Sourdough Starter

[PhantomCruiser]

Man! I used to have a sourdough starter, but years ago shortly after I'd gotten married the wifey knocked it over and spilled it all. She wondered why the apartment smelled like beer.

She was mortified that she'd spilled the starter, and 25 years later I've not tried to get another one going. But after this thread that might change.

[SCEtoAUX]

This is the procedure used to make the sourdough starter:

Kitchn - Make Your Own Sourdough Starter



It uses cups, but I weighed the flour and water and found that the amounts referenced do weigh about the same. Anyway, it worked good.

I started the process by combining the first bunch of water and flour in a ceramic crock pot with a very wide mouth. It had a loose fitting lid, but I covered the opening with some cheese cloth instead and secured with an elastic band. I then followed the steps below for around 5 days. Sometimes I fed it twice a day, sometimes only once.
No packaged yeast was used. Just the natural yeast found in the environment. It found its way into the water/flour mixture through the cheese cloth.

I found that after the starter was nice and ripe that transferring it into wide mouth mason jars worked better for storage. The rings and lids are OK for storage in the refrigerator. When I want to use or feed the starter, I replace the lids with cheese cloth secured with the rings and let it warm to room temperature before going through the steps to use it in a recipe or return to storage. That stuff really increases in volume. Half a jar of starter will increase to a full jar or more within a day.

[Richschindler]

Man oh man, what I wouldn't give for a nice hot, fresh sour dough bread. I used to fly to San Francisco a lot and always got some there. I know you can get it anywhere, but it seemed special coming from There.
Oh great, now I'm hungry.

[Texman]

I found a sourdough from Germany at Germandeli.com

Makes a great sourdough bread, very reminiscent of my time
there.

[Gil]

Wheat berries come infected with the microbes needed to make a sourdough starter (organic rye flour is even better). Best way to proceed is to obtain a sack of organic wholewheat flour. Mix one part organic wholewheat flour with one part distilled water. Cover and allow to rest at room temperature - between 60 - 83.4 dF. It will begin bubbling within 24 hours. When it shows enough activity (doubles in bulk) take one half the mixture and mix and equal amount of organic wholewheat flour and distilled water and allow to ferment. Repeat this one more time and you'll have a starter ready to make sourdough bake products. Keeping the starter alive requires about 25-30 grams of starter fed back into a mix of 100 grams flour and 100 grams water. Allow this to ferment until doubled in bulk then refrigerate. It will keep under 38dF refrigeration for at least 4 weeks though you may have to go though a feeding "refresh" cycle to get it ready for bread making. You can use tap water after the starter is well established. If your starter has any off color or smells bad discard it and start over. Make sure you use sterile techniques in the starters preparation.

Debra Wink's "Pineapple Juice Solution" is one of the best explanations for the method she developed for making starters for those that want a deeper dive into the subject.

-Gil

[PICARDIE]

Just a an additional and funny story and also a warning about the storage of the sour dough starter. I use to keep it in a plastic bottle (milk bottle type) and store it in the fridge to slow down the growth of the micro-organisms. However, this low temperature storage does not stop the growth totally. One day I made the mistake to screw the bottle cap tightly. A few days later, in the night, I heard a loud bang. I woke up and checked that nobody was trying to break the front door or a window. Nothing suspect. I got the explanation the next morning when opening the fridge. The cap of the sour dough starter bottle had shattered like a grenade and spread fragments of plastic everywhere in the fridge, not mentioning the whitish goo that covered the stuff in the fridge.
As a conclusion, if you store the sour dough starter in a bottle, never screw the cap tightly !!

[elliott]

I'll bet cleanup was fun......NOT!

[PICARDIE]

Absolutely ! And it's a free lesson you keep in mind ...

[Wad Cutter]

One thing you have to keep in mind when you make your own starter is it will be different from one place to another due to the air born bacteria. I live near S.F. alone the coast and the started I made was incredible. True Sourdough starter. There are a number of bakeries that make some of the best bread and are well sought after when coming to S.F. Calif. wc