Sourdough Starter

SOURCE: Wild Yeast Blog & Breadchick Blog

Recently I have become more interested in baking breads. This started with my purchase of Home Baking: The Artful Mix of Flour and Tradition Around the World. This book delves into the old world of baking as this husband and wife team travel the world to add more traditional recipes to their repretoire. Both the pictures and stories are inspiring and after having tried a couple of recipes I can honestly say that bread baking is nowhere near as difficult as some make it out to be. Having conquered a few recipes I wanted to try making sourdough. Through many searches on the internet I found several recipes for starters and eagerly started the process. I must say you definitely need patients...as you will not be able to start baking for approximately 7 days.

Once you have created an active starter the possibilities are endless. Some useful websites include: The Fresh Loaf, Bread Chick and Wild Yeast.

Ingredients:

• White flour (bread or all-purpose)
• Rye flour
• Water

Equipment:

• A 1-quart or larger container with a lid, preferably transparent and with straight vertical sides (this makes it easier to gauge the activity of the culture).

General process:

• The stuff you’re growing is a “culture” before it is mature and stable enough to bake with, at which point it becomes a “starter.”
• Feeding involves removing and discarding a portion of the culture, and adding water and flour to what remains: first mix the culture and water together thoroughly, then add the flour and mix until thoroughly blended.
• Before you begin, it’s helpful to mark the weight of the container on the bottom with a Sharpie, or note it elsewhere. Then when it’s time to discard some of the culture, you can just keep taking some out and weighing the container until you know that the remaining culture is the right amount.
• While this has been debunked in some quarters of the sourdough world, unless you are 1000% sure your utensils are not any other metal but stainless steel, do not use metal to store or mix your sourdough starter. Some metals will react with the acidity of the starter and cause the starter to go bad and/or the starter will corrode your metal bowl/utensil. I like those nice quart size snap and seal ziplock containers for mine. All six of my starters live these starter condos and have for years.
• When you’re done mixing, smooth the top of the culture flat as much as possible. Place a piece of tape running straight up the outside of the container, and mark the level of the culture. This is how you will know how much it has risen.
  Replace the container lid when you’re done mixing. If it’s a screw on lid or mason-jar type, you may want to leave it a little loose to give accumulated gas an escape route. If it is a plastic snap-on lid, you can snap it tight; the lid will pop off if the pressure inside gets too high.
• Get used to “tossing off” (throwing away) part of the starter every time you feed it. Yes, this feels very wasteful but unless you are baking every day with the starter, all you will end up with by saving the toss off is a bunch of containers all over you have to keep feeding. If this really, really bothers you, see if you can find someone who wants a sourdough starter of their own but don’t feel bad about just throwing the toss off away.
• Never tightly seal your starter, either in the fridge or on your counter. If you do, the build up of gas will literally blow the lid off and you will have a mess all over the place. This is also a good way to “kill” your starter. After all, it is a living thing.
• A healthy starter should be bubbly and foamy about two hours after each feeding.
• Hooch is the liquid that forms on top of starters between feedings. This liquid is slightly alcoholic and is the ‘waste product’ of the yeast after feeding on the flour. There are two camps about hooch in the world of sourdough. Some people say it is bad and a sign your starter is starving. Others say, it doesn’t mean a thing other than your yeast ate and you should just stir it back in and go forward. I happen to be in the later camp and unless your hooch is some strange color or has mold or something else weird about it, just stir it back in and feed away!
• If at any time you notice the following, throw out your starter and start over:-Strange colors other than gray-Strange smells other than sour or vinegar (i.e. wet gym sock, bad chicken)-Mold
• One last thing, after you have nursed your starter for one week, you can name it. Don’t name it before because this considered bad luck and a sure way your starter will die. Don’t ask me why, it is an old sourdough wives tale. Ironically, most starters I know are named after men even though the main starter you use to bake with is a called a “mother starter”.

Day 1 - AM:

• Make sure your container is clean, well-rinsed, and dry.
  Mix 100 g water, 50 g rye flour, and 50 g white flour (or 1/2 c. water and 3/8 c. of each flour.)
  Leave the culture in its warm spot for 24 hours.

Day 2 - AM:

• Hopefully you will see signs of life. Has the culture risen a little? Are there any bubbles in it, even one or two? (These are sometimes best seen by picking it up and looking at it through the bottom of the container.)
  
• It is possible that you will see a large rise (50% or more) at this point. Don’t be fooled; this does not mean you’ve birthed a miracle baby. In the initial stages of a culture, a type of bacteria called leuconostoc may predominate; it produces a lot of gas and causes the rapid rise. This bacteria is not desirable, but not harmful either, and it will eventually die out as the beneficial critters settle in and the culture becomes more acidic. You may also notice that the culture has a rather unpleasant odor; don’t worry, this too shall pass.
  (If you see absolutely no sign of life whatsoever, I suggest leaving it alone for another 12 hours before proceeding. If there is still nothing, why not forge ahead anyway and see what happens?)
• Discard all but 75 g of the culture. Feed this with 75 g water, 25 g rye flour, and 50 g white flour (1/3 c. starter, 1/3 c. water, 5 teaspoons rye flour, and 1/3 c. white flour).
  Set it back in its warm spot for 12 hours.

Day 2 - PM:

• You may see signs of activity, but the culture may be either more or less lively than what you saw this morning. Anything from a single bubble to a 100% rise is good.
• Again, feed 75 g of culture with 75 g water, 25 g rye flour, and 50 g white flour, and return it to the warm spot.

Day 3 - AM:

• Your culture may appear dead, but it’s probably not. Don’t worry, just go ahead and feed as before.

Day 3 - PM and every 12 hours thereafter:

• Continue to feed as you’ve been doing. At some point things should pick up steam, and you will notice that the culture gets a little more vigorous with each feeding.
  When the culture at least doubles itself in 12 hours and is looking nice and bubbly, start feeding with only white flour (75 g culture / 75 g water / 75 g flour). This happened for me around the end of Day 4.
• After about 5 – 7 days, hopefully you will observe that the culture can double itself in 8 hours or less, smells pleasantly sour, and is full of bubbles. Congratulations, you have raised a 100% hydration starter that’s ready to bake with! If you’re looking for a recipe, how about this Norwich Sourdough?
  
  At this point you can also start decreasing the amount of culture in relation to the feeding flour and water, and use room-temperature instead of 85-degree water. You have been mixing 1:1:1 culture:water:flour at each feeding. Now try 1:2:2 and see if the starter can still double in 8 hours or less.