Note On Sourdoughs
What You Need Starter Recipes Fresh Starter Friendship Starter Feeding Your Starter |
There are many stories of how and why sourdough was used throughout history. Many theories of how bread came to be and as many ways to develop and use sourdough starters as there are storytellers. |
I love sourdough bread! My preference is for a sourdough that is not very sour, just enough tang to make the bread flavorful. I also use a fresh starter (this is not a starter with sugar or honey) that allows bread to raise beautifully and isn't sour at all. There is also a starter that is a sourdough starter that is a rich starter with milk and sweetener, usually white sugar although honey is lovely here, that is referred to as a friendship starter. Each has it's place and we will look at all of them.
I refer to my soured dough-and-water mixture as a "Starter", the fresh flour/water mixture that the starter is add to as a "Sponge" and the final mixture as "Dough". There are other terminologies out there and they are not wrong, just different.
Most cultures have, in the past, used "sourdough" starters to make bread and some still do. Many European bakeries start their breads off with a "Sweet starter" while "Sour starters" are very popular in the United States. In the 17 and 18 hundreds, here in North America, housewives would use a sweet or fresh starter on a daily basis and having your starter "Sour" was considered evidence of "poor housekeeping skills".
A "Sweet starter" is referred to as a fresh starter which has not yet soured. Fresh starter like a sourdough starter is comprised of water and flour (usually wheat) that has wild yeast spores living, breathing and breeding in it. Yeast spores, referred to here as "yeasty beastys" for obvious cute reasons, float in the air and live on the wheat berries (and therefore within wheat flour) and when water is add to the flour to form a thick mud like paste the yeasty beastys are happy and reproduce.
Once the starter is "Active", having developed enough yeast to form bubbles it will leaven bread made with the starter. Before you could purchase packages of dried yeast at the store, you had to grow your own fresh yeast, making you a yeast rancher of sorts. When left to sit for several days without being used and "Refreshed or Fed" (by adding more flour and water) starter takes on a sour smell and taste developed by beneficial bacteria that like the moist environment that the yeasty beastys provide. In turn, these bacteria help to fight off "bad" bacteria that can overwhelm and kill off the yeast. Evidence of "bad bacteria" in our starter is a pink haze. Should your starter develop a pink haze throw it out! Sterilize the container and start over. The pink bacteria is poisonous and must never be simply removed from the starter!
Most cultures have, in the past, used "sourdough" starters to make bread and some still do. Many European bakeries start their breads off with a "Sweet starter" while "Sour starters" are very popular in the United States. In the 17 and 18 hundreds, here in North America, housewives would use a sweet or fresh starter on a daily basis and having your starter "Sour" was considered evidence of "poor housekeeping skills".
A "Sweet starter" is referred to as a fresh starter which has not yet soured. Fresh starter like a sourdough starter is comprised of water and flour (usually wheat) that has wild yeast spores living, breathing and breeding in it. Yeast spores, referred to here as "yeasty beastys" for obvious cute reasons, float in the air and live on the wheat berries (and therefore within wheat flour) and when water is add to the flour to form a thick mud like paste the yeasty beastys are happy and reproduce.
Once the starter is "Active", having developed enough yeast to form bubbles it will leaven bread made with the starter. Before you could purchase packages of dried yeast at the store, you had to grow your own fresh yeast, making you a yeast rancher of sorts. When left to sit for several days without being used and "Refreshed or Fed" (by adding more flour and water) starter takes on a sour smell and taste developed by beneficial bacteria that like the moist environment that the yeasty beastys provide. In turn, these bacteria help to fight off "bad" bacteria that can overwhelm and kill off the yeast. Evidence of "bad bacteria" in our starter is a pink haze. Should your starter develop a pink haze throw it out! Sterilize the container and start over. The pink bacteria is poisonous and must never be simply removed from the starter!
Like most hobbyists out there, Sour Dough Aficionados are a diverse group of people who will swear up and down that the only right way to make a sourdough starter is....! Well, there are several ways to make your starter and probably one of them will work for you very nicely! So let's start with a few basic ideas and go from there. First off, all but one will take several days, and up to a couple of weeks to produce a strong viable starter.
What you are going to need
- Container - You need a glass jar or a crock with a loose fitting lid. A quart size canning jar with a ring and a piece of old thin sheet or cheese cloth is great for a small batch of starter. I prefer a glass jar over a crock because I can see how things are going. A quart size or larger jar that has a hinged lid that uses a rubber seal ring is good, you just won't use the seal ring. You can also use a jar without a lid and use a rubber band to hold the above mentioned thin sheet or cheese cloth onto the top of the jar.
- You will need to sterilize the jar or crockery and the cover with boiling water.
- Water - Yeasty beastys seem to like hard water, probably because of the trace minerals, but can not live in chlorinated water. I filter my water using a Brita filtering system but any brand will do. You can buy spring or drinking water, but there is no need to use distilled water. You can also measure out the amount of tap water needed and let is sit for an hour or so to allow the chlorine to dissipate.
- Flour - Start off with organic or unbleached wheat flour. There's no "soapbox" here, it's just that there are more yeast spores in organic flour and the bromine used in all-purpose flour is not helpful. Will the starter work with all-purpose flour? Yes, the yeasty beastys just won't be as robust at the beginning. So if that's what you have, go for it. It's what I used for years before unbleached and organic flours where readily available.