Gifting, Sharing and Sending a Sourdough Starter — Gartur Stitch Farm (2024)

This week, I have sent over 50 sourdough kits out into the world. It is an amazing feeling that doesn’t get old. I think it is a powerful thing to be able to gift people with something they can do to take care of their family, especially at the moment.

If you have starter already and want to gift some to a friend, here are some of our top tips:

• to have enough starter to give away, start by feeding up your starter. You can either split your starter into a new jar for your friend and feed both as normal ( about 100g of starter and 100g each of water and flour) or spilt some off and give them the discard to feed up.

• Generally, you don’t need more than about 50g of starter to pass on to really get a new starter going.

• If you are going to post your starter, my top tip is to send a ‘stiffy’ - no that isn’t anything rude, rather a starter that has been fed extra flour so it is more dough like. We have found that when posting, starters are more likely to leak if they are liquid - as they ferment and expand enroute, the more liquid it is, the more likely they are to escape.

  1. To make a stiffy:

     1. Add 50g of flour to 25g of 100% hydration starter (remember that is a starter that has been fed equal weights flour and water).

     2. Mix well. It will be much more dough like than you are normally used to.

     3. Place in a small jar - we find screw tops are better than clip tops for posting or double bagged plastic bags.

     4. To rehydrate their stiffy, they simply need to add 50g of flour and 100g of water and the starter is back to 100% hydration.

  2. If you want to send them a recipe for sourdough bread, you can find ours here. Be sure to send them some tips on maintaining their starter as well.