Information from "Healthy Bread In Five Minutes A Day" (their second book):

They suggest storing dough to develop flavor and their recipes are based on dough that can be stored for up to 14-days in the refrigerator.

And yet one more suggestion from the book:

Lazy Sourdough Shortcut: When your dough bucket is finally empty, or nearly so, don't wash it! Immediately re-mix another batch in the same container. In addition to saving the cleanup step, the aged dough stuck to the sides of the container will give your new batch a head start on sourdough flavor. Just scrape it down and it will hydrate and incorporate into the new dough. Don't do this with egg-enriched dough.

(From page 51 in the book.) You can take that even further, by adding a more sizable amount of old dough from your last batch. You can use up to 2-cups of old dough in the batch; just mix it in with the water for your new batch and let it stand until it becomes soupy before you start mixing the new recipe. An immersion blender can be particularly helpful for blending the old dough with water. Add this liquid to your dry ingredients as in the recipe. Professionals call the old dough that you add to a new batch pate fermentee, which means nothing more than "fermented dough."

OR, check out King Arthur Instant Sourdough Flavor, and try it as an add-in. http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/items/king-arthur-instant-sourdough-flavor-12-oz

I would suggest using the old dough method.

-Grainlady

Sourdough starter is yeast, but it's a different strain than commercial yeast. Baking with starter isn't fast but it doesn't have to take two days once you have an established starter. A big issue is if you chill your starter, rather than keeping it out and feeding it every day, because it needs a few hours just to warm up and start burping again. Getting it down to prepare in the evening to bake tomorrow is easy, and shouldn't take a lot of actual time, though might be a bit spaced out. You can also prepare dough to sit overnight and bake in the morning, or make in the morning to bake after dinner. If you have a warmer kitchen, or proofing box (low heat warming drawer or oven setting), you can speed it up a bit. White also goes faster than whole wheat or whole rye Or you can feed up your starter, so you have a lot, and use a much larger proportion of starter to flour, and have a quicker rise.

Keep in mind, the more starter, the shorter the rise, the sweeter the flavor--the less starter, the longer the rise, the more sour the flavor.

Short answer on the 5 Minutes a Day, yes, you can, sort of, and Grainlady has pointed you to the instructions, but you're really going to have to experiment and see what works for you, in your environment, with your starter, and be willing to experience some failures along the way until you figure out exactly what works for you. One thing you'll see when your neglected starter is hungry, is "hooch". It's a gray liquid (alcohol) or grayness on the top part of the starter. It's harmless to stir it in, or you can just throw out that part, but if you see hooch you do need to pay attention and feed it.

By way of encouragement, I keep a jar of discard on the fridge. The closest it gets to being fed is new discard. It has a combination of whole wheat and white starter discard, and is still pretty darned lively, though very sour. It makes fabulous waffles. If it works for neglected discard that sits for months, it's sure to do for a tended dough bucket.

Thank you for the detailed instructions, Grainlady! The tricky part of the 5 a day method for us is that we don't usually have room in our fridge for a giant bowlful of dough.

Getting it down to prepare in the evening to bake tomorrow is easy, and shouldn't take a lot of actual time, though might be a bit spaced out.

Yes, this would be my goal, Plllog. My starter seems to be good quality. It passed the float in water test. The baked bread passed all 7 kids yumminess test today (no easy feat!) The hardest part was saving a hunk to share with DH when he gets home.

So, now we just need to get it to the mix it the night before, bake it in the morning stage, and then maybe I can keep up with it. Any thoughts on how to make this happen? I think I need a no-brainer schedule with simple steps. :-)

I'm sure your starter is fine, but I think you'll find that after a year it'll be that much finer, especially if you stress it occasionally (let it go a little too long between feedings) to thin the herd. :)

My own journey is a big old muddle of learning wild yeast (sourdough starter) and whole wheat at the same time, combined with water restrictions that made me look for ever less cleanup. Whole wheat actually requires at least eight hours of soak (in the liquid of the recipe) or rise, to fully hydrate, along with some acid to reduce the anti-nutrients. Along the way, I experimented with a number of traditional recipes, some white or with a large enough percentage of white to handle the same as white, many of which I documented in this forum (search on 'sourdough"). What worked for me was making a preferment (i.e., biga or levain--The Kitchn says "leaven") in the evening, and baking in the morning. I can't remember the timing well, because I have a bad relationship with mornings. There are some hours involved for the dough to rise. It only rises as fast as commercial yeast when you're counting on it not to!

My best advice is twofold: One, get in the habit of baking bread so that it becomes part of your rhythm, and you'll have it ready before your chicks turn up hungry. The other is just to try some recipes and learn what it is you all like best. There may be one that does it for your daily bread, or a base dough that you can make up differently as in the 5 minutes method, or it may be a rotation of different flavors and textures. While learning one at a time seems wise, there's also something to be said from learning a bit from each thing you try and bringing the total learning back around when you try them again. Nine people, minimum, if I got that right, is plenty to be experimenting on, and should give you plenty of scope for learning what you're doing.

So, do you want sour or just good bread with wild yeast? Sour takes some time to work, remember the rule of less starter = more sour taste requires longer rise. If you have your starter on the counter and feed it every day (maybe twice a day while it's young), you'll be ready to bake a lot sooner. I don't quite agree with some of what is said at The Kitchn about starter. It is an acidic environment (not "likes" one). It's also not finicky once established. While it's young, you have a number of organisms fighting for supremacy. The yeast will win, and as it strengthens, it'll do away with new organisms introduced in feedings without any protest. Once it's established, it's very hard to completely kill. Just feed it up and it'll start burping again. I'll also mention, that no matter the original source, all wild yeast in starter is the same kind. The whole location thing is silly. "San Francisco" sourdough is the name used for really really sour. That's about how hungry the yeast is, not the location (French fries aren't from France, either, though, I believe they got their name because frying was in vogue in France at that time, just as really sour bread was commonly made in San Francisco, and they did up beans mighty fine in Boston).

Rather than getting too wrapped up in how long the process is going to take, it's best to just go with what you know and work it into your life. Eventually, you'll be able to adjust the timing. Like maybe you know if you set your dough to rise at noon, it'll be ready to bake after the school run, and before dinner. Or that if you make your levain after breakfast, you can mix the dough up after dinner, and bake after breakfast the following day.

Also, have some interim breads, either quick to produce commercial yeast breads, or bisquits, waffles, cornbread, or whatever it is you can fill in with if your bread just isn't ready yet, while you're learning. You'll get there.

Uh Oh, there was a beautiful long post from Trailrunner here yesterday. I was coming back this morning to reread it, follow her links, and write a respone. Where did the post go?

I definitely want to try making sourdough bread more. I was able to eat it with very little discomfort (yay!), and we all loved it. DH said he would gladly eat it all the time.

I've been making whole wheat bread for about 10 years now, first with store bought wheat and all by hand. I learned of the health benefits of freshly ground wheat, but told myself that I had to prove my commitment to making bread before investing in a grinder. That involved a several months long process of learning to make palatable bread. I started having consistent success after reading Laurel's Bread Book (an absolute gem of a find at a used book sale), and learning that whole wheat takes about 10 minutes of hand kneading to really develop the gluten. My little ones and I would play "pass the dough" and take turns kneading our lumps, since we'd make about 4 loaves at a time. Yummy bread became a time consuming, but achievable, weekly task.

Eventually I did invest in that grinder, and then learned of the heavy duty bread mixers, which required another investment. I got a KTEC Mix n Blend, which makes good bread, but maybe not quite as good as our old "handmade with love" dough. I grit my teeth every time it runs. It's efficient, but sucks all my joy out of making bread with it's obnoxiously noisy process. I grew to despise making bread, and would often substitute with homemade biscuits, muffins, rice, or if really desperate, tortilla chips. : /

Now it's ten years out and fresh made bread is not sitting so well on my or DH's tummies. I think we need a little help digesting it. It's a decision between either sourdough or gluten free at this point. We love(!) bread and really, really want this to work. It's not the sour taste we're after, but the nutritious digestibility of it. The fact that it doesn't require an earsplitting, deafening mixer is a bonus!

I'm going to try mixing up the levain this morning and see what kind of timing we get. I do have to step out for a few hours this evening, so I hope the bread doesn't suddenly decide it's ready to go in the oven while I'm gone! : )

Are you quite sure Trailrunner's post was in this thread? She has many here and in Kitchens, as well as on The Fresh Loaf.

It may not be the gluten you're having issues with, especially considering this is a fairly new thing. Look up FODMAPs and see if that sounds like it could be your issue, then talk it over with your doctor. An elimination diet either way could tell you for sure.

The noise of the mill puts me off when I'm not feeling well, but I do have shooter's earplugs for when I use it. I'm thinking of getting the kind of headphones my friend uses at the race track for that and the Vita-Mix. Definitely not something to have going around the kids without strong ear protection. Since I started milling, white bread tastes like candy to me, and a lot of commercial 100% whole wheat/grain tastes like undercooked, flavorless sponges. :( My low cleaning water bread is no knead but it's unsweetened and does require milling.

So, I'm unclear if you're still using whole wheat flour?

Something to keep in mind with 100% whole wheat/grain and wild yeast is that you're not looking for it to double in bulk. About 1.5-1.75 times the original bulk is considered fully risen. If your crumb is too firm or closed, add some more water to the recipe. Don't add too much water, though, because too much can make it collapse. Also, if there's too much water, but the dough is confined in a pan, instead of pooffing more in the oven, I, at least, just get wet bread. Fully cooked (200° F), but wet crumb rather than just moist.

The good news is that whole grain with wild yeast, in my experience, doesn't really over rise. It gets to where it's going and will just stay there for a long time. It'll exhaust and start to fall at some point, but it gives a good leeway for getting it in the oven. The main issue is that the longer it sits and more exhausted it gets, the less handling it can take in the shaping. In rising, the sharp bran cuts the gluten in whole grain (I've even learned what the cut gluten looks like in the dough) and that will limit a second rise. Because of all that, I usually make a single loaf, but if I'm making a larger recipe, I divide them right after mixing.

Laughable, Jeff and Zoe, the authors of abin5 and New Artisan Bread in Five do answer your question. On page 46, "We've found that we still need some added yeast in addition to the natural starter, although you can use less (see page 14)." On pages 14 and 15 they say that "less yeast works well for all our recipes except for the gluten- free dough but the initial rise will be slower". So no you cannot substitute starter for yeast but you can use less yeast with the expectation of other changes. In this book, they discuss using starter and how to incorporate the starter into their recipes. hth

Laughable, by the way, AnnT of this forum makes the absolute most yummy looking bread and I believe has a system where she uses teeny amounts of commercial yeast. Her blog is Thibeault's Table. You may also wish to check Susan at Yeast spotting, a blog where wild yeasts are featured-altho sometimes commercial yeast is used. Third, My Bread byJim Lahey of the Sullivan Street Bakery has a no knead, no fridge system, small amt of yeast, that was featured in the New York Times and lauded by Bittman. I am pretty sure that it is no fridge but I found the timing too restrictive. ymmv. If for health reasons you cannot have any yeast, then these suggestions wont work.

Agree with +GrainLady about the method and Cambro. We have: http://www.webstaurantstore.com/cambro-rfs8pp190-8-qt-translucent-round-storage-container/214RFS8PP.html and I've yet to find anything better (or priced better)