Using refrigerated sourdough starter?
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
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Sourdough Starter
Comments (16)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....See MoreIs my sourdough starter, er, toast?
Comments (6)azzalea - What's the difference between "wild yeast" and "gathered the yeast from the environment"? In my books, both are so-called "wild yeast". "Wild yeast" are actually naturally-occuring yeast that cover everything in our environment. In starters that use grapes, the silver/gray haze on the skins of grapes is a yeast source, and the grape juice is a source of carbohydrates with which to feed the yeast. Some starter recipes call for cabbage leaves. The silver/gray haze on the inside of the cabbage leaves is a source of yeast. There are even starters that call for certain tree leaves, such as a recipe I have for peach leaf starter, once again, it's covered with yeast. The first basic source of yeast in a starter is the flour, especially when we use wholegrain flour. The outside of grain is covered with yeast. The old "catch yeast from the air" is more-or-less an old wives tale because the yeast that builds into a colony in starter is basically from the flour source, not from air (although there ARE yeast in the air), and whole grains assure a good quanity of them to start with, above using bleached or unbleached flour, which has had the outside bran removed. Hops are another yeast source for making starter. We renew our yeast each time we add flour to the starter. The old yeast die off, and the new flour adds a new source. Even modern starters that are made with bakers' yeast eventually become "wild yeast" starters because the bakers' yeast quickly die and the "wild yeast" in the flour take over. -Grainlady...See MoreLOOKING for: Recipes using Sourdough Starter
Comments (1)Here is a good recipe for Sourdough English Muffins Sourdough English Muffins from "Sourdough Cookin'" by Dean Tucker, 1 cup sourdough starter (after being fed and left to expand for several hours) 2 1/2 cups unbleached bread flour 3/4 cup buttermilk 1/4 cup yellow cornmeal 1 t. baking soda 1/2 t. salt Take buttermilk and starter from refrigerator at least 30 minutes before preparing recipe. When all ingredients are at room temp, combine and stir well. Turn dough onto a lightly floured board or work surface and knead until smooth or knead about 5 minutes in a heavy duty mixer such as a Kitchen Aid or Bosch, adding a little more flour if necessary. Roll dough to 1/2-inch thickness and allow to rest for 10 minutes. Cut with a floured 3 or 4-inch round floured biscuit cutter. You can use a very clean tuna can with both ends cut out if need be. Sprinkle 2 TB cornmeal on a sheet of waxed paper. Place muffins on cornmeal and press lightly to coat each side. Cover with plastic wrap and a clean towel and let rise for 1 hour. Cook muffins on a lightly greased griddle heated to 350 (or a medium low burner) for 20 minutes (or less-see my note), turning occasionally while cooking. When done, split and butter and toast, then spread with honey or your favorite jam, jelly, or cream cheese. Recipe makes 10-12 muffins. Note: you can sub 1 cup whole wheat flour for 1 cup of the unbleached if you want whole wheat muffins. I made a note that mine took only 6-7 minutes per side to bake on a lightly greased cast iron griddle. Teresa...See MoreHave you tried using sourdough starter in a
Comments (11)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....See More- 6 years ago
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