Maintaining a sourdough starter is not an easy job, as you have to feed it and discard it daily. But there is a solution to it, and that is keeping it in the fridge. But, can you do this forever, will the starter be ok if it spends a lot of time in the fridge? How long can you keep your sourdough starter in the fridge?
A sourdough starter can stay indefinitely in the fridge as long as you feed it. If you don’t feed your sourdough starter, it can last up to 2 weeks in the fridge. On average you should feed the starter once every 7 days, if you keep it in the fridge.
Keeping your sourdough in the fridge is a great thing to do if you can’t feed your starter daily. The low temperature of the fridge will slow down the good bacteria in it, so they won’t be as active, and they will require less food. But be careful, as doing this will change the taste of your sourdough considerably.
A Starter Kept in the Fridge Will Change the Taste of the Bread
A sourdough starter that is kept in the fridge will make the bread taste very, very sour, even for sour bread.
The reason for this drastic change in taste is simple. The slower the fermentation process of the starter the more sugar the bacteria will consume, and the more lactic acid it will produce, which is the one responsible for the sour taste.
If you prefer your sourdough bread as sour as possible, this change in taste can be a good thing, and if you want to know what else you can do to make your sourdough bread taste even more sour, you can check out this article: 21 Ways to Make Sourdough Bread as Sour as Possible. However, if you don’t want your sourdough bread too sour, this change might not be that welcomed, but you can easily rectify this by using one of the tips found in this article: 21 Ways to Make Sourdough Bread Less Sour Tasting.
While the change in taste is the biggest change, there are a few others that you should be aware about.
Other Differences Between a Room Temperature and a Starter Kept in the Fridge
A sourdough starter kept in the fridge can produce hooch even if it’s not hungry. Hooch is the liquid that collects on top of a sourdough starter when it hasn’t been fed for some time. Hooch is a mix of water and alcohol that forms during the fermentation process.
Normally hooch appears because the bacteria in the starter are hungry, and there is nothing left for them to eat. They’ve consumed all the sugar and starch found in the flour. But if you keep your starter in the fridge, hooch can for even if they have enough food. This is a simple byproduct of the slow speed at which they move and consume the food.
Note: Through this article I kept mentioning the bacteria in the starter, If you didn’t know about them, you should know that they are good bacteria, that are more or less the same thing as store bought yeast. One other common name for them is probiotics ,and they don’t even make it into the final product, the bread. If you want to know more about them and what benefits they have you can check out this article: Does Sourdough Contain Probiotics? (+ What They Do).
If you keep your starter in the fridge it will mature slower. So, if your starter is brand new, you would normally have to wait at least 2 weeks before you can use it to bake. But if you keep it in the fridge, you have to wait at least a month before you use it. If you don’t it won’t have enough strength to make the dough rise.
And one final thing that we should cover is how to properly use a starter kept in the fridge, as you can’t simply take it out of the fridge and mix it with the rest of the ingredients.
How to Use a Starter Kept in the Fridge
Due to the low temperature of the fridge, the bacteria found in the starter have slowed down considerably. And simply letting them at room temperature won’t make them move faster, even if the starter has reached room temperature. Instead you need to wait at least a day for this to happen.
So you should always take the starter out of the fridge, and keep it at room temperature for at least one day before baking. If not, the dough won’t be able to rise completely.
Can You Store Sourdough Starter in the Refrigerator?
Keeping the starter in the fridge is a viable long term solution. But you still have to remember to feed it from time to time. So what about the refrigerator? Will the freezing temperatures of the refrigerator stop the starter from going hungry, or is it too cold for the bacteria to survive?
Technically speaking it can be done, but practically, you have to be very careful at how you store it.
The bacteria in the starter are very fragile, and if the starter ends up with freezer burns, they might not survive. So in order to ensure that this doesn’t happen you have to be careful with the way the starter is packaged (from my experience sealable plastic bags seem to do a good job), and make sure that there are no big temperature fluctuations in the refrigerator, as this is the main cause of freezer burns.
Another thing that you should do, is put the starter in multiple bags, or whatever recipient you are using. While the starter can survive being frozen once or twice, doing so constantly won’t do it any good, so it will be better to separate it into multiple portions from the start.
And when you want to use the starter simply take it out of the fridge, when it’s unfrozen feed it some flour, and treat it like a normal room temperature starter for one or two days, after that you can bake with it.
Final Thoughts
So, sourdough starter can stay in the fridge for as long as you need it to, and it requires minimum care.
The only difference is the change in taste, but if you like your sourdough bread to be really sour, this can be a great benefit.
And remember, if you don’t have the time to look out after your starter, or you don’t bake that often, you always have the option of keeping it in the freezer, there it will stay fresh for very long periods of time, and you don’t need to feed it at all.