Had a bakery owner tell me I was ruining my sourdough by using tap water

I was at this little shop in Portland last month, and the owner watched me fill my bucket at the sink. She goes, 'You're killing your starter with that chlorine.' I thought it was total nonsense since I've been baking for 5 years with no issues. But I tried using filtered water for a week and my rise was noticeably better. Anyone else run into this or is she full of it?

3 comments

3 Comments

gonzalez.reese23d ago

Oh wow, another thing to consider - I heard the mineral content in tap water can actually throw off your fermentation time too. Like hard water with lots of calcium might slow things down compared to soft water. So it's not just the chlorine, it could be what's left behind that's messing with your rise.

kai_butler8323d ago

I got curious about this last year and tested it myself with two identical starter jars for a month. The tap water one got this weird dull look and took like 8 hours to peak, while the filtered one was ready in 5 hours. A friend who works at a water plant told me most municipal systems add chloramine now, which is way harder to get out than old school chlorine. Try letting your tap water sit out for 24 hours or just grab a cheap Brita pitcher, it made a bigger difference than I expected lol.

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black.pat17d ago

That bit about letting tap water sit out for 24 hours is solid advice, @kai_butler83, but it only works for chlorine not chloramine like you said. It's funny how something as simple as water now requires a whole science experiment, feels like everything in our kitchens needs its own little setup these days. Between the air quality for my starter and now the water, I'm starting to think my grandmother would just shake her head at all this fuss she never worried about.