Mix 20 grams of brown rice flour with 26-30 grams of water. We will start with very little flour and water to avoid excessive discard! Stir the mixture with any kitchen utensil (stainless steel/wood are fine), scrape the sides of the jar, and cover the jar with a cheesecloth or a lid (loosely, the air still needs to come through). It is important to scrape the sides of your jar to prevent it from building up on the walls and growing mold.

Find a place for your starter that is away from direct sunlight and separate from other food sources. Placing it near other foods can increase the risk of mold. Ideally, choose a warm spot in your house, but avoid placing it on a radiator or too close to a fireplace, as excessive heat can harm the bacteria.

Examine your starter for signs of activity. At this point, you should start seeing little bubbles at the bottom of the starter. If you don’t see any bubbles, give the starter a stir and let it sit for another 24 hours to activate.

Once your starter is starting to bubble up a little bit, proceed to the next step. If after 48 hours you don’t see any activity, proceed to the next step anyway and see if some discarding/feeding will help boost the process. If after that you still don’t see any bubbles, check out the troubleshooting section below!

Once you start seeing bubbles, it is time to start the feeding and discarding process! Discarding a portion of the starter is necessary to maintain a manageable amount and reduce waste. Every time you feed the starter, you need to feed it at least at a 1:1:1 ratio, meaning if you have 50g of starter, you will need to feed it with 50g of flour and 50g of water. So, if you don’t discard, you will end up having to increase the amount of water and flour with each feeding.

So, remove everything but 20g of the starter and add 20g of brown rice flour and 26-30g of water. If you are using buckwheat or sorghum flour, you might need to add less water to create a thick paste consistency. Give the mixture a stir, scrape the sides, cover the jar with a cheesecloth or a lid (loosely), and let the starter sit for another 24 hours.

At this point, we will start feeding and discarding our starter twice a day to build up its strength. At each feeding, discard everything but 20g of the starter and add 20g of flour and 26-30g of water. Don’t use the discard for the first week as it has harmful bacteria that can make you sick! However, after the first week, you can collect discard in a separate jar and use it in gluten-free recipes that call for sourdough discard later.

Feed your starter every 12 hours for the best results. However, if you forgot to feed it at the 12-hour mark, don’t worry, feed it whenever you can and continue the process! It is best to keep feeding and discarding twice a day for the first 2 weeks. After that, you can keep your starter in the refrigerator when you aren’t baking with it. If you keep it in the fridge, make sure to feed and discard it at least once a week to keep the starter healthy and active.

After about 10-14 days of consistent daily feedings, you can try baking your first gluten-free sourdough loaf! To do that, you will need to grow the amount of your starter. Now you have about 60-70g of starter and you will need at least 150g in order to make bread and have some extra left to maintain the starter.

To achieve that, skip the discarding step during the next feeding and instead, feed the starter with 100g of flour and 120g of water It will take a little bit longer for bacteria to work through its food this time! Then, once it reached its peak activity (when it is at its highest point), you can use it in a bread recipe!

Note: if you are keeping your staretr in the fridge, instead of using a cold starter in bread, it is best to take it out of the refrigerator and feed/discard it at least twice at 12-hour intervals before baking bread.