In this article I will show you how I dehydrated some of my sourdough starter.

Why I Dehydrate Sourdough Starter

There are three reasons why I dehydrate my starter.

  1. Backup: This is so I have something to fall back on if I kill my starter.

  2. Pause: I can do this if I am going to do any extensive traveling and cant maintain my starter

  3. Share: The dehydrated starter is an excellent way to share you starter.

Heating Mat

I will be using this inexpensive heating mat.

This was purchased for about $13.

I got mine here:

Seedling Heat Mat

I did a test drying starter with no heat. It took the starter 3 days to fully dehydrate, and I still had to discard some un-dehydrated pieces.

The heating mat brings the dehydration time down to about 16 hours.

Spread the Starter

Using an 8” silicone cake pan, I added about 25g of starter.

I got mine here:

Silicon Cake Pan

The start is then spread as thin as possible inside the pan.

I even put some of the starter up the sides to help me spread it thinner.

Cover and Wait

I cover the pan with a grease splatter screen. This will keep things from getting into the starter, but allow the moisture to get out.

I let it set for several hours checking every 2 hours or so.

Here I am using a PID controlled hot plate as a heating source.

Shown i the video is a 16 hour time laps of that process.

Note that found no difference between the PID controlled method and the heating mat. Both worked extremely well. The heating mat was much easier to setup so I will likely use this method in the future.

I check the dehydration status through out the process. I simply test a few pieces. If I can snap them like a potato chip they are ready.

When testing, I always test the thicker pieced.

Conclusion

Once the dehydration process has completed, I break the pieces into smaller pieces.

The smaller chips makes it easier to pour the chips into a jar.

I vacuum seal my jars. Not sure it helps, but I have the machine and might as well use it.

I’m not really sure how long you can store dehydrated starter but I do dehydrate on a regular bases.

Going Further

I own 3 actual dehydrators, and this way is so much simpler and easyer to setup that it is now my goto method for drying my starter.

Here is another session I did dehydrating two 25g starter batches. When I went to feed my starter, I realized I had too much starter. Before feeding, I just took to 25g of starter and added to each silicone cake pan.

Video showing the process.