Sourdough Starter

Posted on by anon

Sourdough is so cool. Basically you just mix flour and water together and then you get homegrown yeast! Kind of like a pet that you grow from scratch.

I’ve always loved sourdough bread. It might be because it’s my mom’s favorite type of bread; I’ve eaten a lot of it over the years. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’m a texture junkie when it comes to food. I love the combination of an open crumb and a crunchy crust. The distinctive sourdough flavor is also divine.

Turns out, it’s super easy to get started making your own sourdough. All you really need is water and flour. I keep my sourdough starter at 100% hydration, which means that there are equal amounts by weight of flour and water.

It should only take about 5 days to grow an active starter, depending on your environment. As a rule, the higher the ambient temperature, the more quickly the yeast reproduces.

Start by mixing together flour and water in equal amounts. It is important to use a kitchen scale for accuracy. While it isn’t necessary to have them exactly equal, if you’re too far off the mark, there may not be enough food (read: flour) for the yeast to consume and you might end up with a malnourished starter. In addition, it is important to know the hydration of your starter when making bread.

Instructions

Day 1: Combine 100g flour and 100g water. Mix well and store.
Day 2: Remove all but 100g starter. Add 100g flour and 100g water. Mix well and store.
Repeat Day 2 instructions until starter is active.

Every time you feed your starter, take a spoonful and drop it into a cup of tepid water. If the starter floats, that means it’s active. It might hit the bottom and slowly rise to the surface. Ideally, you want the starter to float up immediately.

How to tell if your starter is healthy

You might find a layer of clear liquid at the top of your starter on day 2 or 3. Don’t be discouraged. Stir in the liquid and feed the starter again. You should only be concerned if the mixture has developed spots or an unpleasant smell. This may happen even if you’ve had a healthy starter for a while. These are symptoms of unwanted mold or bacteria colonization. If this occurs, discard the starter entirely and start from scratch. It may take a few tries, but you’ll get there!

Make sure you’re always using clean water and utensils so you’re not accidentally introducing foreign bacteria. The biggest thing to watch out for is soap. If you get soap into your starter, it will soon develop the aforementioned black flecks and smell really funky.

How to store a sourdough starter

Use a glass or plastic container. Many metals are reactive and will affect the performance of your starter. Stainless steel should be OK, but I like to use transparent containers so I can see the activity at a glance.

I keep my sourdough in the drawer of our TV cabinet, covered with a paper towel and secured by a rubber band. This does mean that on drier days, the starter loses water. However, I’ve found that my starter is healthier and smells more pleasant when it is allowed to breathe. You may want to experiment in your own environment. Another factor is that keeping your starter out in the open will make small spaces smell strongly of yeast, which may be uncomfortable.

What to do with discarded starter

Once your starter is up and running, you’ll might feel guilty about dumping out two-thirds every time you feed it, especially if you’re feeding it with 100g of flour and water like me. You have a few options:

Reduce the amount of starter

You can choose to reduce the amount of starter you’re maintaining. For example, keep only 20g of starter and feed it with 20g each of flour and water. That means you’re only discarding 40g of starter instead of 200g.

Use sourdough discard in recipes

While discarded starter isn’t ideal for bread, it’s perfect for plenty of other recipes, like pancakes. As a rule of thumb, you can substitute starter for any flour + liquid combination in recipes in a 1:1 ratio, but there are also recipes that benefit from a little of fermentation’s TLC.

One example of using discarded starter with fermentation is my all-time favorite no-fuss recipe: overnight sourdough pancakes, linked below. I adapted my recipe from the Fluffier Overnight Sourdough Pancakes recipe on CulturesForHealth.com. Take a look if you get a chance! They have tons of great recipes.

Banana bread is a great example of using discarded starter for flavor, just as a substitute for flour and liquid. Simply mix in the starter and bake, no waiting time required.

Give it to your friends and coworkers

Sourdough is pretty much made to be shared. You’re making more every day, after all. Spread the sourdough happiness!

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Overnight Sourdough Pancakes

Parmesan, Cumin, and Thyme Sourdough

Posted on by anon
Finished loaf in the bistro at work.

I love to bake, and you probably can’t tell yet, but I’m obsessed with sourdough. If you don’t know about sourdough, read my explanation and instructions on how to make your own in the post linked below.

Now, my penchant for baking and cooking is in conflict with my inability to consume large amounts of food in a sustainable manner. I recently realized I can get around this by bringing most of what I make to the folks at my office. Two or three times a week, usually, I’ll bring some baked good and/or pancakes (they’re sourdough too! I’ll post a recipe soon) and ping the office Slack. I get introduced to new hires as the office baker now. It’s great, because it means I get to experiment a lot. I’ve pretty much perfected pancakes.

For a while, I’d bake bread and let it cool overnight before bringing it to the office (rather than baking it morning of). This was because if I didn’t let it cool and put it in a bag, the lovely crust would get soft and not be crunchy anymore. At some point, though, I remembered that bread is supposed to be stored in paper. Cue bringing fresh bread to work!

I feed my starter at night. That means it usually reaches the peak of its activity in the morning. However, I missed it Saturday night because of my Halloweekend frolics (I made it back home at around 4 AM, way past feeding time).

My starter’s old enough to last 36-48 hours, so I just fed it when I got up at 11 AM on Sunday. That means that last night, my sourdough starter was extremely active. It bobbed immediately to the surface when I did the water test and I literally squealed in excitement. I had a suspicion because it looked THICC.

I had to make bread. My roommate had some leftover grated parmesan that we needed to get rid of, so naturally I made cheesy bread. It wasn’t very much Parmesan, but it did lend a really full flavor to the loaf. I adapted the olive, parmesan, and thyme recipe from Artisan Sourdough Made Simple. It’s a great, versatile recipe that results in a slightly denser loaf (if you don’t add the olives, which is where the extra moisture comes from). You can also use all bread flour instead of adding all-purpose flour. The AP makes the bread chewier (found out by accident once when I added about 150 g by mistake). This recipe also halves well.

Step 8 in the process: relaxing.

Ingredients

The dough

50 g active sourdough starter, 100% hydration
360 g lukewarm water
470 g bread flour
30 g all-purpose flour
9 g salt

The mix-ins

up to 50 g of parmesan
1/2 tbsp dried thyme (or fresh, if you have it)
1/2 tsp cumin

  1. Dissolve the starter into the water. Use a whisk, fork, or your hands.
  2. Add the flour and mix until combined.
  3. Scrape down the bowl and let the dough hydrate for 10 minutes.
  4. Knead the mix-ins into the dough until well combined. It’s better to sprinkle in a little at a time. Otherwise, they’ll be unevenly distributed.
  5. Scrape down the bowl, pushing the dough into one mass.
  6. Cover with a damp towel and put in a warm place (ideally at least 21 C or 70 F) to rise for about 8-10 hours, depending on the vitality of your starter and the temperature. You’ll know the dough is ready when you poke it and impression lingers in the dough without immediately bouncing back.
  7. Pre-heat the oven and Dutch oven, if you are using one, to 232 C / 450 degrees F.
  8. Dump the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Gather the edges in towards the middle until you’re all the way around, then use a bench scraper to flip it over (onto another lightly floured surface) so that the seam is down. Let relax for about 10 minutes.
  9. Using a bench scraper, flip the dough back over, seam side up, and shape. I made mine into an oval like so: starting from the side farther from you, pinch the left side gently and bring it to the middle. Repeat on the right side, overlapping. You’ll get what kind of looks like a zipper. From the bottom, start rolling away from you until the seam is facing down. Flour the top generously, pick it up with your bench scraper, and put it into your floured proofing basket, seam side down. Cover with a damp towel and let proof until puffy (not that long, about 20-30 min).
  10. Flip the banneton over onto a parchment cut to fit the Dutch oven, and score the dough with a lamé or a sharp knife. Confidently!
  11. Lower into the preheated Dutch oven. Bake with the lid on for 20 min. Uncover and bake for 30 min. Bake directly on the rack for 10 min, or until the color is to your liking. Your house will smell AMAZING.
Ready to bake!

I mixed up all the ingredients and let it proof overnight. It could have used a bit more proofing time, but this loaf is suited to being a bit denser anyhow. Shaped it in the morning and wrapped everything up in about an hour and a half. It was still warm when I got to the office about 35 min after taking it out of the oven. Mmmm… fresh bread.

Yum!

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Sourdough Starter