Thursday, November 4, 2010

How to start your own sourdough starter.

Have you ever taken the time to look up a recipe on how to make sourdough starter only to find dozens of versions? Some include fruit or active dry yeast, others use sugar and then there is the soupy starter and the thick dough starter. There are those who think you must leave the starter uncovered so it can "catch" the natural yeast in the air, others say it doesn't matter. Ugh, how overwhelming! That's how I felt as I started researching sourdough starters about 6 months ago. However, I was determined to figure out how to make my own sourdough starter and create some beautiful sourdough breads.

Fresh baked sourdough bread.
A disclosure: I am not an expert on sourdough. The information I am providing you is what I have found as I've been doing my research. Before including the information below, I went to the most reliable sources I could find. If I found a strain of thought on someone's blog, I made sure I could find support for it before including it. I do not have a list of reference for this, mostly because I went on hundreds of sites through the course of time and found it far too difficult to keep track of all the places I visited. Think of this information as if coming from a friend, sitting down at the kitchen table and visiting while eating a slice of fresh baked sourdough bread! :-) I have also done quite a bit of my own experimenting with starter, just to see what worked and what didn't. This is not to say that my method is the only one, it's simply what I found to work best and was the most consistent for me. 

A Little Background
Before the advent of cultivated yeasts like active dry yeast, cooks had to "capture" their own yeast through a sourdough starter.  It's been said that sourdough bread has been made and eaten since the time of the Egyptians, 6000 years ago. There is belief that the first sourdough starter came to the US in the hold of Columbus' ship. By the 19th century, pioneers and miners were carrying a sourdough starter with them in their travels, allowing them to more easily make bread without stopping to find and purchase yeast. Sourdough gained in popularity during the California Gold Rush and it was during this time that the famous San Francisco sourdough was started.





Sourdough is a mixture of water and flour left to ferment. The perfect environment is then created for microscopic organisms (or a lactobacillus culture) and wild yeasts to grow.

"A sourdough culture is a mixture of wild yeast and lactobacillus bacteria living in a mixture of flour and water. Over time, the culture will tend to become a mixture of one of three wild yeast strains, and one of five different lactobacillus strains. The two form a symbiosis that is interesting, and makes the culture quite stable. A German researcher has sourdough cultures that have not changed in over 50 years of use. In the classic San Francisco sourdough, the yeast doesn't eat maltose, one of the starches in flour. However, the lactobacillus bacteria do. In all sourdough cultures, the lactobacillus makes the culture quite acidic, and that acidity acts as an antibiotic, keeping stray bacteria and yeast out. Few yeast strains can survive in a sourdough culture. Yeast that can survive the acidity produced by the lactobacillus will thrive in the culture. Also, the lactobacillus eat the dead yeast cells, which helps keep the culture from getting nasty."

There are natural yeast in our environment and in the flour we use and depending on where you make your sourdough you will get a different flavor and different strains of yeast. San Francisco has some of the best sourdough bread, so people purchase starter from bakeries there. The only problem is once the sourdough is in your home and out of it's original environment and you start feeding it, the original yeasts and cultures from the San Francisco area slowly disappear and are replaced by the yeasts and cultures in your environment and in your flour, ultimately lending a different flavor and characteristics to your bread. In the article "Against the Grain", Katherine Czapp writes,



Why Sourdough?
During the making of sourdough starter and bread, the anti-nutrients are neutralized as the grains soak for many hours and even days. This is one reason why it can be beneficial to find sourdough recipes that incorporate long rise and rest times, as long as your starter can handle the process. Phytic acid is one of those anti-nutrients and is found in whole-wheat flour. During the soaking and fermenting process in making sourdough bread, the phytic acid is broken down by as much as 62%. (Note: 62% was the most consistent percentage I saw in my research, however with longer fermentation times, some people claimed that phytic acid was completely removed from the sourdough bread.) This allows your body to more easily absorb the minerals that exist in whole grains. Sourdough bread also has a lower glycemic index, meaning that sourdough bread raises your sugar level more slowly than regular bread.



There has even been evidence that people who suffer from celiacs disease are able to eat sourdough bread when it's made a certain way. The long soaking and fermenting process breaks down the gluten in wheat. Actually, I read that if the grain is fermented long enough all of the gluten can be removed from the grain, however at that point you have nothing to help your bread rise. If you are someone who suffers from celiacs disease this is a topic I'd recommend looking into. Not all sourdough bread is the same and commercial sourdough would likely be out of question, but I've read in quite a few places where people are able to enjoy certain types of sourdough without any ill effect. I think I could spend years just looking into this topic alone. On celiac.com, Scott Adams shares research information on celiac patients given a specific type of sourdough:


The researchers conclude: 'These results showed that a bread biotechnology that uses selected lactobacilli, nontoxic flours, and a long fermentation time is a novel tool for decreasing the level of gluten intolerance in humans.'"


Katherine Czapp and her husband Garrick Ginzburg-Voskov share a sourdough recipe in their article "Our Daily Bread" that has been successfully eaten by those with celiacs disease. Katherine Czapp has done quite of bit of fascinating research on celiacs disease, as well as, looking into how our grains are grown today and traditional methods of preparing our food so they are more easily digested.    Check out her articles on westonaprice.org (two of my favorites are "Going with the Grain", "Against the Grain")

Helpful Hints

These hints come from my research and from my personal trial and error in making my own starter. The first sourdough starter I made was a very, very soupy mixture (and yes I was following a recipe) that would begin to get little bubbles in it. While this starter did make sourdough bread it was extremely dense. I knew there must be a better way to make a starter than what I was doing, so off I started on my long trail of research.
  • Flour to use. I've had the best results with my starter when using whole wheat or rye flour, the fresher the better. I did a side-by-side test of making a starter from white flour, wheat flour and rye. The rye starter fermented the quickest and in very little time there were plenty of bubbles. The wheat was the second best. I had very little success with the white flour or at least it took longer to ferment than I gave it. While I did get some bubbles, it never doubled in volume the way the wheat and rye would. I know that you can have successful starters from white flour, however why bother? Wheat and rye flours are both much healthier for you
  • Water issues. If you are having problems with your starter it might have to do with your water. We have an awesome water filtration system in our home, however as it filters out all the "bad stuff" it also removes most of the minerals. This ended up being a bit of a problem for my starter, so I began adding a couple drops of liquid minerals (I like ConcenTrace Trace Mineral Drops) to my water before mixing it with my starter. It made a difference and my starter began doubling in volume. Your starter needs the minerals to stay healthy and active, kind of like us! :-) Over-chlorinated or fluorinated water can also cause issues. If you think your water might be an issue, try purchasing some natural spring water and see how your starter does on that.
  • Feeding methods. There are many starter recipes out there that say you only have to feed your starter once a day. I'd argue otherwise. Instead you should feed your starter a min. of two times a day and preferably 3 times daily. If you are at home where you can experiment with feeding 3 times a day, try it out and see how happy your starter is. What I noticed when I do a twice-a-day feeding schedule is my starter will begin loosing about a quarter to half of it's volume by the time it gets to the second feeding. This mean the starter is starting to starve and it needs more flour and water to feed on. With three feedings, it stays bubbly and keeps it's volume. With a one time a day feeding my starter wasn't doubling itself nor did my bread rise as well.
Sourdough blueberry muffin.
  • Discarding part of your starter. You must discard half of your starter each time you feed it. Well you don't have to, but if you don't you are going to need A LOT of flour and a huge storage container. Think about it like this, if you start with 100 grams of starter at the first feeding you need to feed it an equal amount of flour and water. So, you'll feed your starter 50 grams of water and 50 grams of flour. Now you have 200 grams in your container, but don't forget that 200 grams needs to double in volume. You're thinking, no big deal, but wait. Now it's time for our second feeding. We have 200 grams of starter, so I need to feed it 100 grams of flour and 100 grams of water. Now your starter is 400 grams. If you do a 3 time day feeding, by the end of the day your starter will have grown from 100 grams to 800 grams. Wow! Now if you know you are going to be doing a ton of sourdough baking this isn't such a big deal because you're using it up so fast, but for the rest of us this would be far too much starter to keep on hand and this is just after the first day. By the end of day two you would have 6,400 grams of starter!
  • What to do with discarded starter. Now don't get alarmed by the idea of being wasteful because you are discarding starter. This is where being armed with an arsenal of sourdough recipes comes in handy. Each time you discard half your starter, put it into a container in the fridge. Keep adding the discarded starter to the same jar. In a couple of days you'll have plenty of starter to make sourdough cake, pancakes, English muffins, donuts and so forth. Before you know it, all of your baked goods will be sourdough ones, which is awesome because of all of the great nutritional benefits, as well as the fact that sourdough foods are much easier for our body to digest. Check out this link (click HERE) about how to revive a starter that has been stored in the refrigerator.
  • Sharing your starter. Another fun idea you can do with your extra starter is pass it on to friends and family. This is actually excellent for the upcoming holidays. It's always easier to start with a healthy starter and continue feeding it than it is to start your starter yourself.  Take a clean half pint or pint mason jar, fill it with 100 grams or about a half cup of fresh starter. Wrap it up and put a hand-made card on the outside. In your card include how to feed a starter and also give a little background to your starter, like where it came from. Then if the person you give your starter to wants to pass their extra starter to someone they can include your starter's background info and their background info. Before you know it the starter has a beautiful history all written out. How cool is that! Some of the top bakeries in the world have been using the same "mother" starter for over 250 years! Can you imagine all of the history that goes along with those starters and how strong they must be to have stood the test of time?
Sourdough donuts.
  • Fermenting time. Give your starter time to ferment and gain some vitality before using it. You can typically try and use it after about a week of feedings, however I think the starter gets drastically better after about 2 weeks.
  • Weight versus volume. If you are able to, weigh out your ingredients instead of measure them out by volume for much greater accuracy. This will give you the most consistent starter. My starter is always 100 grams, so I feed it 50 grams of flour and 50 grams of water. If you have to use volume measurements then work in a ratio of 3 parts flour to 2 parts water or use 3/8 cup flour to 1/4 cup water. The starter consistency is something similar to a very, very thick pancake batter.
  • Liquid and mold on starter. If a dark liquid appears on the top of your starter, simply stir it back into the starter and continue feeding it. (Per Bob's Red Mill website) I actually haven't had this happen with my latest batch of starter. It's pretty thick and even in the fridge it still bubbles slightly and the water doesn't separate out. If you get mold on your starter, don't stir it in, instead skim it off and make sure to always use a clean jar or container each time you feed your starter. Typically mold happens in the beginning stages of making a starter. Once your starter is strong and active the starter can take care of itself and mold will will have a difficult time growing on it. If you continue to have issues with your starter, you may have to pitch it and start over.
Sourdough English muffins.
  • Storage containers. Store your starter in a non-porous material like glass or ceramic. Sourdough starter is very acidic and it can slowly eat away at the surface of plastic and metals, even stainless steel. Using a stainless steel spoon to stir your mixture is fine, although any other type of metal is not recommended. 
  •  Covering your starter. I have tried not covering my starter at all and covering it with a towel, plastic wrap and a lid. The greatest problem with not covering your starter at all is that the top can start to dry out. If you are stirring your starter really well, to help incorporate air into it, when you feed it, there is no reason you need to leave it uncovered. There are thoughts that you are trying to "capture" the yeast in the air, but through my research, some of the top sourdough makers I found said this isn't actually the case, at least not enough to merit actually leaving the starter uncovered. My starter stays happy and healthy whether I cover it or not. Ultimately it's your choice. 
  • Temperature. Starter is happiest between the 70° - 80°. If it get much cooler than that, it will slow down its activity. Something to keep in mind in cold climates. If your starter stays on the cooler side, you will likely not need to feed it as often. While if it's in a warmer climate it's exactly the opposite, with feedings needing to happen more often. Basically think about bread when it rises. The warmer the temp. the quicker it rises. If you kitchen temperature averages above 90°, you may want to look into ways to help keep your starter a little cooler or you risk killing it. For colder climates, consider keeping your starter in the oven with a towel around it and the oven light on.
  • Understanding your starter. Get to know your starter and forget about the standard rising times used in making regular bread made with active dry yeast. Everyone's starter is going to be different and it will rise differently as well. Some starters may require overnight to double your dough in size, while others only a couple of hours. This simply takes practice and familiarizing yourself with your starter. Sourdough starter requires you to be a bit more adventurous when baking. There aren't always cut and dry recipes and instructions for using it, especially because the hydration level varies from starter to starter. The recipe I share below is for a starter with 100% hydration. While there are plenty of recipes out there, don't get discouraged if they don't turn out the way you hoped on the first try. Instead, have fun and keep trying knew ways of using your starter. Your kitchen will become your own science lab and if you have kids, be sure to get them involved as well. Before long you'll become more comfortable with your starter and will have gained a great understanding in how it works. 
  • Long term storage. I mentioned above that you can store your discarded starter in the fridge for later use. You can do the same with your "mother" batch as well. This is helpful if you know you are going to have a period of time where you can't feed your starter regularly. Some people always store their starter in the fridge once it is healthy and active, however I've read that over time this can actually deteriorate the starter and that's not something you would particularly want to do once you've put all the time and effort into getting it started. So far I haven't put my "mother" starter in the fridge, so I can't say whether or not it would be something I would do. If you do decided to refrigerate your starter, it's still important to feed it. It gets a little fuzzy here. I've seen recommendations to feed it from once a week to once every couple of months. For the most part, the sourdough experts seem to say that feeding your starter in the fridge once every 1-2 weeks is best.
Interested in doing some more research, here are a couple of helpful sites to start with:
Sourdough Home - http://www.sourdoughhome.com/index.html
Sourdough QA - http://www.nyx.net/~dgreenw/sourdoughqa.html
The Fresh Loaf - http://www.thefreshloaf.com/


The Starter Recipe
What You'll Need: 100% hydration starter
  • Whole wheat or rye flour - the freshest flour you can get or preferably freshly ground at home
  • Fresh water
  • Ceramic or glass container (a wide mouth mason jar works well) with a lid or something comparable
  • Wooden or stainless steel spoon
  • Scale - optional, but makes making a starter much easier
Getting Started:
Day 1
In a clean container mix together 50g of flour and 50g of water (or 1/4 cup water and 3/8 cups flour). Scrape or wipe down inside of container to keep sides clean, this will help prevent possible mold forming. Lightly cover container with a lid, towel or plastic wrap.


Day 2 or 12-24 hours later  
Check to see if you see any bubbles in your starter*. If there is, it's time to "feed" the starter. Add to your container another 50g of flour and 50g of water (or 1/4 cup water and 3/8 cups flour). Stir well and cover again.

*This is where a glass jar comes in handy, because you often can see a bubble or two through the sides of the jar. If you can't see any bubbles, try stirring your starter and see if there are any bubbles or if the starter seems lighter in consistency. If nothing has seemed to happened yet, wait another 12. If at the end of 48 hour your starter is still doing nothing, discard it and try again. 



Feeding 100g of starter with 50g of flour and 50g of water.

Day 2, 2nd feeding or 12 hours later 
Discard half of your starter so that it is once again 100g (if using volume measurement, simply discard half before feeding it).* Add 50g of flour and 50g of water (or 1/4 cup water and 3/8 cups flour). Stir well and cover again.

*Typically the 2nd feeding happens around 12 hours later, however if your starter isn't showing any signs of life yet, wait for bubbles to start to show and then feed it. This may take another 12-24 hours. If you feed your starter too soon you can actually end up diluting it too much and ultimately it won't have enough organism to survive.


Starter has just been "fed". I mark a line on the jar with a dry erase marker so I can clearly see if starter has doubled.

Day 3 
Hopefully at this point you are starting to see some real activity with your starter. Continue discarding half and feeding your starter every 12 hours for at least a week before trying to use it. Your starter is ready to be used for baking when it can easily double itself between feedings. After the first two weeks, I switch to a 3 times a day feeding schedule if I know I'm going to be using it often. My starter is always much happier on this schedule, but it will stay alive even if I only feed it twice a day.


A happy starter easily doubling in size between feedings.
 From here on out you will continue to feed your starter 2-3 times a day. The more you can use your starter the healthier and happier it will be. If there will be a period of time where you know you can't feed your starter, then stick it in the fridge and space your feedings out to every 1-2 weeks.

I hope this post gives you a desire to start your own sourdough starter!









32 comments:

  1. Hi Terese! I am so excited you did this great article on sourdough! I too cook with sourdough often and have done a few posts on making sourdough bread, but nothing as extensive as your article here. I would LOVE to share this article on my thoughts on friday link love at a moderate life so more folks can get comfortable with their starters and start making great wholesome bread! I am ALSO excited to see you are still in the running for the foodbuzz contest! I didn't know you were entered until today, and I feel badly because i have been sharing the progress of my bloggie friends on my friday post, so, i will be adding you this week! Big hugs! Alex@amoderatelife

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  2. Wow! I've been wanting to make sourdough for such a long time, but I've been super intimidated. As always, you don't fail to disappoint! What a thorough post. I feel far more confident to tackle this then I ever did. Thank you for sharing (and my future loaves of sourdough bread thank you too!)

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  3. Therese, I love this post! What I need now are all of your recipes!

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  4. Great post. So informative! I'll definitely bookmark this one.

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  5. Kudos! Your sourdough post is thorough and informative. We love that you incorporated the history as well as working with your own sourdough starter and baked goods. We find some bakers expect to manage and maintain their starter while others expect sourdough to be a large mass of dough they can scoop or portion out and bake it into bread. Irene @ KAF

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  6. I have been wanting to bake me some sourdough bread for months now, but it sounds so difficult. Thanks for breaking it down for me, now I will give it a try.
    Martin
    mdfindley69@austin.rr.com

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  7. Thank you - this couldn't have been timed better. I have been following someone else's instructions and got to the point....what do I do now. I too have read masses on the perfect way to make a starter and they all contradict. I appreciate your extensive research and willbe more informed when taking my 'pet' out for a little bake!

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  8. Thank you all for the comments. For those of you who are new to making a sourdough starter and try it out, feel free to pass on questions to me and I'll do my best to help you out. Like I said in the post I'm not an expert or anything close, but I did have a lot of trial and error in the process of making my starter and have a much better feel for it now.

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  9. Hi Therese! So glad to see you on the hearth and soul hop this week! I do hope you and your lovely family enjoyed the holidays and I wish you a very happy new year. My sourdough starter is one of my bestest little kitchen friends and I treat it as if it were one of my pets! I really like that it is living and breathing and rising every day when I feed it! I also love the taste of sourdough bread and other baked goods like pancakes! Thanks so much for linking this up to the hearth and soul hop! All the best and big hugs too! Alex

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  10. Therese! This is great! Thank you!

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  11. Hi there,

    Just wanted to say, your pictures blow my mind, your sourdough instructions were the first (and only) I've found on the subject that I could believe in (read: that worked), and your approach (using sourdough for anything and everything, including doughnuts) is exactly what I'm into.

    So, I mentioned you in a blog post I just wrote about sourdough, and linked to this page. (That's the URL I'm using now, so click if you want to read it.)

    Anyway, thank you, thank you, and I'll definitely be back for bread recipes.

    Elisabeth

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  12. Thanks Elisabeth! If you want some more sourdough recipes (I still need to get more on my site) check out Sourdough From A To Z (http://gnowfglins.com/ecourse/sourdough-ebook). It's great. I didn't know about this book until after I'd done my research, but they share much of the same things I share in this post, but also have plenty of recipes too. Good luck with your sourdough baking!

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  13. YAY! Day 2 of my starter and ready for its 3rd feeing. There is totally noticeable volume growth and bubbles from the 2nd one! I'm excited this is working!! Can't wait to make some sourdough bread here soon!! I've heard the recipe you put up is amazing!

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  14. Thank you thank you for your excellent and thorough instructions! I now have a successful starter and popped my first loaf out of the oven today... delicious. I'm so excited to experiment and try new things....now to exercise some self control and not devour 3 lbs of bread! Ha ha.

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    1. Very awesome Meg, glad it turned out good and I'm with you on not indulging too much on fresh baked bread. Give me some fresh butter and I could devour a loaf!

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  15. So happy I found your website! Will be trying this sourdough starter soon. Thank you for sharing all the wonderful information you found while doing all the research for us!!!!

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  16. hey. so I'm a little confused. Do you use the "discard" to bake with?

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    1. Yes that part can be a bit confusing and one I could figure out in the beginning. You do use the discarded starter for baking. Basically you always want to keep at least about 25 grams of starter (a tbsp or so) of starter to feed. This is your "mother". You feed it to make enough extra to use for recipes (you must feed your mother at least once a day for it to stay healthy, but preferably 2-3 times a day) . Sometimes you won't need the extra starter that you have left over from feeding the mother and you can discard it or store it in the fridge for pancakes or other baked items that doesn't rely on the actually leavening a healthy starter creates. Discarded starter that you don't want for bread works great for items like pancakes because the discarded starter is all you need, plus a bit of sugar, baking soda and salt added to it to make a lovely breakfast item. The baking soda is what creates the leavening verses the natural yeast of the starter. You don't always have to discard/remove part of the mother starter. For instance if you normally maintain about 30 grams of mother starter, but you need 300 grams of starter for a recipe you don't discard any starter when you feed it. So you start with 30 grams. You feed it then 15 grams water 15 grams flour, now you have 60 grams of starter for your mother. You continue to double your starter with each feeding until you have at least 330 grams of starter in the end. Then you remove the 300 grams (after it's had time to double in size once it's been fed) you need for the recipe and go back to maintaining your original 30 grams for the mother starter. In the end you often end up making quite a bit of sourdough items because who wants to see the discarded starter go to waste. Another option is to store your mother starter in the fridge until you need it and then spend several days using it like crazy and stick things in the freezer. Once done baking stick the mother starter in the fridge again, where it essentially goes dormant.

      Kind of a lot... does that makes sense? If not please let me know and I'll try and explain it better. I know the first part of creating a starter and making sourdough items can be confusing, so I want to help if I can.

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  17. oh yes, thank you! everything you said makes sense. in fact, I started on the 3rd...and the starter is doing pretty well! it's doubling between feedings :) ah, so exciting. my husband and I used joked the other day that sourdough starter can not be started in the first year of marriage...for it will lead to bd consequences... cuz it's so finicky. But .. seems like it's working out great! thank you again!

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  18. your starter recipe is magic! the bread turned out beautiful! I blogged about it too, and of course, linked it back to your blog...so that people could read more of the awesome cooking adventures you share here!

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  19. So could you post a recipe on how much starter to extra flour ratio youd use to bake bread? Im also a bit confused wondering if youd then not remove your half of starter and feed it and keep doubling its contents until you get enough of a large batch to bake into actual bread? Im thinking that's how it works?

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    1. Your questions are exactly the same as mine when I started. Sourdough baking is confusing to start. As far as ratio of starter to flour for bread recipes that is entirely depended on the bread recipe. Try this recipe, it's super easy and will get you more comfortable using a starter: http://artistta.blogspot.com/2011/11/easiest-sourdough-bread-recipe-i-know.html?showComment=1384890877566#c3270641382788842227


      Have you heard of GNOWFGLINS? She has a great sourdough ebook you can purchase for sourdough recipes and another book I like is Classic Sourdough by Ed and Jean Wood. Standard bread recipes that use yeast are different than sourdough recipes, so it's best to start with a real sourdough recipe before trying to convert a yeast recipe. If that makes sense! :)

      If you are making bread you continue to double your starter without discarding any of it until you have enough starter for your recipe and some left over as your "mother" which you then save and feed. For instance if you need 300 grams of starter for a recipe, feed your starter until you get that amount. So, if you start with 50 grams, then you feed your starter of 50 grams, 25 grams of water and 25 grams of flour. Now you have a 100 gram starter. At the next feeding 8-12 hours later you feed your 100 gram start 50 grams water, 50 grams flour so you have a 200 gram starter. Continue feeding starter every 8-12 hours until you have enough for your recipe with at least 25 grams left over so you aren't remaking a new starter. The only time you discard any starter is when you are feeding it to maintain it, but not using it to bake. I will often make several thousand grams of starter to do a bunch of bread baking and then go back down to maintaining my initial 50 gram starter until I am baking again.

      Hope that helps!

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  20. Is it correct that after 48 hours of starting the whole process if there's no bubbles, you throw the starter away?

    How many ounces is the glass jar you use when you are working at producing enough sourdough to bake a large batch of bread? (I bought glass fido jars from Italy I got on Amazon). The biggest size I'm going to get is 3 liters. Is that big enough?

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    1. You can wait longer than 48 hours to see bubbles, but much longer than that it is basically easier to just start again. You may only see a handful of bubbles, but as long as you see some your flour and water mix is becoming an active starter. Everyone's environment is different, so results of how quickly a new starter can be begin will vary. Flour and water type can also make a huge difference. If you have a big problem with getting a wheat flour starter going, then try rye flour, which ferments for easily than wheat. Also, be careful if you have other types of ferments in the same space. Keep different fermenting products at least 10 feet apart from one another.

      The size of jar you use to make your starter really depends on how much you are making. A 100g starter works well in a pint jar (16oz) or half pint jar (8oz). I personally can make as much as 10,000 g of starter depending on how much baking I'm doing. When I make that much I use a food grade, plastic container. Always have enough room in your jar that your starter can at least double without it overflowing. Much of this comes with trying it out and learning as you go. You'll find what size jar works best and what quantity of starter is best to keep on hand. I have gone down to as little as 10g of starter at different times. For me now it just depends on what I want to maintain and when I'm using it.

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    2. Thank you very much for your help. I don't like plastic. Do you think for a big batch I should get the 3 liter or a 4 or 5 liter fido glass jar?

      If the jar I get is too small, would using stainless steel be ok, although I know the very best is glass which I definitely prefer.

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    3. I honestly can't give you an accurate answer for that. It completely depends on the amount of starter you need for your bread. For me, because I bake extremely large batches of bread (50 loaves and more) I have to use a food grade plastic bucket. I have found no other containers that will hold the amount of starter I make. I use gallon glass jars purchased from Azure Standard (4 liter) for smaller batches of bread, but in the end it's completely dependent on the activity of your starter and the quantity you need.

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  21. How many ounces is the jar you keep the 100g of starter in?

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  22. Wow Artistta, you bake 50 loaves and more! Do you sell them, freeze them, or use them for a church dinner? !!!

    How MANY gallon glass jars do you use for smaller batches of bread?

    Now, I'm going to look for your article part two of you buying land to grow veg, etc.!

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  23. I forgot to ask, how many gallon glass jars do you use for how many loaves of bread?

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    1. I can't give a straight answer on this. I make a variety of breads and each calls for a different amount of starter. My recipes range from 100g to 450g per loaf/batch of whatever sourdough item I am baking. Once you start baking you'll quickly see how large of a container you need for your bread. Typically a quart jar should be sufficient for 1-2 loaves of bread if they user a greater amount of starter.

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