Sourdough Bread

So with my wife publicizing my breadmaking machinations, I've been deluged with requests (at least 2) for details.

So I make sourdough bread. (That is bread without commercial yeast; not necessarily bread with the famous San Francisco tanginess.) The only particular difficult part is making a starter. Once you have that, you just have to add some flour, stir and knead. You can add some salt, sugar, or oil if you like. I don't really work from a recipe but I'll try to estimate quantities in another post.

First, one needs to make a sourdough starter though. Because it is so heavily processed, all purpose white flour is really slow at picking up wild yeast. A store like WinCo that sells bulk flours lets you pick up a few better flours very cheaply. 2 or 3 pounds of flour will be ample for creating a savory starter.

There are some very fancy recipes online but it took me a while to figure out what underlied them all. It really doesn't take a recipe and is very simple. Start with 1 part flour plus 1 part water. Leave it at room temperature. Tomorrow you have to double the volume and keep the flour to water ratio even. The day after you double the volume. Pretty soon your mass of flour and water is a sweet smelling bubbly starter that will make great bread.

A few caveats. 1. Don't use metal to stir the starter as the reaction won't help. 2. Try and use filtered or purchased water at least to start as reactions won't help. 3. Since you're doubling the volume each day you may quickly have way too much. The solution is simply to discard half (or more of the mass) before doubling it. 4. Flours are different and the amount of water you need varies. The only way to tell how much to add is to try and get the consistency right. You want a batter that sticks to the spoon just a little as you pull your spoon away. Kind of a stringy look.

Depending on conditions you'll have a pet to keep in your refrigerator in as little as 5 days. My first try took almost two weeks though. Once you have it you need to either feed it each day or put it in the refrigerator and feed it once a week. I feed mine when I use it so once it's established there's no waste. Given the cost of those little yeast packets it's probably a fairly cost effective way to make bread. (Apparently some famous bakeries have kept their cultures alive for hundreds of years.)