San Francisco Sourdough Starter Genuine Original San Francisco Culture with Easy Foolproof Recipe. True Original Organic San Francisco Sourdough Starter. Easy recipe with top notch customer support. Proudly Manufactured in the USA!

This was my first time making sourdough bread. The starter is great. I had it for over a year before I finally decided to try my hand at it. The instructions are very thorough and I followed them almost to the t. 1st pic is my first loaf, not so pretty and the bread was quite dense, it didn’t rise as much as it should. The 2nd photo was my 2nd loaf and the bread turned out better. The only reason my first loaf didn’t rise as much as it should was that it was my first attempt and I needed to practice, so the 2nd loaf I was able to do better on. I am a newcomer to this so I expect to get better. Both loaves tasted great. It’s a good starter and the instructions took some study but they are thorough, and written for someone who needs step by step. I definitely recommend this starter.

I’ve always been intrigued with sourdough, and bought mine from a local bakery. While I enjoy supporting a local bakery, there are just some products they don’t make!I’ve been contemplating trying to make sourdough for years now, yes - years! I was searching again for sourdough starters and this one intrigued me as it appeared to have a fairly decent success rate. What have I got to lose? $15? Not even, the return policy is fantastic!I’m not going to say my first attempt at sourdough was easy, I don’t even think it was foolproof, but it was of reasonable difficulty. If you really want to make sourdough, I think you can with this starter!Now this experience wasn’t without its frustrations. The first recommendation I have is IGNORE the instructions with the packet. Instead follow the link in the package and use those instructions. I’m not sure if the printed instructions are outdated, but they are incredibly confusing. I nearly failed my starter early on by trying to follow the initial instructions, luckily this seller provides amazing support and answered my questions promptly when I reached out.If you are confused or something doesn’t seem right, reach out! If you give up all you guarantee is failure.Once I started using the instructions on the website (the link in the booklet), things started progressing a lot better! This starter does forgive a bit, but it is a living culture so you have to be careful too!My first attempt was the loaf of bread in the dutch oven, I followed the instructions to a tee. I would have liked to have seen a little more air bubbles in my finished product, but it was also one of the coldest days in my house of the year (so I think that had some impact)! The only other thing I noticed with the dutch oven was the crust came out MUCH darker! Maybe even a bit too dark for my tastes (and this was with double sheets of parchment under it). The finished product was still very edible and delicious and even better as toast. I ended up using King Arthur Organic bread flour and Kirkland purified water (you can get a big case for cheap at Costco).I was so excited about my first loaf of bread, I wanted to make more! I did deviate quite a bit on the second attempt, instead of using the dutch oven I used my pizza steel. The instructions were quite insistent on not moving the dough once it has risen. I have not noticed a difference, but I will say move it very gently and only on parchment. Don’t try to take it off the parchment, don’t bang it down hard. Also as the instructions say, use flour or oil to avoid any plastic wrap from sticking to your dough.I ended up making a loaf of rye bread and it was just as heavy as the initial sourdough (but it was also made with only 60% bread flour). I think I will have to tweak the recipe in the future. What I did like about baking on the pizza stone was that the crust didn’t come out quite as dark. The instructions strongly recommend to only cook in a dutch oven, it does solve problems, but it also creates some. The dutch oven is incredibly limited for shape, but it also holds in moisture a lot better.My third project was pizza. For this dough I actually just ended up using the sourdough loaf recipe. When I took the dough out of the fridge in the morning, I divided it into four and rolled the dough out super thin on parchment paper. Yes, I know I was supposed to stretch it, but trust me if you like thin crust pizza you will not be able to stretch this dough by hand to your liking. I gambled on the fact my pizza might not rise at all due to all the rolling I had to complete, but I figured.. why not? After sitting 7 hours on my counter covered and the pizza oven was heated to 550 degrees, I topped the pizzas and used my pizza peel to transfer the pizza (on parchment paper) to my pizza steel. Surprisingly I did get quite a few air bubbles in my pizza! The bottom of the crust had these little tiny bubbles and was crispy and lovely. This pizza is AMAZING!!! I’ve made 72 hour pizza dough with yeast previously and the same bread flour, but there are some noticeable differences. The biggest different I will say, is how the sourdough handles moisture. I do like to use fresh mozzarella on my pizzas which adds a lot of water. A yeasted dough I find gets a little more soggy, the sourdough on the other hand loves the added humidity and does a lot better.I can’t wait to continue experimenting with my sourdough culture. The two biggest things I struggle with is getting more rise/bubbles in my loaves and shaping them of course! I imagine with practice it will improve.

First of all, ignore any bad review that obviously didn't read the directions or complains that this starter is deceptively time-consuming. If you're going to purchase a sourdough starter, do your homework: You're committing to the care and feeding of a microbiome, which takes time, and sourdough breadmaking is measured in days, not hours. If you aren't able to make that kind of time commitment, you're better off buying your sourdough bread from a good bakery.This starter dates from 2017, so it's definitely not the oldest prepackaged "San Francisco sourdough" starter out there. It is, however, a very good, cost-effective starter with some solid support behind it.As others have noted, the real directions for reactivating and using this starter are on the website, not with the package, so you'll want to download and follow them exactly. (Note to manufacturer: It would help if you just put the real directions in the package)The starter in the pouch is dried and crushed--you will need to reactivate it with distilled water and flour. The type of flour you choose will have a big impact on the speed of reactivation as well as the taste of the bread; there are several books on sourdough that can explain the differences.I reactivated mine with a mixture of rye and whole wheat flours, carefully discarding and replacing every day. By the fourth day, the culture was bubbling and rising to about twice its level. I kept feeding it for the next week, until it was routinely growing to about 3X its size, and a small pinch of starter easily floated on the surface of cold water.I made my first loaves with it the next week, a three day process for maximum flavor and texture: You set the sponge and let it rise in the fridge overnight, then mix up and knead the dough, letting it rise again overnight in the fridge. On the third day, you form your loaves, let them rise, and bake.The dough will be sticky, especially if you're using a "high hydration" recipe, so oil your hands. The starter itself is almost comically sticky (my partner jokes that it's a great substitute for Liquid Nails), but that's characteristic of most starters.The bread (pictured) has a little tighter crumb than I prefer, but I expect to improve that as I work with it. It has a good flavor, although it lacks the San Francisco tang I love. Again, that tends to improve as the culture settles in and I figure out its favorite flours.

I purchased this starter about a year ago. I did not activate it until a week ago. I followed the step by step instructions with some slight variations on the fermentation time. and was able to make my first loaf of bread. I am no stranger to baking and I also have experience in growing cultures so it wasn’t to hard to follow. The bread had the sour taste I was expecting. I am sure I will improve the quality with the many loaves to follow.