because the more the temperature is high (i.e., too warm or too cold), the more yeast will die and the bread will be stale and lack flavor.
This is a pretty good summary of how to make a sourdough starter, but I’ll add a few tidbits: The temperature for a sourdough starter varies with the recipe you’re using. The recommended temperature is 118 degrees, while the optimal temperature is around 105 degrees. So if you’re making a standard recipe, do not use a starter that is too warm.
While you can probably make a good loaf of bread from a starter with just a little bit of flour, if you use a sourdough starter, you need to do some work to maintain it. This is because the starter is very sensitive to temperature, even at normal room temperature. If you let your starter sit out in a warm place too much, it will die and the bread will lack flavor.
If you start your sourdough starter at too warm a temperature, you risk losing much of the good flavor in the air and a sourdough bread recipe that is not good for the environment. Because of this, I recommend starting your starter at a fairly cool temperature.
The question is, how much do you need to let your sourdough starter sit out at? The answer depends on whether you want to let it sit outside or inside your refrigerator. Outside means you can let your starter sit a day or two and then you can start your bread right away. Inside means you can let your starter sit a couple of weeks and then you can start making bread by just starting your sourdough starter right away.
Sourdough doesn’t need to be refrigerated. It’s just one of those foods that it’s best to let sit out for a while and then start eating when you get the itch. I love sourdough, but it takes a little bit of time to get used to it. For me, I prefer to let my sourdough sit out for a couple of weeks, wait a couple of weeks after that, and then start putting the starter back into the fridge.
Sourdough can be a bit of an acquired taste, but its definitely worth the effort. Once you get it, its great. Its basically the stuff you would eat to stay alive, if you died of something like starvation or something. Just take a look at the picture of this recipe for a starter at the top of this page. It looks like my starter is ready to go. Next up, I will hopefully be using this recipe to start making dough for bread.
One more thing, sourdough has an amazing flavor. It’s almost like your own natural yeast. I like to try to keep my starter cool, which means I can add a bit of lemon zest or whatever. Once you get the sourdough out of the fridge, the starter temperature should be at between 70-80 degrees. If you’re planning to make bread, the starter temperature will probably have to be lower.
This was a recipe I’ve found helpful for keeping sourdough at a temperature conducive to producing good bread. If you don’t have a low starter temperature, you may need to add a bit of lemon zest or whatever to your starter to get it to be at your preferred temperature.