Once you have a healthy starter, you can get by with a lot less fussing than older guides would have you believe.
I bake maybe every couple of weeks. I keep my starter in a one pint jar. I take out half for starting a new loaf, replace it with three ounces of bread flour and two ounces of tap water back in the jar, give it a quick stir, and leave it on the counter overnight.
The next day it has risen, so I stick the jar in the fridge and forget it until next time. No feeding, no throwing out portions, etc. It just sits.
The reason for a fussier feeding and care schedule is if you have a specific balance of microorganisms you are trying to maintain. Leaving it the way I do tends to select for a dominant strain of yeast, which is probably fine for most people, but may reduce the levels of the sour bacteria some people want.
I’ve left my starter for as long as two months untouched. At that point it benefits from some reviving by moving it to a bowl and adding a double dose of flour and water and leaving it overnight to rise. But there is never a shortage of viable yeast in the starter.
Once the starter is active, it is very resiliant. People will warn about the need to use pure spring water and stir with sterilized spoons and so on, but I use regular chlorinated tap water and a spoon from the drawer and it never fails. Yeast is tough.
An easy hedge is to make starters in several jars and keep them far enough apart to limit cross contamination, although that is unlikely unless you’re a really sloppy mixer or you stir with the same spoon. Then keep only the best one.
You can also take your last package of yeast, add two cups of water and two cups of flour and mix well. Three hours later take two cups of the sponge, add 1.5 tsp of salt, two tbs of olive oil, and two cups of flour, mix, knead, etc as you would with any other bread recipe. Bake, yummy bread, and don’t forget to put the remaining sponge in the refrigerator.
Do this long enough and you have a traditional bread starter. Depending on where you live you can get a lovely one with local yeast species (e.g. SF Bay area) or you might throw it out. No guarantee.
I just started my sourdough too, but I’m using a starter that dates ostensibly to a plague epidemic in Bavaria in the 17th century! There are several listings on eBay for a “Black Death” sourdough starter (even though its name is a bit of a misnomer since the 1348 epidemic is more typically called that). Happy baking!
In all the bullshit home rennovating I managed to actually kill the one a friend gave me over the summer. I figured I should use the shut in time to just start a new one.
I may bake some commercially yeasted bread out of necessity but when this starter gets going I am looking forward to some good posts and pictures.
I just ate a piece of sourdough Pandemic Bread for lunch and boy was it delicious. I made a starter using this recipe from the Exploratorium: Basic Sourdough Starter Recipe | Exploratorium
It’s been going strong for a year now, even when I neglected it for a couple months this summer.
Thanks to @jlw and his bread photos for inspiring me to make my own.
Nice article. That’s a good example of how tough a starter can be. The consistency and flavor may change from what’s expected as the long ferment gets working away on the flour, but usually it will still be good.
This is an article from King Arthur Flour anout shrinking starters to just two ounces and keeping them in the fridge:
I keep more like 8-10 ounces in the fridge, but I am sure less would work. Regardless of the exact size, smaller starters kept cold mean much less maintenance time and waste.
Ya, back when I did chemistry people used to use this kind of lab robot to automate parallel reactions, and I have occasionally thought something similar would be handy in the kitchen:
I started making my own sourdough last September from a starter taken from a friend.
I now bake twice a week, with pretty consistent results; usually a half white/half granary mix, and a 100% rye sourdough for lunch at the weekends.
I love it - I’m a self-employed knowledge worker, so making something physical with my hands is particularly rewarding. Something special about the fact that it’s only flour, salt and water (and sometimes a dry spice like rosemary or chilli).
The sad part is that it takes about two weeks, which is at the tail-end of the quarantine period. I think it’s best to go into quarantine with a bouncy, happy starter from day one, and then spend the rest of the time learning how to use it.
a high rye sourdough is my favorite. Given me a good hunk of it, with some sliced apples, a god spicy whole grain mustard, and some extra sharp aged cheddar. mmmmm.
I use a guide from a sourdough book I have at home. It’s very straightforward.
I use a small jar and add two teaspoons of flour per day with enough water to make a smooth paste and keep it in the cupboard. After 3 days it is starting to bubble. On day 5, I add about 100g of flour and enough water and leave it overnight, it then has activated enough for me to make the bread in the morning.
If I have any starter left over that I want to keep, i just put the jar in the fridge.
I have never had a need to throw half away each day or make a big batch, it grows perfectly well with a small amount added daily.
if you’re making a starter from scratch and you live in the Bay Area and a place where you can place a open bowl of yeast/water/potato flakes in the open overnight. You’re golden.
Sourdough starters depend on local natural yeasts floating about in the air.
After it’s inncoulated with natural yeasts you can bring it indoors. (Or I just put mine under the lid of a BBQ grill for a day or so)
Each area has a different regional fauna of yeasts. While I don’t live in the Bay Area…I leave mine just lightly covered with cheese cloth, outside, under a oak tree. Natural yeasts love oak trees and they’ll ‘bloom’ like Corals in the light of a full moon. (also good for making sourkraut in October).
Now, you want a free ‘kick start’ there’s a group of sourdough enthusiasts that have kept a starter alive for decades…
And they’ll send you some for a SASE. Throw them a buck or so tho. Or some extra stamps.
Friends of Carls. http://carlsfriends.net/
They’ll send you envelope with a few crumbles of the dehydrated starter to get you started.
However…it’s kinda like having a puppy. You got to feed it, pay attention to it, and take care of it’s needs. OR IT WILL DIE.
If you have a dehydrator, you can dehydrate your starter for longer term storage or gift packages.
I’m a faithful disciple of the Tassajara bread book. I mix the four and water combo according to consistency. I leave no room for runny liquids, it’s more of a pudding, and I had that bugger doubling in volume in about an hour. Anyhow, my point in my original post is that it takes time to make a starter from scratch. Seeing that exponential curve in infection rates, I would hope people would just plan ahead, get one going and perhaps they can master the magic of sourdough during their downtime.
Blessed be the breadmakers. I’ve never actually baked a loaf but I am told you can make a nice sourdough using kefir whey as a starter, and that is pretty appealing as I like to make kefir.
SO - will somebody please post on their experience using kefir as a starter?
