I used to do sourdough!!! Loved it. I'll bet if I look hard enough, I could find my starter recipe!!! Looks so yummy!!

Nancy.

Me too, I never tried capturing my own wild yeast but I did have a starter going for a couple of years, kept it in the fridge or I've even froze it when I wasn't going to use it for awhile. If I remember correctly my starter had milk and sugar in it. To keep it going I had to feed it every week. Caroline it's a good job you live where you do, you'd have me banging on your door, your kichen must smell ohhhhh so good.

Walk me through how you captured your wild yeast, what were the proportions of water and flour you used? Sugar? Did you just let it sit on the kitchen counter? How warm was your room? How much of this starter did you use in a batch of bread? Where do you keep your starter and what proportions of? did you feed it with and how often?

Now aren't you sorry you posted this LOL. I feel like the little kid who's answer to the question which has just been answered is, why?

Annette

I could never go on the no flour, no sugar diet - ever. I love any kind of bread. This is the first time I've heard of wild yeast, why the bottled water? Would tap water (well water) work, too?

I am glad you iike it. The yeast is actually everywhere but the kind you want to grow bread is on the grains of the flour. Especially stone ground rye. The bottled water to get it going is in case you have a lot of chemicals in your water. I don't but I wanted to give it the best start. I am linking the tutorial. You will see that you have to be patient...very very very. It doesn't always take the number of days you think it will. I use trailrunner on the site also so you will see my posts. It is a wonderful website. The Fresh Loaf. You do not use sugar or anything else. Just flour and water.

Annette...if you were nearby ...well you would be welcomed with open arms...

schoolhouse...well water would be wonderful.

Nancy ,,,please do look around and also at the website and give it a try. I will give lots of encouragement. c

Here is a link that might be useful: Sourdough tutorial

Heh. I started one a few weeks ago myself. I baked a loaf a week ago. It was okay, but I let it bake too long and the crust was too hard. The inside was yummy.

Sourdough starter and recipe.

That's the one I used. Just plain white flour and water for the starter. It should get a lot better as time goes on. There's a lot of hooch in mine right now. I think I'll take it out of the fridge and bake another loaf tomorrow.

How interesting; I have been reading lots about bread making and techniques. I have been making all our breads and buns for two or so years now. I love making bread!

I know about The Fresh Loaf forum, but haven't spent a lot of time there. I am really interested in the stone-ground, whole grain breads.

Another forum I enjoy since it is both about bread and her life on the farm (and in the boondocks of southern Missouri)I really enjoy is A Year in Bread.

I love the idea of sourdough bread and your own yeast, but I hate to admit I am not a huge fan of the taste of the bread. The sour thing puts me off. So, I hate to go to all that bother and find we don't like it.

I have been reading about using wild yeast to make home made wines. That is another fascinating subject. Ihave have a few grape vines planted.......

Your bread looks picture perfect! Now are you going to carry it a step further (my dream) and buy your own grain mill and just grind the berries as you need them? I devotees of this say it makes the best flavored and nutritional bread possible. Evidently the minute flour is ground it begins loosing Vitamin E and others.

I am in the process right now of making a whole wheat pancake with yeast that should be made overnight, a sort of sourdough technique, but can be made an hour in advance too. You use white whole wheat pastry four. I have done it once before and we loved it. It is a way to use up the case of Hodgson Mill pastry flour that I bought...we didn't like crust using it...too much the texture of cornmeal.

Here is a link that might be useful: A Year in Bread and rural Living

Hey gldno...yes I like her blog too. Also you can check out Wild Yeast...she has a very nice blog.

The thing about sourdough is that if you follow the inst. and keep it on the counter it does get more sour. But there is an alternative...you put it in the fridge and only refresh it 1x a week. So on saturday you take it out, take out a cup full for your waffles etc ( this is the discard and you use it to cook with) then you add the weight of the starter that is left in water and flour...ex: if you have 100grams of starter you add 50g water and 50g flour...leave on the countertop for about 6hrs till bubbly and double and then back in the fridge. It will not get very sour at all. I too don't like the sour and so far this has worked very well. Also you don't have to keep tending it as some folks do.

I have toyed with the idea of a mill but so far have not done it. The ones that you get for the home take a LONG time to grind very much flour...the big ones are way too expensive and HEAVY. So I will just continue using the flour I get at the health food store and the grocery...for now anyway.

I would love to see what you are making and we can swap recipes.

token: I couldn't get the link to come up...may need to try a different computer. Care to share what you are making?

I made these this AM with the discard..the recipe is from the King Arthur web site...sourdough waffles

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the link worked this AM. Thank you very in depth study of the history of pizza and lots of other things. c

The starter recipe is very basic.

Every 24 Hours, Feed the Starter. You should keep the starter in a warm place; 70-80 degrees Farenheit is perfect. This allows the yeast already present in the flour (and in the air) to grow rapidly. Temperatures hotter than 100 degrees or so will kill it. You can take comfort from the fact that almost nothing else will do so. The way you feed the starter is to (A) throw away half of it and then (B) add a half-cup of flour and a half-cup of water. Do this every 24 hours. Within three or four days (it can take longer, a week or more, and it can happen more quickly) you should start getting lots of bubbles throughought, and a pleasant sour or beery smell. The starter may start to puff up, too. This is good. Here's the gist: When your starter develops a bubbly froth, it is done. You have succeeded. If this sounds brain-dead simple, that's because it is. People who didn't believe the Earth was round did this for millenia.

The bread recipe is easy too.

* 2 Cups of sponge (proofed starter)
* 3 Cups of unbleached flour
* 2 tablespoons of olive oil or softened margarine
* 4 teaspoons of sugar
* 2 teaspoons of salt

First, let's talk about leftover sponge. You should have some. The leftover sponge is your starter for next time: Put it into the jar, and give it a fresh feed of a half-cup each of flour and warm water. Keep it in the fridge as above; you'll have starter again next time.

Now, for the recipe: To the sponge, add the sugar, salt, and oil (the oil is optional - you can use softened butter instead, or no oil at all). Mix well, then knead in the flour a half-cup at a time. Knead in enough flour to make a good, flexible bread dough. You can do this with an electric mixer, a bread machine on "dough cycle," or a food processor. You can also do it with a big bowl and your bare hands.

Then you let it rise in a warm place. I use my oven with just the light on. It takes a few hours. Once that's done, you punch it down and make your loaf. Then you let it rise again before baking. I skipped that second rise in my first batch and I now know it's very necessary. My first loaf was really flat and hard, but inside, the taste was right on. I actually started a new loaf last night. It's still in the oven now, trying to rise. I hope to be able to bake it this afternoon. For some reason, mine takes several hours to get going.

OK, I think I will give it a try. I still have two loaves of Farm Girl's Honey Wheat Sandwich bread in the freezer so will wait a while.

Maybe we should create a bread thread under 'conversations' and keep this going.

It is a great way to pass these winter months!

Never done a bread using a poolish or a biga....want to try those next.

You might want to go ahead and get started with the culture as it takes a bit for some folks to get it going. If you will use the bit of rye as suggested on The Fresh Loaf site I linked you will have a little more luck. Don't put any regular yeast. Resist using anything else...pineapple juice etc. Just use the formula. And by the time you have it the bread will be gone. You can use any discard as an additive to almost anything you are making. Just throw it in...quick breads,pancakes,waffles..you name it.

Let me know if you would like any more info. I don't know about a sep , thread...what do you think ???? c

I love sourdough pancakes. My sister now has Mother's hooch. Mother kept it going from abt. 1974 until she died in 2003. Mother started it on their first trip to Alaska.

Almost as good, are cottage cheese pancakes.

NEAT! I will have to try this soon. I remember my mother did this when I was little and there was an accident. She put the starter in a bowl that was too small. She left it on the counter and the next morning it had erupted and spilled down the cupboards to the floor!

-trailrunner, your bread is PICTURE PERFECT! Do you have a recipe for it?
CMK

I once watched a show of some artisinal baker out in San Francisco. They were known for their great bread. They gathered their yeast from the leaves of organic cabbage. Simply washed off the leaves with water and used that water to mix with their flour. In no time, they had their yeast starter. San Francisco apparently has a special kind of yeast which is used to make their famous sour dough breads.

I'll give your version a try.

Actually, I remember 'feeding' a friend's sourdough starter when she travelled!!! lol. SFO's sourdough is fabulous!! They do bread bowls of it with chowder inside. If you like chowder(I don't) it would be yummy.
The sourdough my friend and I made had instant potatoes in it, for some reason. I am going to save this recipe for when I can finally eat bread again (diet, don't you know)

Nancy.

I resisted reading this thread for three days, because I knew it would be irresistable, and it is. We are just now getting over eating fruitcake cookies through the holidays.

Nell

Hi Nancy, potato sour dough, sounds very interesting. Care to share the recipe?

by the way, I too am dieting, but I haven't given up my bread - just doing portion control and it's been effective.

ianna

How yum is this?
I would give up dessert before bread. I have a bread flour source nearby and my neighbor has a mill. I can hardly wait to try this.

georgeanne

thread moved to conversations !!!