I think I got a sourdough starter going

[wryter2000]

Tuesday night I mixed 2 Tbs of water with 2 Tbs all purpose flour and a bit of sugar. Last night, it was bubbly. I added another 2 Tbs of water and 2 Tbs of flour, and this morning it was really bubbling. Plus, it had some clear liquid on top.

Now what do I do? :)

I know somewhere in ths forum there's a link to a great site for bread making that has information on how to get a starter going. I'll go search.

[NMDemDist2]

1. here's a site that talks about it, hopefully Housewolf will check in after

work


http://www.io.com/~sjohn/sour.htm

[wryter2000]

2. Thanks

That's very helpful. I'm kind of hoping I've caught lactobacillus sanfrancisco. I only live across the bay in Oakland.

[Shakespeare]

3. Betcha did.

I'm up in the north bay, and have been caring for a starter for a few months now--the bread has the to-die-for SF sourdough taste, so I'm assuming it's the famed wild yeastie.

I've discovered that my starter seems to have a personality, btw--it hates the cold. I can't keep it in the fridge for slow-growing maintenance. It doesn't die, but it becomes overwhelmed with ennui and refuses to rise until it's been on a warm countertop for the better part of a week (which pretty much defeats the whole fridge approach). So, we keep it warm and feed it well, and it rewards us with wonderful bread every Saturday when I bake. :-)

[wryter2000]

4. Wow

I sure hope you're right. I've been keeping it out of the fridge, but my house is pretty cool. Especially with the chilly weather now. Brrrr.

[Tab]

5. Not to hijack this thread, but can someone explain how starters work?

I'm not a baker - it seems you're either a cook or a baker - but I'm getting serviceable at it.

I've heard all about starters, and I know some people guard their starters carefully - over the years they refine them and it acquires tastes that are unique and make great bread, but how exactly do you create a starter, how do you "care" for it, and how do you use it, and what makes for a great starter?

[Warpy]

6. Starters are basically colonies of yeast feeding on flour and water

Some people do starters that arise from wild yeast spores in the air. Sometimes these work, sometimes they don't. The problem is that there are zillions of varieties of yeast. Some of them are very tasty and some of them are awful.

Other people use red grapes, flour and water to create a starter. The red grapes have natural wine yeast on their skins, and this is a generally very palatable yeast family that produces a lovely starter as far as flavor goes. I found it a little wimpy when it came to raising bread, though, so I supplemented it with a commercial yeast. I still got the lovely flavor and aroma of the starter.

Sourdough starters not only give the usual yeast flavor to breads, they also impart a sour flavor, since acetic acid is one of the byproducts of aerobic fermentation. In English, given a supply of oxygen, yeast will eat carbohydrates and pee vinegar. Shut the oxygen off, and they pee alcohol. The addition of a sour flavor to yeast breads just adds a separate layer of flavor that most people find quite nice.

The easy grape starter is this: get some red grapes from the market. Put them into a large plastic or glass (preferred) container, smash them slightly, add equal amounts of flour and water mixed together (I do a pint of each) and cover the container. Do not look inside and especially do not sniff the contents for a week.

After the week is up, strain the liquid through a sieve to remove all the grape skins and seeds. Use a cup of starter as a cup of liquid ingredients in your bread recipe and replace that cup with half a cup of water and half a cup of flour. That's how you keep a starter going, you feed it.

If a starter starts to smell bad, it is bad. Discard it quickly, because you won't like either the bread it makes or what it eventually mutates into.

When Housewolf gets here, she'll tell you how to do a wild yeast starter. I've never gotten one of those to work properly, so I won't.

[housewolf]

8. A little more info...

Warpy gave you some excellent information (Hi Warpy! :hi: ), let me just add a few more comments.

A starter is a symbiotic mix of certain strains of yeast and lactobacilli. Primarily the yeast contribute the rise to the bread and the lactobacilli contribute the flavoring, although actually both contribute to both. The difference between bread made with a starter (often called a "natural starter" or a "sourdough starter or sometimes by variety of French terms) and one made from commercial bakers yeast has to do with the texture and flavor of the bread - bread made from with a starter is more moist, doesn't go stale as fast, and has more complex flavors which can range from mild and delicious to quite sour. And there are some people who are allergic to wheat but they can eat sourdough because of a difference in the way the sourdough acts upon the wheat.

There are two main ways of getting a starter - one being that you get a start from someone who has a healthy, stable starter, either in liquid or dried form. If its dried, it will take a period of time to bring it back to life and to a point where it's strong and healthy, mature enough to bake good bread. If it's liquid, it will probably take only a few feedings to bring it back to a fully activated state where it's ready to make bread. Many/most people with starters are happy to share some of theirs. Some sourdough bakeries will give some starter when asked. On the internet, there are sites that give or sell dried starters. One that gives starters away for the price of a stamped envelope is the Oregan Trail starter that has been in existence since around 1847. Another site is Sourdoughs International which sells dried starters from quite a few different locations around the world, each having its own individual characteristics.

As you suggest, a starter needs some care and it takes some planning when you want to make bread with it. Most home bakers keep their starter in the refrigerator and bring it out the day before they want to bake with it. Because they tend to "go to sleep" in the refrigerator, they need a couple of feedings with water and flour to bring them back to "fully active" before making the bread dough. They can stay in the refrigerator for quite a while with no ill effects, but the longer they are in the refrigerator the more feedings a starter will need to become fully activate.

Besides bread, starters can be used for many other types of foods. THe most common, of course, being sourdough pancakes and waffles (YUMMMMM!) THere are recipes for sourdough-just-about anything you can think of - cakes (sourdough chocolate cake!), cinnamon rolls, coffee cake, meatloaf, fried chicken, meat pies, fried onion rings, cookies, gingerbread, doughnuts, pizza crust, biscuits, crackers, engish muffins, crumpets, scones, pretzels, and almost limitless varieties of risen and batter breads.

What makes for a great starter? Great question! Maintaining a starter well, keeping it strong and healthy. Keeping it on a regular feeding schedule. Consistency. With care, a starter can be maintained for years. But somethings cause them to become vulnerable to being taken over by "foreign" micro-organisms that can either ruin the starter or cause it to change it's characteristics (resulting in difference in flavor) - these would be things like "starving" the starter by ignoring it for a long period of time, letting it become too acidy, changes in temperature can have an effect, too.

[Shakespeare]

13. RE housewolf and the serendipity of the internets....

Listen to this woman, wryter, for she doth know her stuff. :-)

I'd been scouring the internet for a good starter recipe, and finally settled on a rye starter (which only starts with rye flour, and then works white flour into it over the long term) because it sounded like the best of the many I'd looked at. And hey, guess what--that recipe and that website (I learned later) is housewolf's! I still think that's cool.

I've always loved working with yeast doughs, but have tremendously enjoyed my sourdough for the last few months. The aroma is beyond wonderful, and I love watching (and feeling, during kneading) the way the yeasties help the dough go all silken--especially by the second phase of the sponge. I've come to think of my starter as a pet, of sorts.

Anyway, I highly recommend housewolf's starter. Keep us posted on how yours goes, and if it takes on that classic SF sourdough taste.

[wryter2000]

15. Housewolf has helped me before

She's a gem.

If I do get honest-to-goodness SF sourdough, I'll make samples available to anyone who wants it. And I think of my starters as pets, too. I couldn't wait to get home last night to see what this new one was doing.

[housewolf]

18. A woman after my own heart!

You wrote: "I've come to think of my starter as a pet, of sorts."

That's exactly what they are to me! You take very good care of it, and it in turn will take very good care of you.

At one point I had about 8 starters that I was maintaining and baking with - fortunately we had an extra refrigerator! Each one had its own special traits and characteristics and I loved them all. Now I don't bake sourdough as often so I'm only keeping one. But back in those days I was so nuts about sourdough and so determined to learn everything that I could about them and how to work with them... I'll never forget, one day I took one in to work with me just so I could watch it's activity over the course of the day. It peaked earlier than I thought it would, and wanting to bake with it when I got home, I went to the lunchroom to ask if they had any flour I could feed it with. THey all got a good laugh about it :rofl: but they gave me some flour and asked me about the starter for a long time after
:shrug:

[wryter2000]

11. Cooking versus baking

I know what you mean about either being a cook or a baker. I've always considered myself a cook, although I did master pie crust pretty well. Ever since I got my Kitchenaid mixer, I've been learning about bread. It's been great fun. There are so many great bakers here, especially Warpy and our wonderful Housewolf.

[housewolf]

7. Some sourdough info

Hi Wryter :hi:

You asked "now what do I do?" Well, you want to keep feeding it every day for a while. It takes a period of time for a new starter to stabilize and mature enough to be able to flavor and rise bread dough well. How long, you ask?

Well, one famous sourdough baker/author (the one who popularized the red grape starter method) recommends 11 days, feeding 3 times a day with lots of water and flour. While you can basically bake with a new starter after 3 days or so, Whenever I start up a new starter, I like to give them 2 full weeks of feeding 2 - 3 times per day. What that accomplishes is a good lengthh of time for the microbes in the starter to "shake themselves out", develop strong and healthy colonies of good microbes, get all the bad microbes out, and develop into a mix of microbes that are strong and healthy and can defend themselves from attack from foreign microbial invaders.

In addition, it takes a while for a new starter to develop it's full flavor so if you are patient and give your starter a good start in life, you'll be much happier with the results of your first bake than if you rush it and try to bake with it right away.

How to feed it? Pick a quantity (I like to work with 2 ounces) so I'll explain in terms of 2 ounces but you can adjust to a quantity that you like. So in the morning, take 2 pour out all but 2 ounces of starter and add to that 1 ounce of flour and 1 ounce of water so that your original 2 ounces has now doubled to 4 ounces. 8 Hours later, take your 4 ounces of starter and add 2 ounces off flour and 2 ounces of water so that your 4 ounces of starter has now doubled to 8 ounces. 8 hours later, take your 8 ounces of starter and add 4 ounces of flour and 4 ounces of water so that you've doubled it again to 16 ounces. Then in the morning pour off all but 2 ounces and go through the whole procedure again. Since you've already 2 - 3 days into it, do the 3 feedings per day for 7 - 10 days.

Now comes the caveat - I share Shakespeare's experience of starter's having their own "personality" so you kind of need to get to know your starter and learn what makes it happy. For the most part, they like a slightly warm temperature - between 75 and 80 so if you have trouble with getting it going, you might give some thought as to how you can give it a warmer environment. The consistency of the starter also has an effect, and some so better in a thicker, batter-like consistency while others prefer a more loose, thinner mix. I've found it most convenient to use equal weights of flour and water. If you don't have a scale, many use a ratio of 3 parts flour to 2 parts water - i.e., a cup and a half of flour to a cup of water.

It sounds like your starter is well on it's way, you're so lucky to be in the bay area, I'm sure you'll have a good SF starter on your hands!


A way long time ago, when I first came out several years in the woods and found that online comminications had advanced from Prodigy and Genie to the World Wide Web, I created a bread website. While it hasn't been maintained for a few years, you've find several pages of information about sourdough here
http://www.angelfire.com/ab/bethsbread/FrontPage.html

Here's another good source of sourdough information in the form of questions & answers gathered over a period of years from the rec.food.sourdough newsgroup
http://www.nyx.net/~dgreenw/sourdoughqa.html

[wryter2000]

9. Thanks

I've only been feeding it once a day. When I'm working, I'm afraid twice a day is all I'll be able to manage unless I get up in the middle of the night to feed it. Imagine, a two o'clock feeding for bread starter. :)

During the long weekend coming up, I'll put it on a three times a day schedule. It's bubbling away happily in its glass jar and is making quite a bit of hooch, even though my kitchen is pretty cool. I think I detected a sour sort of smell this morning.

This has been so much fun. If this starter doesn't work out, I'll keep trying. In the meantime, I have Carl Griffin's starter in the fridge. Now that you mention it, that bread does resist going stale very well. I've been surprised at how long the bread stays fresh.

[wryter2000]

10. Oh, I should add...

I recently got "hired" by the Contra Costa Times to write freelance articles on gardening (which is funny because my garden is a total mess because I have so little time for it). I'm hoping to move into cooking columns, too. If I manage that, "Stalking the wild yeast" will probably be my first column.

[Wordie]

12. Hey, wryter2000!

You must be really happy about that...it sounds like a great opportunity!
Congrats on the new job!

:toast:

Sounds like you could easily combine both interests in that column, if you write about things you grow, then eat!

[wryter2000]

14. I am happy

I usually write romance and erotica, but this job fell into my lap when another writer got too busy to do it. It sure pays more than writing fiction. :)

When I'm harvesting veggies from my garden, I probably will combine the two types of columns. Thanks for the suggestion! :yourock:

[NMDemDist2]

16. that's awesome! and you'll have to copy the colums over here for us

to enjoy too. and the CC Times is a pretty darn big regional paper IIRC. Well done!

[wryter2000]

17. Thanks

I was thinking of posting my columns in either the gardening group or the writing group. They will get more cooking related when I start harvesting crops.