Best starter I've ever used. So easy to get going and bake with!
Our Dehydrated 119 Year Old Organic Sourdough Starter
Our Dehydrated 119 Year Old Organic Sourdough Starter
Regular price
$22.50
Regular price
Sale price
$22.50
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Handmade
Ready To Use Sourdough
Easy Baking Process
Description
Description
Meet Our 119-Year-Old Sourdough Starter &
Get Started Baking Immediately!
Baking Sourdough Bread can sometimes feel out of reach, because starting a sourdough starter and building its strength requires time, patience, and sometimes a little luck. But, opening your jar of our LIVE sourdough starter changes the game completely, and gives you great results right away.
The Dehydrated Version of our 119-year-old legacy starter is shelf stable and a great option for anyone outside of the US.
Our established starter is resilient, she fits into real life. Go on vacation. Take a break. Keep her in the refrigerator. You don’t have to worry about one missed feeding destroying months of work.
Have complete confidence in your baking, or gift it to the baker in your life. This is an heirloom sourdough starter you, can keep for years.
When I inherited this starter 19 years ago, everything changed.
Sometimes what’s missing isn’t another recipe or another bag of flour. It’s simply a strong, established starter you can rely on.
Our 119-year-old starter is active, STRONG, resilient, and wildly reliable—giving you the chance to skip the months of trial and error and start baking with confidence.
Ready to see sourdough success?
Why Ours?
Our starter is carefully maintained and hand-packed daily, not mass produced. We feed her with just two simple, high-quality ingredients:
• Organic King Arthur All-Purpose Flour
• Filtered water
That’s it.
She arrives dehydrated and ready to feed, so you can get your sourdough journey started without spending weeks or months trying to establish a starter from scratch.
And if you’re wondering whether she’ll give you the results you’re looking for, just check our reviews!
Thousands of bakers have already trusted our starter in their kitchens around the world!⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Happy Baking! ❤️
Vidya,
Little Ranch Family
📦 International customers: Please see our dehydrated starter option.
What She’s Fed With
What She’s Fed With
What’s Inside
What’s Inside
The Story Behind “The Bitch”
This starter has been alive since 1907 and has only lived in three households—mine included. I received the last remaining portion of her as a birthday gift from my half-brother. It belonged to his grandmother and had already been in her family for a century.
At the time, I had just finished culinary school and was working as a young chef in San Francisco. One of the books that inspired me to become a chef as a child—Kitchen Confidential by the late Anthony Bourdain—told a story about a starter named “The Bitch.” She made incredible bread. So does ours.
This starter is a piece of our family, and we’re honored to share her with you. When she arrives in your home, we encourage you to name her—make her part of your own story. She’s meant everything to us, and we know she’ll mean something to you too.
Customer Reviews
Customer Reviews
Overall rating: 4.9 / 5 from 97 reviews.
It has arrived ❤️!! So excited to be part of this long journey. Order arrived really quickly and communication has been fantastic when customs had questions (New Zealand is strict).
Amazing stater! My first time baking sourdough was a success!
I was at the end of my rope with my homemade sourdough starter. It just wasn’t producing loaves that ticked all the boxes (rise, flavor, open crumb, etc). I decided to buy dehydrated starter from Little Ranch Family and….good gravy! I am making the most delicious, beautiful loaves! I am so happy! I added a bit of the dehydrated starter to my existing, struggling starter and it really ramped it up!
Provide starter that works.
Bought the dehydrated starter after quite a bit of research and baked my first loaf. It turned out spectacular! It was the classic recipe from when you order. Absolutely loved how it worked out!
Easy to rehydrate and is ready to use within 2 days. Made the chocolate starter with it as well and it came out great!
I haven’t had a chance to bake with it yet, but it looks just like the YouTube videos.
After a month of failing to make a stater from scratch I pulled the trigger and bought the dried starter. Best decision ever. Do not hesitate to try it for yourself.
Arrived quickly even to international, simple to rehydrate and ready to bake happy, healthy sourdough soon after my old starter caught a mould and couldn’t be saved. Absolute life saver!!
Hello, Thank you so much for your kind message! I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly my sourdough starter arrived, even all the way here in Québec, Canada. I was quite busy during the first week, so I waited a bit before giving my new levain my full attention. To my delight, everything went beautifully — I had worried for nothing! I saved all my discards and used them to create a lovely stash of dried "Tabata," my 119-year-old new girl. I’ve already started baking, and I love making two loaves at a time: one topped with sesame seeds and the other with everything bagel spice. Thank you again for sharing your precious starter with me. I will be forever grateful. Sincerely, Nadine Collin 😊
So excited!!! I 100% messed up the ratios when starting to rehydrate. I was nervous, but it still came back to life perfectly! I absolutely LOVE it and can’t wait to get cooking!! It smells wonderful (just like how yeast should!) Checking on it everyday is giving me something new and exciting in my baking journey!
This was the missing key to my sourdough journey! I ended up incorporating it into my starter and it immediately took off. No more dense bread! Its sooo soft and delicious. Thank you for sharing!
First time, there were lot of wonder and questions about how feed right, how take out, how keep healthy, and I still do search around. The instructions help me start but I bake on the 7th day , not 5th like guide. I give 5 as quality of starter, healthy and active fast. However it is very nice if you help beginners like me guide how to keep it good after use and one basic recipe bread, it is wonderful. I have to go around social media to test recipe.
The "BITCH" Starter is beyond 💪STRONG💪 Thank you, Little Ranch Family!
The best starter hands down! Followed your recipe and baking instructions. Love it!!!
Very good
I was able to bake in exactly 5 days my other starter was struggling but with a bit of this starter as well now both are alive and growing
I'm excited to start this journey! I'm hoping I can keep the pace and do a good job so I can start enjoying some bread!
Love my new starter! This super developed starter made all the difference for me. Thank you so much! It’s delicious!
Love this starter! So healthy and ready! Love this starter buy it
I have yet to get a starter recipe to work yet. But so far discard sandwhich bread is great! I’m excited to find a good loaf recipe that works.
My starter is now very well established, healthy and happy. She's rising quickly and she is now my baby. It took me about 7 to 10 days to fully wake her up with the dehydrated starter, feeding once every 24 hours. Once she was well established and fully awake she rises and peaks beautifully. I couldn't be happier. Thank you for your beautiful well established 118 year old starter! I did not have to start from scratch and wait months.
I highly suggest buying a starter to get you started in the sourdough world! It was super easy to rehydrate the dehydrated with the step by step guide that also came in the mail. I baked on day 5 and all turned out great! Highly recommend!!
My first loaf with the Little Ranch dehydrated sour dough flakes. The starter showed results right away. The bread was delicious.
Love love love!! I’m already making my first 2 loaves this morning, and the dough is so incredibly beautiful! It’s jiggly and full of bubbles! I love it! Can’t wait to make more things. Thank you :)
The best starter I’ve used!!
Beyond happy with my sourdough started, second day and it was already hungry and happy. I also tried the chocolate sourdough recipe and it came out amazing. I’m still learning, it was actually my first sourdough bread, thanks to this starter I made the best bread ever! Love my new sourdough starter, it’s addicting! Can’t wait to learn and make more.
Arrived timely, although I had to be away for a long weekend so waited to wake it. Today is day 5 of waking up the starter. It did as the card said each day. Very active! I’m excited to bake a batch to try the flavor.
I ordered the 118 year starter and my experience was great! I received such a quick response to my question I had about feeding it, and the customer service was incredible!
Love this starter and your channel so helpful
Easy instructions to follow and I’m really confident my sourdough journey is going to succeed this time thanks to this starter!
Happy with my "witch" :) Thanks
The dyhratated starter turned out AWESOME. I followed the directions as provided by you and it turned out great. I made my very first English muffins with some of this starter and they turned out perfect.
After two attempts of making a sourdough starter i kept failing because i was so busy with work that i kept forgetting about it. And when i thought my starter was finally good enough i tried to make a loaf it turned out so bad. I just had to bite the bullet and buy a dehydrated sourdough starter and im so glad i went this route because i finally have a sourdough starter that didn't take a long time to get started and my loaf turned out so good. I cant wait to try other recipes with my starter. Thank you so much honestly
Such an easy way to get started! My starter was so active and the first loaf already came out amazing!
I would love to show it in action and provide a picture but I’m only on day 3 and it’s not doing what the videos show. Maybe I should’ve only used King Arthur flour or should just remain patient. I am excited to see when it’s active. Gave a five star to support the family home business.
The instructions were easy to read and follow. I received mine in the mail Monday and I am currently making my first loaf!
The sourdough starter is working great! It was very easy to get going and we have already made bread and pizza dough.
The starter worked great even though that the directions said 5 g and I only had 4.1 g in my package. It hydrated well and I am currently on day two of the process.