Storing sourdough starter

15 years ago

I made my first sourdough starter this week and am wondering what to store it in.

Right now I have it in a 1 liter canning car, but the narrow neck doesn't make it very conducive to scooping out the starter when I need it. I am not crazy about the idea of storing it in a plastic container.

Anyone doing anything creative, or am I putting to much thought into this? :o)

Featured Answer

grainlady_ks

15 years ago

Teresa-

Starters are as individual as the folks who use them - is the best answer I can give you... Over the years I've collected a file of recipes found in books and on-line, as well as news articles about "Everlasting Yeast"; and as you point out, it's not just one method or recipe.

Everlasting Yeast was popular just over 100-years ago and was made with fresh cake yeast (or even homemade dry yeast made with hops), potato water, sugar, and flour - so it wasn't the flour/water mixture of traditional starters. The cake yeast quickly was taken over by naturally-occurring yeast (so called "wild" yeast) found in the flour.

When I received my Everlasting Yeast I also received instructions for how to use it. My friend, who was in her early 90's when she gave it to me, had never made anything other than loaves of white bread with her Everlasting Yeast. She said she tried her daughters regular sourdough starter but always thought her Everlasting Yeast made better bread. She was very particular that you NOT call it sourdough starter.

I made it according to her cryptic instructions once, and then did my own thing with it after that and used it for multi-grain breads, 100% whole wheat bread, rye bread, cookies, crackers, dinner and cinnamon rolls, hamburger and hot dog buns, pancakes/waffles, cake - all kinds of things using starter. I never made it according to her instructions ever again (we don't eat white bread around here). I used a completely different ratio of ingredients. Sometimes I used just water and flour, and often used agave nectar instead of sugar when adding a sweetener. I also switched to using freshly-milled wholegrain flour.

There was never any "toss 1 cup" associated with Everlasting Yeast. You made the overnight sponge and put a portion back into the refrigerator to use the next time. You could wait as long as a month before using it.

The only trick I discovered was to use it as soon as possible after the sponge would start to deflate in the morning. That's when you'd get your best rise to your breads.

-Grainlady

Sort by:Oldest

Comments (6)

teresa_nc7
15 years ago
A pottery or glass bowl with a "shower cap" cover will do as will a wide mouth canning jar or a straight sided crock. I would not use plastic - the alcohol in the starter can eat or etch through the plastic. I have seen this! Just don't store the starter with a lid screwed down tight. It needs a little breathing room and - it could explode.
grainlady_ks
15 years ago
I've seen starter in humble recycled plastic deli containers with a few holes poked in the lids. A friend had three of them for different kinds of starter they used and only kept about 1/2-cup of starter in each container. I've always thought the glazed stoneware crocks so charming for starter, but just couldn't justify the cost.

I use a wide-mouth glass canning jar with a "Quick Cover" (looks like a small shower cap) on it, and I poked holes in it with a fork for off-gassing). When I got my starter from a friend in her 90's, she had a square of waxed paper with a few holes poked into it covering a quart canning jar, secured with a rubber band. A method she'd been using for the 75-years she'd been using her "Everlasting Yeast".

Just give it plenty of room in whatever non-reactive container you decide to use (no stainless steel of decorative tin). You won't want it filled to the brim.

Be sure to clean the container thoroughly in hot soapy water after each use, and a scalding of boiling water for the final rinse to kill any bacteria that could contaminate your starter. Allow it to air dry. The famous "they" say not to wash your container in a dishwasher because the residue from the sheeting action of the detergents and rinse-aids can kill your starter.

Until you know how your starter is working, you may also want to place a glass pie or baking dish under your refrigerated starter. Occasionally they get a little crazy and will escape the confines of the container and you'll thank me later if it was caught in a dish.

-Grainlady
Related Discussions
Wild Yeast Sourdough Starter
Q
Comments (65)
hello all : Been looking at this page for a while - and was inspired to try something I read - a wild yeast captured from Caraway seeds. After 5 days and a few additions of my own - think I have a live sponge - Started with soaking FRONTIERS ORGANIC Caraway seeds ( I read this - dont remember what site - said organic would be sun dried as to heat dried) in some water in jar - dash of flour - not really sure why next morning drained seeds , added 1/2 of flour closed cap of jar and shook to mix - within 1 hr I had froth - next day still frothy - so put into bigger jar and added 1/2 flour and water - shook to mix - cracked lid for outgas - very frothy and smelled like fermentation next day less froth strong fermentation smell - so added some apple cider vinegar from a dropper I was cleaning out - secured cap and shook - cracked lid for outgas - next day, little movement but lots of hooch and strong fermentation smell - so I added more vinegar , did the mixing etc... this morning I was making bread with yeast - decided to play with the concoction - used up organic fruit juice sweetened apricot fruit jam jar took 1/2 of the mix I started - just shook that to mix and cracked the lid - could smell a touch of vinegar in the mix - the main jar I just added some home stone ground white winter wheat flour - maybe 2 tablespoons and mixed with wooded spatula I mixed the yeast dough I had started last nite -now thick like pancake batter - just checked it a moment ago and appears to be live and starting to bubble I shall report back tomorrow with more result - thought those might be interested in my experiment cheers:
...See More
Sourdough starter - should I dry it or freeze it?
Q
Comments (7)
I have always had both refrigerated and dried. I make the starter batch, and spread a little onto some plastic wrap. Its allowed to air dry for about 2 days. By then it crumbles easily. I simply place in a small plastic bag and its fine for almost forever, if stored in the fridge. You MUST create the starter from just water, flour, and the orignal sourdough culture. Do not add salt, sugar or anything else to the culture!! Every time I make a batch of sourdough, I mix my jarred, refrigerated one with flour and water to give me a stiff batter, almost a sticky dough, as well as adding a little of the dried. I keep the dried ones in the fridge too. I have several, one for rye, one, my grandfather used 100 years ago, and one with a more recent (30+ year old) sourdough culture from San Francisco. All three are viable and will start 'working' within 4 hours. The water I use has no chlorine, so bottled might help prolong the cultures. I do have a new one pound bag of regular yeast, and its compressed and granulated. I store it in the freezer, unopened. Once it is opened, it goes into a canning jar with air tight lid, then back into the freezer again. Everything mentioned in the King Arthur descriptive above is exactly what I do. I don't mind smelling top of the starter liquid in the fridge, as its 'hooch' (booze) like another person mentioned. There is also another recent post I made that covers the same issues of keeping a sourdough culture alive and well. I don't even bother to feed mine, and it could be sitting in the fridge 6+ months at a time, with no ill effects.
...See More
How much sourdough starter to make sponge?
Q
Comments (38)
Ginny, the reason there are so many different ways to do things is that there are a lot that work. Having had a starter going for over a year now, I've found that it isn't that picky. For example, your original question of how much starter to add to make the sponge. It isn't critical. If the amount added is very small, then the sponge will take longer to double because it's starting out with very little yeast. If you add a lot and your starter is a wet one, then you may need to adjust the amount of flour you add to the bread later to get the dough right. I keep my starter in a glass jar in the fridge because it is a convenient size. I'm skeptical about the "no metal" thing. I wouldn't use a reactive metal, but I've stirred with stainless steel and haven't found it to do any harm. I sometimes let my dough rise in a stainless steel bowl. I was a bit worried about whether my starter survived chemo. I only managed to get it out once during the last 5 months when I went through several cycles of fed and double until it was doubling quickly again. Yesterday I finally got it out of the fridge again. It took a while to double (the house is pretty cool at this time of year too) but by this morning it had doubled. It is pretty hardy stuff.
...See More
Sourdough starter for dummies...
Q
Comments (35)
Not idiotic. No question is if you don't know the answer, but you weren't supposed to know the answer to this one. When you make a recipe like that you feed it up first. Details below. First off, the measurements aren't important for keeping your yeast alive. They become important for using it because you want to know how much flour and water you're putting in. If you don't need a recipe, you don't even need to know that, and can just do it by feel. I.e., until it's wet or dry enough. You can work your way back to knowing your proportions just by feeding for a few more days. If you've been feeding half water and half flour by weight each time, which on second reading, I think is what you were saying, the only issue is how hungry the yeast is, and no biggie. It's still all "100% hydration", i.e., the same weight of water as of flour, so no matter how much you have total, you know how much of each. Re the whole wheat, as I said previously, you don't want to shock the starter. Especially since it's not rising strongly yet. I'd feed for another week with AP just to make it easier, but if you feel like playing it's not wrong. Start by giving it only a bit of whole wheat and the rest white, and work up to all whole wheat, or it may go into a coma. Give it some time even if it's dormant and it might recover, but this early it could give up. Probably won't, but could. If you start with 10g, and work up to the full 50g over a week, it's less likely to protest. Whole wheat doesn't form as strong a gluten because of the bran, and the bran can actually cut the gluten threads as it works and rises. Eventually, it will double, but it make take it awhile to develop "legs". If you can, use whole wheat bread flour, or hard wheat berries rated at 14+% protein (this is a different number from the one in the nutrition info on the bag, which due to rounding isn't precise enough to be meaningful for baking comparisons). I don't think red or white hard wheat matters much. White might be a little easier to work with, but not enough to fret over. Feeding up your starter means increasing the size. So you have 200g in your jar, and your recipe calls for 400g. Put your starter in a bigger jar and give it its own weight in food, but don't discard, so use 100g of water and 100g of flour. Wait your standard 8-12 hours for it to double, pull off your 100g feed and set aside/store, discard 100g and feed the remaining 200g by 100g flour and 100g water. If your starter is old and strong, you can probably just feed without discarding, but while it's young, you need more food. So, when you have a recipe that calls for "1 cup of starter", it's usually talking about a wetter starter, that's more of a thin batter or slurry consistency. For your sanity, if the recipe doesn't say the hydration ratio, or give a starter recipe where you can see the proportions, skip it until you're comfortable baking with your starter. If it is a 300% hydration recipe, for instance--the weight of the flour is always 100% and the proportional weight of the water is measured off that, so 300% means three times as much water by weight as the weight of the flour--so once you've separated out your keeper starter, you can increase the water in your feeding, or you can feed first and add the water right before you use it. If you're baking daily, you can just keep a very wet starter going on the counter. If not, it's harder to maintain healthily. Other recipes often call for just your kind of starter, half water half flour. For one of them, just feed up the starter to the correct volume. There are different ideas about the best time to use the starter. No matter what, the whole point is that the yeast will feed on the carbs and burp making the bread rise. Unless directed otherwise, I use it after it has doubled, but well before the next feeding time. Have fun!
...See More
ilovetn
15 years ago
I got on the forum this morning to check out sourdough and here was this thread! I was just given a starter from a friend this week, but I did not like the bread.

"They" will be out to get me. I have the starter stored in a plastic jar that had been washed in the dishwasher AND it has a screw-on top! Next on my agenda will be moving the starter to a glass or ceramic container.

The starter I was given has been used by my friend's sister for nearly 20 years, so I'm pretty sure the starter is good. The directions said to feed it and leave it on the counter for 8-12 hrs. Feeding directions were to add 3/4 cup sugar, 3 TBS potato flakes, 1 cup bread flour and 1 cup warm water. The finished bread was too dense and far too sweet for my taste. Can I leave out some of the sugar when feeding? I think I could rescue this starter if I knew what I was doing.

I would really like a good recipe, especially for wheat sourdough (Grainlady?). My mother loves sourdough, but does not like wheat, so I guess I need a regular recipe also. The ingredients are too expensive nowadays to do a lot of experimenting on my own! Thanks to all the experts on this forum!
grainlady_ks
15 years ago
ilovetn-

You have been given a modern adaptation of a starter and you can certainly take a small portion of it and convert it to a traditional flour/water starter with a few feedings. You could use whole wheat flour as easily as bread flour in the starter, if you'd like.

Try this and see if you can get it revived: To 1/2 cup of starter add 1/4 cup of water and 1/2 cup of flour.

Check out the King Arthur link below for recipes. I use a starter called "Everlasting Yeast" (which was popular about 100-125 years ago) and it includes a really cryptic recipe that is completely without measurements (I go by the "feel" of the dough) and it isn't a typical "sourdough" recipe, although I use the starter in any recipe calling for starter.

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: King Arthur Flour - Sourdough Recipes
teresa_nc7
15 years ago
Grainlady,
I've been reading about the Everlasting Yeast; why do some recipes have you make the starter with only 2 TB of flour and some call for 1 1/2 to 2 cups flour when making the starter?

What do amount do you use, and why?

Thanks!
Teresa

Storing sourdough starter

grainlady_ks

Comments (6)

teresa_nc7

grainlady_ks

Related Discussions

ilovetn

grainlady_ks

teresa_nc7

COMPANY

BUSINESS SERVICES

GET HELP

CONNECT WITH US