Regular starters are usually made with equal parts of water & flour, but for an Einkorn starter the recommendation is 40 grams of water to 60 grams of flour. I decided that was just too thick & nasty, so I decided to just wing it.
Day 1 started out with a glass jar and 40 grams of warm water at 100-110 degrees. (40 grams is a little less than 1/4 cup if you don’t want to weigh water.) Stir in two gigantic heaping tablespoons of Einkorn flour. Add a little more flour as necessary until you have a thick and pasty sludge, still thin enough to stir up, but so thick it doesn’t just run off the spoon. Scrape down the sides. Cover it loosely with plastic wrap and then throw a towel over it because it likes to be kept in the dark. Put it in a warm place; about 80 degrees worked best for me. I have a proofing oven, but you could put it in a regular oven with the light on if the weather is too cold.)
Day 2 add another 40 grams of warm water to the sludge. Mix it in well, because the starter likes the air. Stir in another two gigantic heaped up tablespoons of flour, adding more until you have the requisite sludge. Then cover and keep warm.
Day 3 throw out half of the starter. Feed it (add your water and flour). Cover and keep warm.
Days 4-7. Repeat day three. You may have to keep going for as much as ten days, until your starter is bubbling and smells like old gym socks. If at any point in the process your jar starts looking nasty, just get a clean jar. If your starter develops a dark grey color on top, just scrape it off. If liquid forms on the top, just stir it in.
Now, hopefully you will have a Betty of your own. Or a Veronica, an Archie, or a Jughead. What’s next? Bread!
Your first loaf won’t have much sourdough flavor. The starter will just keep getting better over time. A loaf takes 1/4 cup or more of starter, since I don’t really measure it. I use up about half of my starter, then stick the rest, covered with plastic wrap and foil, in the fridge.
When it’s time to make another loaf, the day before I take Betty out of the fridge in the morning to let her warm up. Then in the afternoon I feed her and let her get to work. Just before I go to bed that night, I mix up my bread dough, and in the morning it’s ready to bake a loaf. Betty, now lighter by half, goes back in the fridge to wait for her next meal.
It’s a real pain making the starter, and it does waste quite a bit of very expensive flour. But once you have it going, there’s no more waste and it isn’t hard to maintain it. I just have to remember to feed Betty at least every week or two so she doesn’t go flat, because that wouldn’t be a good look for her.
I’ve found that using a sourdough starter, the bread will really hold up well, without molding out drying out, for a week. It’s delicious when it’s fresh and warm. Cold, it tastes less like the crappy bread we’ve all come to love, but still makes good toast in the morning. I often slice it up and freeze the slices in zip lock bags, separated by sheets of waxed paper. Then you just pop them in the toaster in the morning.