Sourdough Starter

Paying close attention as I currently have a starter going myself

We just re-started ours again yesterday, too! Why not!?

I bought a sourdough starter off Amazon last year that was supposedly from “San Francisco” that someone had been using with good success there. I made it in August, let it do the bubble thing, then put it in my garage fridge until I had time to use it.

Fast forward to a few days ago when I realized we were running low on bread, I pulled it back out of the fridge, added some flour and water after discarding some of the old stuff, and I had strong bubbling the next day.

So you don’t HAVE to feed it everyday if you’ll only use it so often, I think that’s mainly for people that bake with it several times a week. If you give yourself a couple days lead time you can just pull it back out of the fridge and feed it again, then use when ready.

Add some yoghurt,more flour,salt and make flatbreads out of whats left over.
Naan comes out good.
Use Google, there is about a million recipes.( in your measurements)
As sudsandswine posted, its very versatile,virtually goes to sleep in the fridge

I haven’t made any yet, but a lot of people use it to make their pizza dough as well.
When I have more free time, I would probably like to try my own.

I usually include a variety of flours in my starter mix. Whole wheat, bread, AP, spelt or whatever else I have on hand. The majority is bread and whole wheat flour with the others sprinkled in. I read a while back that this gives the starter a variety of yeasts and enhances the flavor of the loaf. Not sure if that's true but it made enough sense to give it a try.

Sent from my SM-N960U1 using Tapatalk

Years ago I wats given a portion of sourdough starter that had been running for about 40 years by a woman who had gotten it from her mother who got it from her mother before her. I only ever used it for bread using a recipe she gave me. The bread recipe was flour, starter, water, oil, sugar and salt. The bread was slightly sweet and from that well aged starter had this incredible yeasty beer taste that was so good warm with butter on it. My ex and I kept it going for a number of years, however in the course of a move it got neglected and died. I would give a lot to have that stated back. Funny thing is that like you, I’ve been looking for things to do and am now 3 days in to starting a batch of starter. I jump started it a little by swishing grapes around in the water I started with. That white frosty looking blush you see on grapes is yeast I’m told, and I believe it because my new starter was bubbly after only a day. It doesn’t have that beer smell yet, but I’m hoping.

Some may find this helpful to get started.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7cgYvcSfec

This fellow has a wealth of sourdough information on his web site and with his YouTube videos.

Food Geek

I've started several over the years mostly for pizza making. Some from a package, but most just flour and water.

When you do just flour and water you are basically just catching whatever yeast happen to be in the air. Because of that, those starters can be hit or miss. I've had some of both.

My advice is trust your nose. There may be a slightly off smell for a couple of days, and you still have a good starter. If taking a whiff makes you recoil, probably a good idea to mix up a new batch.

Go to breadtopia and read about it. I tried making my own and did not have very good luck. I finally bought a starter and have been using it for 20 years. Another good place to buy a starter is King Arthur. Go to the website. They have a crock that is nice to store your starter in. A lot better then a mason jar.
Enjoy

I have used sourdough starter (mother?) on and off for years. A few things I think I know:

-- Here is a good starter recipe (how to start your starter?):

https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/sourdough-starter-recipe

Looks like what Lunchman is doing.

-- Once the starter is good to go I keep it refrigerated and feed weekly. Seems like it would go forever as long as you feed it.

--My favorite discard is buttermilk sourdough pancakes on Saturday morning. The King Arthur site has a good recipe for that as well.
https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/classic-sourdough-waffles-or-pancakes-recipe

--Sourdough starter is very local, the local yeasties will quickly take over the starter and it will be "your starter", whatever it's origin.

--Play with it. I feel any bread'ish recipe is fair game.

Also, make sure you don't use tap water for your starter unless it's filtered - chlorine can kill it. Ask me how I know :lol:

I've used starter for years, it's a bit of work but the satisfaction of making a loaf of bread from it is awesome!



Here's some that's been in the fridge for a month that I'm reactivating. This was a variety from Italy for pizza. I also have one for San Francisco style bread.

lunchman said:

The questions I have are:

o How many have used a Sourdough Starter and what have you used it in? I looked thru the forum search results and came up with pretty old posts.

o This concept of keeping starter for years and passing it on to others doesn't seem too appealing. Has anyone kept a starter for an insanely long period of time? Is this just folklore?

I wanted to see what the general consensus is regarding Sourdough Starter. Thanks for any insight.

Click to expand...

I used to have a few different sourdough starters. One of the best ones was actually from an "expired" sour beer yeast pack that a homebrewshop owner just gave to me ( I was brewing beer back then...so why not try it?). The blend contained wild yeast and lacto bacteria (to sour). The resulting sourdough starter smelled like cherries (and it tasted like that in bread). You can use it for bread, biscuits, or anything you want to add a "yeasty" tart flavor to. I had another one I used that smelled a little like lemon. One crazy blend I tried (after making some sour beers), was a wildly exotic blend called "Bug Farm." I made one loaf of bread with that one and it was a little too funky to be enjoyable in bread.

One tip...if you let the starter get too sour...the bread dough you make won't rise properly. Not entirely sure why, but I think it is because the souring bacteria work at a different rate than the wild yeast. If you have a larger colony of bacteria in your starter (than yeast), when you add it to the dough it takes a while longer to rise and will be more dense. Which is to say if you want a really, really sour "sourdough" you can let your starter feed and get super sour, but you'll need to use some instant yeast to get your dough to rise properly.

The longest one I kept was for a year (and it would have been longer if I didn't move cross country). I gave some of that sour cherry starter I talked about to my Polish coworker who used to bake like crazy. One thing I noticed...that no one else would have...is that her starter began to smell/taste differently than after months. One weekend, we went to her house and tried some bread she made with it. After a few months the cherry character was absent. I asked to smell the starter and the cherry character was gone from it too. It didn't really smell sour anymore, but had taken on an earthy and almost light metallic note. I attributed this to a few things she and I did differently. She fed her starter with tap water...while I used distilled. She probably scooped it out with whatever utensil she had laying around, whereas I always used a sanitized spoon (I always had Star-San handy because of brewing). I think the water has much more to do with it than anything...but something I noticed after a while. So...tip 2...don't feed it with tap water. Distilled is best, followed by spring, well, or filtered water.

You can keep a starter indefinitely in the fridge if you feed it once in a while. I know some people (in colder climates) just leave it out on their counter. But to answer your question...you can keep it indefinitely out if you use it frequently, and in the fridge indefinitely if only occasionally. If you use a jar, you need to degas it once in a while. Old school people use a ceramic crock with a heavy, loose fitting lid.

This sounds very interesting...I think I'm going to try it!

I remember my Grandmother making it. She called it "Friendship Bread" because of the sharing of the starter between folks.

Awesome stuff.

It's something I would love to do. I even bought the crock fro King Arthur. They are indeed a great resource for all things bread.