Sourdough is stupid simple, despite how intricate and complicated you can make it if you want to.

At heart, once you’ve got starter that’s established, it’s just feeding it regularly.

Feeding can be done with precision if you want, but it isn’t necessary, it just makes some parts of baking easier.

You basically dump half, then mix up equal parts (by weight) of water and unbleached flour. The unbleached isn’t even absolutely mandatory, but it does make sure you’re keeping a fresh flow of yeast via that.

It’s that easy. Generally, you don’t keep more than a hundred grams total. Fifty is just fine for most baking.

My grandfather kept his in a jar on the counter for the entire time I was old enough to realize it was there until his death, which was over thirty years. He didn’t even measure. Just dumped a little out, scooped some flour in and topped up with water. Well water originally, but chlorinated tap water later on. Still made incredible food. Did that every other day if he wasn’t using it, but it was kept in a fairly cool area.

That being said, you will be better off filtering the water you use if it’s chlorinated. It won’t kill enough to ruin anything, but it does kill enough to slow down the process.

A lot of people keep theirs refrigerated and then you really only have to feed every few weeks to be on the safe side. Most starters are going to be fine for a couple of months, though expect to have to feed them for a while before trying to bake with it once you pull it from cold storage. I keep my backup in the fridge, and feed monthly. When I’m in need of it (usually to give someone a starter batch), I pull it out, feed it for three days, and it’s doing fine.

My main starter stays in the fridge unless I’m baking, but gets fed weekly so that I can pull it out at night, feed it, and be ready to bake by morning.

The actual baking can be complicated, but no more complicated than baking via other methods of leavening. You run into less complications with sourdough, imo, because it’s slow. You don’t have to fiddle with the timing as much. You use store bought yeast, it can go too fast. Chemical leavening has to be measured out more precisely, etc.

Mind you, the more consistency you want in a given recipe, the more precise you need to be in measurements and timing, no matter what leavening you use.

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You’ll want to invest in a decent kitchen scale if you’re going to bake a lot. Even for non yeast baking, the differences between volumes of different ingredients vs their weights can be big. Flour in particular can vary a large amount based on how you scoop it out; up to twice the weight in the same volume just because it’s packed tight. There’s tricks to minimize that, but scales are cheap nowadays.

Takes getting used to dealing with weights in recipes. But it’s worth it, even for something as volume friendly as southern style biscuits. Instead of just adding in more of one thing or another to make the right texture dough, you get it right the first time and save five minutes, and they’ll come out almost exactly the same every time.

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For now? Just pick one or two things you want to make. Ask folks that do sourdough to recommend a recipe. Follow the recipes, get used to working with flour and leavening

Legit, I went from never having baked anything but biscuits and pies from scratch to turning out amazing loaves of sourdough bread in a month, back a couple years before covid. And, after covid hit, sourdough got popular, so I’ve helped people get going. If my middle aged ass could pick it up that fast, anyone can.