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First attempt at sourdough starter - which one?

15 years ago

I've done a bit of reading and see that making a sourdough starter can be done many different ways. One book I read last night spent 6 pages describing her method, one website (included below) makes it sound extremely simple.

Since this will be my first attempt I want something simple, that works, and tastes good.

I'd love any encouragement and direction offered.

Thanks,

Ginny

Here is a link that might be useful: Sourdough Baking

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Comments (9)

teresa_nc7
15 years ago
John Ross's information is an excellent way to begin. You can try to capture wild yeast for your starter, or you can make a starter using packaged yeast. I recommend that you get a tried and true starter from the source linked below. For years I tried to make sourdough and was never satisfied with the results until I got some dried starter from Carl's Friends. I've kept it going now for about 4 years. It will only cost you the price of stamp.

Teresa

Here is a link that might be useful: Carl's 1847 Oregon Trail Sourdough Starter
grainlady_ks
15 years ago
That site seems to have a great deal of good solid general information. I'd suggest using wholegrain flour to get the starter going. There are more naturally-occuring yeast on the outside of grain that is milled into flour, than you'll "catch" from the air. Whole grain flour will help foster a larger colony of yeast in the starter than bleached or unbleached flour, but they will also work. Once it's going, you can change to whatever kind of flour you want.

Rye flour will ferment quicker and you'll get a starter going a little quicker than with wheat flour. Word of caution, rye starter is a little smelly. So after feeding the starter a few times with rye, you can switch to whatever type of flour you'd like to use.

I use freshly-milled spelt because it has more carbohydrates which is what the yeast feed on, but I've used all kinds of flour successfully.

The thing to remember, find a version you like and is successful for you. Starter isn't just ONE type or method. I use a century-old method called Everlasting Yeast, but have used others.

Starter recipes and methods are quite varied and the information for "how-to" have a lot of contradictions, as you probably already found out. "Purist" stick to water/flour mixtures and poo-poo using the modern recipes (which may include adding bakers' yeast to get it started), but you'll find lots of recipes that include sweeteners, milk, buttermilk, etc... Whatever works for you - there's not a right or wrong, just a choice.

For every "never" you'll find an "I ALWAYS!" Such as, never use tap water that has been chemically treated. The chemicals can kill the good bacteria in the starter. Lots of people ONLY use tap water. NEVER wash the container in the dishwasher because rinse-aids left on the container can kill the good bacteria in the starter. You'll find lots of people who always wash the container in the dishwasher.

I like the science that goes with naturally-leavened breads and have included a link to a favorite site for more information.

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: Food/Sourdough Index
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No forgiveness needed Cecilia! Here are the original instructions. I find them to be rather convoluted but I'm giving it a go! As posted by Ann T......... Home Cookin Chapter: Recipes From Thibeault's Table Sourdough starter - Amy's bread =============================== copied from: http://countrylife.net/pages/recipes/672.html Amy Scherber's Sourdough Starter RYE STARTER From AMY'S BREAD, copyrighted. Amy's bread This starter is begun with rye flour because rye just LOVES to ferment and is an easier starter to get going than a wheat starter. When I first made it, it had a bubble or two within a couple hours. The procedure is to start it with rye flour, then transform it by changing what you feed it. The original rye will dilute to nothing over time and you'll end up with a white flour (or whatever other grain you choose, it could be whole wheat or pumpermickel, or you could leave it as a rye starter) and water based starter, but it had the advantage of beginning it's life from highly fermentable rye flour. Start it with organic rye flour and spring water. Once you have it going well you can switch to all-purpose white (or other) flour as you choose. The use of spring water is recommended for maintenance, however, as tap water may contain elements (such as chlorine) which may be detrimental to the health of your starter. I also recommend that you use a container that you can mark the volume levels of starter each time, so that you will know when it has doubled. Use a marking pen or tape or any other means to indicate on the container the starter levels each time you feed. Phase 1 - Combine 2 oz organic rye flour (room temp) with 4 oz spring water in a clear container. The batter should be about the consistency of very thick pancake batter, add more water or flour if necessary. Cover & let it sit for 36 - 48 hours at 75 - 77 degrees (a little cooler is okay but over 80 you will incubate the wrong kind of bacteria and your culture will have an unpleasant bitter taste). You should start to see tiny bubbles forming after about 24 hours. By the time it has doubled, there will be a noticeable network of small bubbles throughout the batter & it will be foaming & bubbling on top. (If the batter has not doubled within 48 hours, feed with 2 oz water & 2 oz flour (add more of either if necessary for the consistency) and let it sit another 24 hours or until you see some definite activity.) Phase 2 - Stir the culture down, notice how soupy it's become. The batter should have a noticeable sour smell & a mildly tangy taste at this point. Add 2 oz water & 2 oz flour and stir vigorously until well-combined. Let it sit for 12 hours. It should be showing a fair amount of activity at this point. You should see lots of foaming & bubbling through the sides as well as on the top. Don't be concerned if the culture deflates & loses volume. This means the yeast has exhausted its food supply, but it will continue to increase in acidity. Don't worry if your culture isn't dramatically active yet. As long as there is some noticeable activity going on and the mixture smells & tastes sour, you're on the right track. Phase 3 - The culture should now have a pronounced, sour, fruity taste and smell, it should not taste musty or bitter (if it does, discard and start again, paying close attention to the temp of the culture at all times). Now you can start "transforming" it into a white (or other) flour based starter. Use 6 oz of the starter, add 3 oz water & 3 oz flour, stir vigorously. Let it sit for 12 hrs at 75 - 77 degrees F. Refresh it again, setting up a maintenance level of 12 oz of starter. This will be your "mother" starter that you use to build the sourdough starters/sponges needed in individual recipes. Each time you take part of the mother out to build a starter, you must refresh it with equal weights of flour and water to bring it back up to its maintenance level. To maintain - Use 6 oz of the mother culture (discard the rest), add 3 oz water & 3 oz flour, stir vigorously, let it sit at room temp until doubled in volume. A strong mother will double in 8-12 hours. If yours doesn't do that, let it continue to sit out until it has a nice tangy taste and smell; discard all but 6 oz and repeat this procedure. Repeat this procedure as many times as necessary until the mother doubles within 8-12 hrs. It may take several days. Don't get discouraged, it's worth the effort. To use for recipes - Combine 1/2 c (5 oz) Mother from the refrigerator, add 3 oz flour and 2.5 oz warm water (85 - 90 degrees). The mixture will be stiffer than the mother. Let it sit, covered, until doubled in volume (if it doesn't do so go back to maintenance procedure). When the starter has doubled, it is ready to use in a recipe. Measure the amount needed and discard any that remains.
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I'm glad I posted this -- I'm learning all sorts of things! I didn't realize that sourdough isn't necessarily sour -- but it makes sense the commerical stuff is more so. (I had a friend's homemade sourdough recently, and while it was a very nice bread I remember thinking it wasn't nearly sour enough!) The sour taste is really what I'm going for -- if I can't get that going naturally, I'll looking into adding the taste in with other things. (I picked up a littl container of buttermilk powder for another recipe -- that might be a good taste to play around with!) Thanks for the explanation on acidity and the viscosity of the starter, Carol; that's helps a lot. The alchemy of baking has always intimidated me -- it's good to have a clearer idea of what's going on. I'll keep plugging away for a while longer with this starter, perhaps feed it whole wheat for a while and see if that builds up it's puny flour-lifting muscles. If not, the soured yeast dough may be the way to go, jessica; I didn't know you could do that. It might actually be better way to go, given the infrequency with which I bake. I'm still going to work with this starter -- Ill keep you posted!
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This looks to be #150, so I'll start another sourdough thread with pie segue. :) Cathy, I know the liberated feeling you're talking about! I had it when I started these experiments with the discard. I do as I please with most baking recipes, usually to success. I don't have Grainlady's technical knowledge nor Ann's experience and expertise, but I know that if you control the basics, it'll come out. My mother's challah is so tetchy, however, that controlling it is enough without messing with it. A cousin did that when I was young, and tried using it as a base recipe for other breads, and they were breads, but I didn't really like them. You have to know how to not handle the challah (no typos there) to make it work out right. Add to that the old miseries of using cake yeast and I never messed with yeast dough before. I really liked the figgy loaf! Worrying about keeping the yeast alive rather than if I was going to ruin the bread was great. But that was one of those very soupy things, and if I try that again, I'll use less water/more flour. :) It's interesting that so many people think more hydration means lighter bread and more holes! That's the opposite to what I've experienced so far. Leader, like the ciabatta recipe, works the dough and develops the gluten. Controlled hydration seems to work better for me, and I definitely think the miche was too wet given how much better it got as it dried out. I had similar issues with the pizza recipe. One of the ones I tried, which was the result of much study in a pizza working group, was something like 90% hydration of whole wheat (though not soupy!). It was a very sticky dough and had to be made in a pan. It was not at all comfortable with toppings, though it was okay par-baked. Totally wrong for me, and it didn't have a good enough baked texture to stick with. It's not like my pizza recipe is low hydration. Just comparatively low. It's around 70% hydration. Cathy, I agree that inhaling pizza of any kind is frightening! Thank goodness for the widespread publicity for the Heimlich Maneuver! The miche is peasanty, as in plain old bread. I'd be happy to make the pain de levain for you! That has much more complexity even though it's mostly white. It's very yummy! The miche isn't as flavorless now, but it's not stand in line worthy, unfortunately. Next time. It was supposed to be record setting heat this weekend, but we're having monsoon influence, instead. Not the actual monsoons, which are farther South, but damp and cooler. Spaghetti and meatballs and ciabatta sounds delicious and decadent right now! (Decadent because two starches--my mother never served bread with pasta.) My favorite way to eat ciabatta, however, is with a goodly layer of good butter and an even thicker layer of powder grated good parmesan. This is the breakfast the Italian stewards on the ocean liner tempted my mother with when she was underfed and ill and returning home. I am not underfed, so I don't indulge, but the slightly salty, slightly sour bread with the sweet butter and salty, umami parm is just amazing. (Okay, I'm not underfed, but I haven't had breakfast...) Standing in line for the ciabatta... The gyros-ish meatloaf came out fine. It would have been better with more fat (who says that?), but the meat that needed using was very lean. I suppose I could have added some butter, but who does that? Not I. It's tasty, though. I didn't go full out on the seasoning (i.e., used the recipe) because I'd never made this recipe before. It could be kicked up a bit, but the flavor is about right. The leanness means I can be generous with the oil and grill some up later. :) No yoghurt sauce since since there are no pita either and my cucumbers and dill both bit it in the fridge. Tomatoes, onions and peppers will be fine. :) Ann, one lesson I learned best from you is to just put things in the fridge. Fermenting yeast things, that is. Just put it in the fridge. It's the most freeing thing I've learned recently. I've read all about it, of course, and the pizza recipe is one that's meant to develop in the fridge, but the way you just whip up a levain and throw it in the fridge until you're ready, or make up some do and go off to work, with instructions to Moe for when to take it out. Of course it's a given that cold retards yeast, but so much of my bread life until now has been about keeping yeast warm and cozy and encouraging it to rise, retarding the rise in the fridge to manage the slow process of sourdough is a revelation. Thank-you! Edited to add link and fix weird typo. This post was edited by plllog on Tue, Aug 5, 14 at 20:51
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Chris, if your kitchen isn't arctic, your starter should be fine on the counter while you're feeding it daily. If you have a heavy stone counter that never warms up to ambient, put the starter on a pot holder or something to insulate it from the cold mass. It doesn't need to be warmed. Even if most of the yeast died, there should be some left in there. The oven light shouldn't be hot enough to kill the yeast. Where there are bubbles, there's hope! My own guess is that the yeast gorged in the relative heat and settled in for a post-prandial nap. Let us know if it perks up on the next feeding.
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jimster
15 years ago
Linked below is a method which worked well for me. It jibes totally, so far as I can tell, with everything Grainlady has said.

The use of pineapple juice as a way of adjusting initial pH is interesting.

The wild yeast starter article is only one of SourdoLady's articles on that site. Navigate around for more.

Jim

Here is a link that might be useful: Wild Yeast Sourdough Starter
caflowerluver
15 years ago
Don't mean to hijack the thread, but what kind of container do people use? Should it be glass or ceramic or is plastic OK?
Clare
teresa_nc7
15 years ago
I have had the alcohol produced by the starter to mark up plastic, so I keep my starters in glass canning jars with plastic lids on loosely.
grainlady_ks
15 years ago
I use a glass canning jar for my starter, as well. I put a small "Quick Cover" (looks like a tiny shower cap) over mine, with a few holes poked in it for off-gassing. I have a friend who keeps his in his recycled plastic containers he got deli food in (he keeps several kinds of starter and only keeps about 1/2-cup of each kind) and pokes a few holes in the lids. King Arthur Flour would love to sell you a beautiful glazed crock and matching lid with their emblem emblazoned on the side for $26.50. All of them seem to work equally well.

-Grainlady
caflowerluver
15 years ago
Thanks for answering my question everyone.
Clare
ginjj
Original Author
15 years ago
Opps, I forgot to write quicker and say thank you to all of you who wrote in about my starter question. I certainly do appreciate the help given on this and all the forums. I think GardenWeb has the absolute best community when it comes to helping each other out. Most of the time when I ask a question about anything - cooking, gardening, computers, plumbing etc., I get an answer within the hour. That is so amazing and so wonderful!!

I try to answer questions on the different forums when I see something I can add to.

Those of us reading this and using Gardenweb are so lucky to have discovered this wonderful new world of support, advice and friends. I am sorry for my peers who haven't taken the time to learn how wonderful computers are.

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season and don't drive yourself nuts trying to do it all.

Ginny
earl
15 years ago
I use the [Carl's 1847 Oregon Trail Sourdough Starter] which I was sent [dried] in an envelope. I've got some somewhere in the freezer that I dried and froze. I didn't make any for about a year until recently. The starter just sat in the fridge protected by about an inch of alcohol. I took some out of the jar to see if it would start a new batch. It works fine, having a nice strong smell and flavor.

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