Step 1 - Admire the power inherent in this flake of dried flour, wild and napping yeast and lactobacteria. For thousands of years, adding water to this equation has allowed your predecessors to thrive, build majestic civilizations and make toast. Huzzah!

Step 2 - Put roughly 5 grams of dried starter in a bowl with a lid, but NOT airtight. (This starter will produce gas that will need to escape, just like your Uncle Fred.)

 

Step 3 - Add a 1/4 cup of room temp water. I use filtered water just because, but I imagine tap water would work just as well.

 

Step 4 - Let the starter flakes dissolve in the water. Feel free to stir it up a bit and help it along, but it might take a while to fully dissolve. Also: Accept this as your first exercise in patience.  You will need much patience when making bread. Unbearably so at times, because if you're like me you want things to happen immediately. But yeast isn't interested in what any of us want, it just wants to eat sugar and make bubbles. Yeast is exactly like a 5 year old. PLEASE NOTE:  You don't need to add sugar to either the 5 year old or your sourdough starter since both have plenty of sugar in them already. In the case of the starter, it's present in the flour.

 Step 5 - Once the starter is dissolved, add 1 cup of flour and 1 cup of water to the container. I use unbleached all purpose flour.

 Step 6 - Mix it all up until it's smooth like Billy Dee Williams. And like thick pancake batter. NOTE: It should look a lot more like pancake batter than Billy Dee Williams. If it looks like Billy Dee Williams, that's amazing but you're doing it wrong.

 This is what it looks like mixed. Real smooth. Billy Dee approved!

 Step 7 - Put a lid on it and wait!

Over the next few hours, the starter might separate. It may appear nothing is happening.  But it is...the yeast is waking up and getting ready to chow down and replicate like crazy and the lactobacteria is getting just as excited. So fear not. Be patient. Keep the lid on and let it sit over night.

At some point the next day, you should start to see bubbles forming and eventually those bubbles should turn into a full blown yeast party blow-out. At this point, congrats! You've brought the yeast back to life. GAME ON! 

Step 8 - Feed your starter another cup of flour and another cup of water and let it go through another cycle. Once it's bubbling like mad, you can begin to use it in recipes.

MOVING FORWARD:
- Feed your starter daily. Before you do, pour half of it out so there's plenty of room for it to expand in the container.
- If you don't want to feed it daily, then feed it and put it in the fridge until you plan to use it. The day before you bake, take it out of the fridge, mix it together (it will have separated), feed it again and set it out on your kitchen counter to warm up and come back to life. I've left it in the fridge for a month before and was able to revive it just fine.

RECIPES:
I'll post some recipes of my own, but in the meantime, here are a couple that look pretty close to my own:

• http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2008/10/easy-no-knead-sourdough-bread.html

• http://www.breadtopia.com/sourdough-no-knead-method/

Good luck!