Once I started using my grain mill on a daily basis, sourdough fell of my radar for a while. I was so captivated by wheat berries, mills, fresh flour, and fresh milled bread, that my sourdough starter became neglected.

A coincidence? Maybe. 

Once I got a handle on fresh milled flour with commercial yeast, I slowly added sourdough back into my life, with the nutritious addition of fresh milled flour.

But honestly? I gave up a few times. There’s just a steep learning curve with fresh milled flour + sourdough.

But we’ll master it together.

And it turns out that a huge help is to actually start a new sourdough starter, from scratch, with fresh milled flour. Sometimes starters used to commercial flour don’t like being switched over to fresh flour.

Why combine fresh flour and sourdough?

So, if it’s difficult, why bother? I’m glad you asked.

Sourdough is using natural yeast and natural fermentation to make bread. While this process is commonly seen as a more nutritious way to make bread, that’s only half true. You see, sourdough bread is long-fermented, which means that it’s easier for our bodies to digest in the end. It’s already started to “digest” through it’s long, natural fermentation process. That’s a good thing.

What’s not good is that long-fermenting bread made with traditional commercial flour (store bought flour is essentially just highly-processed starch, missing 2/3 of the natural wheat), is simply a missed opportunity. (Learn more about the effect of sourdough fermentation on fresh milled flour.)

Fresh milled flour + sourdough? A long-fermented powerhouse of nutrition, digestibility, and flavor. It’s truly the best bread you can eat. 

Sourdough with fresh milled flour: getting started

If you’re new to milling flour, let’s get started.

You’ll need a good grain mill. You have three options–a stone mill, an impact mill (steel blades), or a hand-crank mill. I personally choose an on-demand style stone mill, but to each his own. Not sure which mill you might want or need? I wrote an entire guide to choosing a grain mill that breaks down everything you need to know.

Next, you need some wheat berries. It can get confusing with tons of variety, but if you’re starting out with fresh flour, you’ll most likely want to stick to either hard white or hard red for making bread like sourdough.

Then you’ll need a sourdough starter (if you’re making sourdough bread, that is). Good news; you’re in the right place! We’ll cover the whole process of making a fresh milled sourdough starter from scratch, right here.

It’s that simple!

Wheat berries for sourdough starter

Wheat berries can be confusing.

But, when it comes down to it, most wheat berries (ground into flour) can be used to feed your sourdough starter. Just be sure to keep in consistent so your starter knows what to expect. However, my personal preference is to use fresh milled rye flour to feed my starter on the daily. This is for two reasons: 1) my starter is happier, bubblier, and more active when it’s fed rye, and 2) rye is the most affordable grain I purchase.

Great options for fresh flour to feed your sourdough starter include:

• Rye (my personal choice)
• Hard white
• Hard red
• Einkorn
• Khorasan (A.K.A. Kamut)
• Spelt (my second favorite)
• Durum
• Alternative (GF) grains

What fresh milled flour is best for sourdough

The flour you’ll use to feed your sourdough starter and the flour you’ll use to make sourdough bread may or may not be the same. For instance, I personally use rye flour to feed my starter every day, but I stick with grains like Turkey Red (a hard red wheat) or Dakota Snow (a hard white wheat) to make sourdough bread.

Make sure you don’t try to use any soft wheat berries or low-gluten grains to make sourdough bread.

AVOID using:

soft white wheat

soft red wheat

rye

ancient grains (if using, no more than 50%)

In general, stick with hard grains (hard white, hard red) for the best results with sourdough bread. Later one once you’ve mastered fresh milled sourdough bread, experiment with other grains. But I recommend keeping it as simple as possible when you’re starting out.

How to make a fresh milled sourdough starter

Without further ado, let’s make a fresh milled sourdough starter, from scratch. Making a fresh flour sourdough starter is a simple process of mixing flour and water together, but it does take some patience as you wait for it to become active.

I recommend using fresh milled rye flour, but other options are hard white/red wheat, spelt, einkorn or khorasan.

Day 1: In a clean jar, mix equal parts water and flour by weight together, stir well, and cover with something breathable (NOT airtight). Let sit. You can measure with volume or weight, just keep the flour and water in a roughly 1:1 ratio.

Day 2: Discard about half of your starter, then feed it. The easiest way to make sure you’re feeding the proper amounts at first is to weigh how much starter you have, then feed it the same weight in both flour and water, making sure it’s a thick, pancake batter-like consistency. If it’s thinner than that, add a little more flour. 

As an example, if you have 25 g of starter, feed it 25 g of flour and 25 g of water.

Day 3: Discard half of your starter (again), and feed it the same amount of flour and water that the starter weighs.

Days 4-6: Continue this feeding pattern, feeding every 12-24 hours. I like to feed my starter first thing each morning to stay in a routine. You should start to see bubbles and some activity in your starter by now.

Week 1-2: Your starter should be bubbling, doubling in size after it’s fed, and looking happy by the beginning of week two. But don’t try to make bread with your starter before it’s actually active and established. In the first few weeks, even if a starter looks active and happy, it most likely isn’t strong enough to make bread with yet. Be patient and try making discard recipes with your starter at first (like discard crackers or overnight griddle cakes) before diving into fresh flour sourdough bread.

Feeding sourdough starter with fresh milled flour

If you’re used to feeding your sourdough starter store bought flour and are transitioning it to fresh milled flour (or starting a brand-new fresh milled starter), you’ll notice differences. Because fresh milled flour is so different from commercial flour, your starter will react to it differently.

You’ll notice that your starter rises and becomes active more quickly. That’s because fresh flour is alive with nutrients that your starter loves. The downside? It also stays active for much shorter times. A fresh milled sourdough starter needs routine in order to thrive, and is much less flexible than a commercial flour starter. When I was feeding my starter commercial flour, skipping a feeding or two here and there? No big deal. With a fresh flour starter? Skipping a feeding or two leads to crusty tops, very sad starter, and a longer bounce-back time than with commercial flour.

A fresh milled starter needs to be fed very regularly and routinely to survive.

How and when to feed a fresh milled starter

Your best bet is to feed your fresh milled sourdough starter every morning, when possible. I’ve personally found that my fresh milled starter isn’t happy in the fridge, so I keep mine at room temperature. If you’re able to keep your starter in the fridge, feed it once a week.

My method for feeding my starter is very eyeball-ed and simple.

1. Discard starter if it’s starting to have too much “bulk” to it. I don’t like to feed massive amounts of starter, I see it as a waste of flour. Save the discard for recipes later.
2. Add filtered water to your starter until it’s watery and “murky” looking. How much water you add depends on how much starter you want the next day.
3. Mix the starter + water together.
4. Add flour until your starter becomes thick and well-mixed. I aim for pancake batter-like thickness.
5. Fresh milled starters soak up a little more water than conventional flour ones, so keep it just a tad less thick as you’re feeding it than you’d like it to be in the end.

Print

fresh milled sourdough starter, step-by-step

Ingredients

• rye flour see notes
• water

Instructions

• Day 1: In a clean jar, mix equal parts water and flour by weight together, stir well, and cover with something breathable (NOT airtight). Let sit. You can measure with volume or weight, just keep the flour and water in a roughly 1:1 ratio.
• Day 2: Discard about half of your starter, then feed it. The easiest way to make sure you’re feeding the proper amounts at first is to weigh how much starter you have, then feed it the same weight in both flour and water, making sure it’s a thick, pancake batter-like consistency. If it’s thinner than that, add a little more flour.
• Day 3: Again, discard half of your starter, and feed it the same amount of flour and water that the starter weighs.
• Days 4-6: Continue this feeding pattern, feeding every 12-24 hours. I like to feed my starter first thing each morning to stay in a routine. You should start to see bubbles and some activity in your starter by now.
• Week 1-2: Your starter should be bubbling, doubling in size after it’s fed, and looking happy by the beginning of week two. But don’t try to make bread with your starter before it’s actually active and established. In the first few weeks, even if a starter looks active and happy, it most likely isn’t strong enough to make bread with yet. Be patient and try making discard recipes with your starter at first (like discard crackers or overnight griddle cakes) before diving into fresh flour sourdough bread.

Notes

I recommend using fresh milled rye flour, but other options are hard white/red wheat, spelt, einkorn or khorasan.

What you’ll need to make a fresh milled sourdough starter from scratch:

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I’d been making sourdough bread for years and loved it. See my detailed recipe for making sourdough without discard here.

But making sourdough bread with fresh milled flour seemed impossible.

In fact, to this day I still often suggest that folks start with one or the other. Sourdough OR fresh milled flour. And I know that sounds discouraging, but the truth is that it’s actually less discouraging that way. Let me explain.

Making bread is a simple process. Making sourdough bread is a simple process. But both have a learning curve. Making bread with fresh milled flour is, again, a simple process but …

When you combine two processes with learning curves together, the curve just gets, well, curvier.

So in order to get better results, I highly encourage folks to master one or the other before they combine the two things. It’s just simpler and will result in less inedible loaves that your family coughs down. (Ask me what I know about those!) But if you’ve mastered one and you’re ready to combine the two, here are my best tips that I’ve learned over 5+ years of experiments.

How to feed a sourdough starter fresh milled flour

When I first switched my sourdough starter over to fresh milled flour, I was overconfident. In fact, I was so confident that I quickly and rashly jumped from feeding my starter store flour straight into 100% fresh milled flour. I killed that starter.

After getting some starter from my daughter I tried again, but this time more slowly and gave my starter more time to acclimate to the fresh milled flour. Success. We were in fresh milled sourdough business, baby!

But only after learning a lot of tough lessons am I now (4-5 years later!) able to make yummy, fluffy sourdough bread with fresh milled flour.

If your starter isn’t happy with fresh milled flour right out of the gates, go slow and keep in mind that your starter is experiencing a whole new type of “food,” and might take some time to acclimate.

Tips for feeding your sourdough starter fresh milled flour

There’s nothing worse than excitedly feeding your sourdough starter with fresh milled flour, knowing it’s better, healthier, and more nutritious, only to have your starter… fall flat. Literally. These are some of the things I’ve learned and implemented with my fresh milled sourdough starter to keep it happy and active. Happy and active starter = better bread.

1. Switch up what type of flour you’re feeding it. My starter had a rough time with hard white/hard red flour, but started thriving when I fed it exclusively rye flour. Sourdough starters love rye because it has an excess of two components that mean the world to sourdough: amylase and pentosans. Amylase’s big job is breaking down starches into food for yeast. And then pentosans get busy absorbing water and creating the best environment for the yeast to get all giddy with fermenting. While any fresh milled wheat will have these two important components, rye has more. 
2. Feed your starter more often. I find that my sourdough starter eats/rises faster than it did before I was using fresh milled flour to feed it. This leads to it scabbing over the top of the starter faster than ever, which means I need to keep it refreshed and fed more routinely than I had to with my store flour starter.
3. Consider aging your flour. Some people argue that fresh milled flour, straight from the mill is too fresh and your starter doesn’t like it for that reason. If you’ve tried other things and your starter just. isn’t. happy, try milling your flour 1-2 weeks before feeding your starter with it and see if that makes a difference.
4. Feed your sourdough starter at a really thick consistency. I know this feels counterintuitive since technically fresh milled flour absorbs a bit more water than store flour does, but try feeding your starter a bit thicker than you’re used to. I personally find my starter is only happy and doubling when it’s really pretty thick. Thinner starters simply don’t have the body they need to double.

What wheat berries should I use for fresh milled sourdough?

If you’d like a rundown on all the wheat berries and their uses, read this post all about wheat berries.

In general, using either hard white or hard red wheat is recommended for sourdough bread. Like I stated above, though, I feed my starter strictly Rye flour and have seen huge improvement in my starter. Hard white and hard red both have the highest amount of gluten potential, so you’re most likely to make good bread with them.

Other grains like Kamut/Khorasan, Einorn, or Spelt can be used to make sourdough bread, but they have lower gluten available in them, so your bread might be more dense.

How to make sourdough with fresh milled flour

So you have your starter happy with fresh milled flour, you’re ready to bake bread, and you want to know all the tips and tricks to make sure your bread is not only edible but actually delightfully delicious. I’ve got you.

• Don’t be afraid to use dough enhancers in your sourdough. In my experience the sourdough community (and the fresh milled flour community, let’s be real!) tend to be very purist-minded. I’ve come across many people who have tried to shame me for using Vital Wheat Gluten or for using hard white instead of an ancient grain for the most health benefits. I simply don’t subscribe to that mentality. Use what you can and what you feel comfortable with to make the healthiest, yummiest bread that your family enjoys. That being said, adding enhancements to your sourdough dough (such as vital wheat gluten, sunflower lecithin, or extra fat or egg) can seriously improve your results.
• Don’t be afraid to actually knead your sourdough. Especially after 2020 with everyone acting as a sourdough expert, “no-knead” sourdough recipes became super popular. But sourdough, just like any bread, needs to develop gluten in order to have a good texture. You don’t *always* need to stretch and fold, coil fold, and any of that fancy jazz either. Just normal kneading can be for sourdough, too. Develop that gluten, baby.

Should I sift fresh milled flour for sourdough bread?

While I’m not a huge supporter of sifting fresh milled flour (the bran that you sift out is where tons of nutrients are!), go ahead and sift your flour if it helps you achieve the results you’re looking for. Any version of fresh milled flour you can use is still a huge improvement over any flour you can buy at the store. A couple notes on sifting;

1. Feel free to sift your flour, then add the bran back into the dough. Some people swear the act of aerating the flour helps aerate your bread. Sift on, sister!
2. Try sifting your flour, cooking the bran in boiling water until it’s soft, straining it, and adding the soggy brain back into the dough. This helps soften the bran (which has sharp edges and tends to “cut” the gluten we’re so desperately trying to develop). This way you’re still getting nutrients from the bran, but hopefully experiencing the benefits of sifted flour (i.e. lighter and fluffier bread).
3. If you can make bread you enjoy eating with sifted fresh milled flour, and can’t make bread you enjoy without sifting your flour, then–please–sift your flour! And feel good about it, too, because you’re making your family amazing bread.

Need a grain mill?

I recommend four different grain mills. I’ve used and love them all, but if you’re looking for more information on all of them, see my Guide to Choosing a Grain Mill.

Want to be an overnight Fresh Flour expert?

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More like Sourdough with Fresh Milled Flour:

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