Before we begin, I would be remiss not to point out that there are many different ways to do everything I am about to describe. In this regard, Google is both your friend and enemy, since while you will find a plethora of information on the subject, a lot of it will seem to conflict with what you may have read elsewhere.
The purpose of assembling this information is primarily to help my friends who want to create and maintain their own starter (the fundamental building block of a good sourdough bread), along with a basic recipe on how to use it.
Keep in mind that a starter is a living thing (quite literally), and in the beginning will require a non-trivial amount of attention to detail if it is to thrive. A well maintained starter can last for years.. even decades. In fact, there are starters you can get FOR FREE that have been around for over a century.
If you would like to get some very very good (and FREE) starter, go here and follow the instructions on the site. Once you receive it, you will have to revive it. I personally believe the best method for doing so is here, but as with all things there are differences of opinion. The method proposed by the folks that are distributing the starter, along with some recipes, is here. No matter how you revive it, once it's thriving I strongly suggest you freeze about a cup of it so that if something goes wrong you can recover with a viable batch. This true for any starter, regardless of it's source.
I prefer to make my own starter, and I will show two ways to do just that.
I stated earlier that a starter is a living thing. Specifically, it is (ideally) a culture of two micro-organisms digesting sugars and reproducing. You don't need me to tell you that there are more than just two types of bacteria in the air. What this means is that unless the two desired bugs wind up dominating the culture, and if you decide to not use packaged yeast this is even more likely to occur, you have to throw it out and start over.
In effect, your are cultivating yeast. Yeast survive by digesting sugars, and as a result will produce alcohol and carbon dioxide. It is the latter that causes your bread to rise. The process itself is also what gives sourdough its unique flavor.
Anywhere in my instructions that call for the use of water, I recommend using bottled spring water. Do not use distilled water and if your local utility company treats their water with chlorine (or chloramine) you should avoid using tap water as well. The chlorine in tap water will try to kill the bacteria - after all, that's why it's there in the first place. You don't have to get expensive water, a gallon of supermarket-brand spring water will last a good long while. If you do get that much, consider boiling it before use to kill off any bacteria that may have taken up residence within if it has been sitting around for a few months. Naturally, let it cool to room temperature before use. Water over 95 degrees will kill yeast quite quickly.
Before you begin, assemble your arsenal of tools and ingredients. You will need:
A clean and sterile glass container for your starter *
A plastic spatula
Glass or plastic measuring cups and spoons
A thin, clean, lint free cloth large enough to cover your container
Flour
Water
Active Dry Yeast **
Sugar **
A good deal of patience and diligence
* The container should be at least twice the size as the amount of starter you intend to maintain
** You won't need these if you intend to use the yeast local to your area.
From here we split off into two different methodologies: First, you can elect to make a starter unique in flavor to the naturally occurring bacteria where you live. Second, you can simply use active dry yeast and sugar to get a starter going quickly.
Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages.
Method one, cultivating local yeast, takes more time and effort, but very well may be worth it if you have the time and patience to do it. It runs a much higher risk of the wrong bacteria obtaining dominance over the culture, which will mean you have to throw it out and start over. It will also take much longer to make.
Method two, using store bought yeast and sugar, will produce a starter that you can use for making bread in as little as 4 days. While it will not carry the "local" characteristics of method one, it is much easier to produce and has a very high success rate.
Once you have a living starter, regardless of how you got there, the process of maintaining and storing your starter is the same. Let's go over just how to get there in the first place.
Method One - Local Yeast Cultivation
If you are taking the local bacteria approach, you will be feeding your starter until it is robust enough for storage. This will probably take about a week, so plan on having it sitting out on your counter for that long.
Begin by mixing 1/4 cup of flour and 3 tablespoons of water in a small glass bowl. Transfer this mixture to your container, cover, and let stand for 12 hours.
You now have a starter in its infancy. Yes, it was that simple. From this point, you will need to start feeding it. Every 12 hours, add 1/4 cup of flour and 1/3 cup of water and mix thoroughly. Do this for a full week (don't worry about any lumps, as they will disappear). You should eventually see the starter bubbling. That is the sign of an active culture. Congratulations!
If at any time during this process, should the amount of starter exceed half of the capacity of your storage container, remove and discard enough to bring it down to half full. Technically, you don't have to throw it away. You could cook with it if you are averse to wasting food, but it will probably not be active enough to be useful as a leavening agent.
Once the week is done, you can resume a normal sleep schedule again (that every 12 hours thing is a real drag) and skip ahead to Care and Maintenance of your Starter.
Method Two - Using Commercially Available Yeast
With this approach, you are already starting off with enough yeast for your culture, so while it will take almost about as long to produce a viable starter, there is much less hands on work involved. While there is a great deal of pride in knowing that your sourdough is unique (due to the different characteristics of the local yeast cultivated in method one) there is no shame in taking the path of least resistance. Particularly if you are new to the process, or just cant see 14 feeding cycles timed 12 hours apart for a week as being something to which you really want to dedicate yourself.
Mix together 2 cups of flour, 1 package of active dry yeast, and 2 teaspoons of sugar. Gradually stir in two cups of warm water and mix until it forms a thick paste (don't worry about any lumps, as they will disappear). Pour off enough to leave you with just two cups. Cover and let it sit someplace where it wont get a draft. You will want to put the container into the sink, as during this initial phase the yeast will be very active, and will almost assuredly spill over. Dried sourdough starter can be difficult to remove from your counter-top.
Once a day, for at least three days, and up to five days, stir the mixture and re-cover.
By now, the starter should have a pleasant sour smell and will show signs of bubbling. Your starter is ready for use.
Before the purists decry the addition of sugar and commercial yeast, there is a method to this madness....
Using method one as described earlier entails some degree of luck. I will try to explain the biological processes at work here in the hopes that it will help to clarify things.
Yeast isn't very sensitive to the pH level of the growth medium, or acids in general, besides acetic acid. Acetic acid is produced to some degree by lactic acid bacteria (lactobacilli). In an ideal culture, both yeast and lactobacilli are present and thriving. It is the latter that produces the sour in sourdough, and it is already present in the flour. Once you add water, both yeast and lactobacilli will start to break down the carbohydrates and feed. As the acetic acid builds up, the commercial yeast will die off, while in parallel being replaced by wild yeast that is more tolerant of the acidic environment.
This, of course begs the question as to why to use commercial yeast at all? After all, it will eventually become extinct in the culture. Unfortunately it's not as simple as that, and that's why excluding commercial yeast at first makes a starter based purely on wild yeast so hit-and-miss. As the commercial yeast eats the simple sugar you added, it produces alcohol. This alcohol will inhibit the growth of leuconostoc bacteria which often gain an early foothold in traditional starters. They produce antibiotic proteins which in turn inhibit the growth of wild yeast and lactobacilli. Make sense? In other words, using commercial yeast can be thought of an as insurance policy against the development of the antibiotic proteins that will ruin your starter. And as I said earlier, eventually the culture will be too acidic for the commercial yeast to survive, and it will be supplanted by wild yeast that can flourish in that environment. Once your starter is established, all traces of the commercial yeast will die off after a few feedings, and you will have a "proper" culture.
Care and Maintenance of your Starter
Once your starter is established, taking care of it is not that much work at all. There are three ways you can store your starter (room temperature, refrigerated, or frozen), and each one will determine the feeding schedule. Your starter is very temperature sensitive, and the warmer it is, the faster it eats, and by extension the more frequently it will have to be fed.
If you are going to do a LOT of baking (at least once a week) you may want to just keep things at room temperature. This will require daily feeding.
If you store the starter in the refrigerator you will only have to feed it every few weeks. Try not to let it go more than a month between feedings. Remember you will have to bring your starter to room temperature before feeding it. If it's been stored this way for a few months, you may need to do two or three feedings (over two or three days at room temperature) to "wake it up" before use.
A general rule of thumb is that when you feed your starter, you want to essentially double its volume. Let's assume you have two cups of starter You will need to remove one cup first (either use it, give it away or discard it, or perhaps put it in another container and feed both batches) and then feed it with 3/4 cup flour and 3/4 cup water. Mix well and allow it to ferment for a few hours before using it or putting it back into the refrigerator.
Put more simply, for each feeding remove half of what you have, then replace it with the same amount (by weight) of water and flour.
Long term storage can be done in the freezer. When frozen, your starter will no longer eat, so you can transfer it to a seal-able container first. When you want to use it, take it out of the freezer two days before you intend to use it, unseal the container and cover with a cloth, let it sit for a day to fully defrost, feed it, and let it ferment for a day before use.
Tips and Tricks
Personally, I like to keep things simple. Now that you are armed with the knowledge you need, I will share my particular adaptations. You don't have to do things this way, but I find they work for me.
First off, I use quart sized wide-mouth mason jars as my container, and cheese-cloth (folded over twice so as to not be too porous . When not storing a culture in the freezer, I use the band to hold the cloth over the mouth of the jar. When I am freezing, I replace the cloth with a lid and use the band to seal the jar. I use a wooden spoon for mixing, a glass measuring cup for liquids, and plastic measuring cups for dry ingredients.
It is EXTREMELY important that the containers are sterile. I boil my jars in water for a little while, dry them, and then immediately add ingredients. It is entirely possible that your culture will inherit other sugar-eating bacteria that you don't want. Until the yeast has dominated the culture (either from yeast that you added in method two of making the starter, or that which it picked up naturally from the air in method one), you do not want to inadvertently introduce a competing bacteria.
If boiling the jars is inconvenient, you can add ONLY a few drops of unscented bleach to the jars and fill them to the brim with hot water. Let them sit for 5 minutes, rinse a few times with hot water, then invert them over some paper towels to dry.
It is also important that you use only glass for the containers and that the starter never comes into contact with metal while being stored.
While the starter is a robust entity, never lose sight of the fact that it is a living thing, and needs to eat in order to survive.
NEVER add more yeast or sugar to an existing culture. Over time, the yeast that you added (if you made it that way in the first place) will become supplanted by local yeast, as the commercial yeast will be killed off when the culture becomes too acidic.
After the first regular feeding, I will take the cup of starter I remove and put into its own jar, label it and freeze it. This makes for a nice insurance policy in case your active culture fails for any reason.
As your starter sits or goes quiet in the refrigerator, the mixture separates and a layer of liquid will form on the top. This liquid contains about 12% to 14% alcohol. Hooch is the alcoholic by-product of the fermentation process. The hooch will have a brownish color. NOTE: The alcohol dissipates during the baking process. Stir that liquid back into the starter before using.
Hooch builds up in your starter, especially when being stored in the refrigerator. You can either pour it off or stir it back in. If your sourdough starter is on the dry side, just mix the hooch back in. If your starter is already too moist, pour it down the drain. Regular feedings of your starter will reduce the amount of hooch.
If the hooch or the starter itself turns another color, such as pink or orange, discard it. This means that something undesirable has established a dominant place in the culture, and you probably don't want to eat it. This is where that batch I put in the freezer can come to the rescue.
If your starter starts to smell TOO sour, remove all but one cup, add two cups each of flour and water and allow to ferment for a few days at room temperature.
One last tip... If you want to make sourdough rye bread, make a starter with rye flour. The same can be said of any type of bread you want to make with a grain-based flower (rice flour, rye flour, spelt flour, whole wheat flour, barley flour, sprouted flour, einkorn flour, bread flour, etc.). Whatever flour you would use to make the bread, use it to make your starter.
I'm Getting Hungry
I promised you a recipe, and here is a very basic one. This will make a single loaf of bread. There are thousands of sourdough recipes out there. Find one you like or make up your own. After all, that is the true joy of cooking.
Ingredients:
1 cup sourdough starter, room temperature
3/4 cup lukewarm water (110 degrees F.)
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3 cups bread flour or unbleached all-purpose flour *
Cornmeal
* The thickness of your sourdough starter can determine how much flour needs to be used. If you think the dough is too moist, add additional flour (a tablespoon at a time). The same is true if the dough is looking dry and gnarly. Add warm water (a tablespoon at a time).
In a large bowl or in the bowl of a 5-quart stand mixer, add all the ingredients except cornmeal. Mix everything together into a uniform dough.
Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead until elastic, about 15 minutes. NOTE: In an electric mixer, it should take about 9 minutes.
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let rest for 10 to 15 minutes.
After resting, knead dough (see kneading tips below) on a lightly-floured board by pulling the dough towards you and then pushing down and forward with the palms of your hands (kneading gives the bread the elasticity and lets it rise).
Kneading Dough Hints & Tips
Lightly dust your work surface with all-purpose flour or bread flour. Place a small mound or a measuring cup of flour near the work surface as you will use this flour to sprinkle over the dough as you knead to prevent sticking. Also lightly dust your hands with flour to keep the dough from sticking to you.
Gather the dough into a rough ball and place on your floured work surface.
When you knead, you will use only the heels of your hands. Push down on dough with your hand heels.
Fold the dough in half. Turn the dough about 45 degrees and knead with your hand heels again. Continue to knead, fold and turn the dough for the required length of time or to the consistency suggested. I usually knead the dough around 5 minutes. Well-kneaded dough should feel smooth and elastic. Press your fingertip into the dough; it should spring back.
Place the dough in a lightly-oiled large bowl. Place a damp towel over the bowl and then cover with plastic wrap (the humidity in the bowl helps in the rising process). Let rise until it doubles in volume (when you can put your finger in the dough and it leaves and indentation and doesn't spring back out) approximately 4 to 8 hours (depending on the temperature and the starter used, the rising time can vary as much as 2 hours).
After dough has risen, remove from bowl, and place on a lightly-floured board. Knead in a little more flour to feed it one more time before baking. Shape dough into a loaf shape and place on a cookie sheet that is dusted with cornmeal or use the Silicone Baking Mats. I personally recommend that you use the Silicone Baking Mats as nothing sticks to them. Cover with plastic wrap and place in a warm spot to rise until doubled in size, approximately 1 to 3 hours.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. After rising, slash the bread with a bread razor or a very sharp knife making three 1/2-inch deep diagonal slashes. I find that greasing the knife or razor makes scoring the dough easier as it is less likely to stick to the blade. The scoring is primarily for aesthetic purposes, but also prevents the crust from cracking as steam builds up inside the loaf.
Brush or spray the top of the bread with cold water and bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until nicely browned. A good check is to use an instant digital thermometer to test your bread. The temperature should be between 200 and 210 degrees.
When the bread is cooked, remove from oven and place the bread on a wire cooling rack to cool. Let baked loaf cool for 30 minutes before cutting (this is because the bread is still cooking while it is cooling).
Pro-Tip:
Cornstarch Glaze
This is a typical mixture that professional bakers use to get that characteristic sheen on breads.
1/2 cup cold water
1 teaspoon cornstarch
In a small saucepan, with a small whisk, stir together water and cornstarch. Heat mixture to a gentle boil. Stir, reduce heat, until mixture thickens and is translucent. Cool. Brush on loaf about 10 minutes before baking is finished and again 3 minutes before bread is completely done.
Enjoy!
If you have any questions, or think I have missed something, don't hesitate to contact me.
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