Sourdough starters are a lot like teenaged boys. If you keep them warm and well-fed, they’ll be as happy as can be and grow like…well…sourdough starters! While there is some fascinating chemistry involved in sourdough starters, it really is NOT rocket science; anyone can grow a happy sourdough.
Ingredients: I used tap water in growing my starter, but if your tap water is heavily chlorinated you’ll need to use bottled water. Chlorine is a bad thing for those yeastie beasties. I also use regular, all-purpose white flour. You can use whole wheat flour if you like, but the texture of your starter will be slightly different.
When you get a bit of starter: Add 1/4 cup lukewarm water to the container holding your starter. Put the lid on the container and shake it vigorously to loosen up the starter from the sides. Turn this mixture out into a large glass or ceramic bowl.
With a large wooden spoon, stir in 1 1/4 cup warm water and two cups of flour. Mix thoroughly. Cover the bowl loosely (sometimes I forget and wrap it tightly with plastic wrap and it hasn’t made a difference) and let it sit on your counter at room temperature for 8-12 hours. During this time, it will grow and bubble.
After 8-12 hours, stir the starter and throw out about half of it. (You can use it to bake with if you want, but the point is to reduce the volume of the starter by half.) This step has puzzled me, but in my reading this past week, I’ve come across a few pieces of information that help me understand why we do this. When the starter is fermenting, it produces certain acids that inhibit growth. By discarding half the starter before adding more ingredients, you bring the acidity to a proper level.
To the remaining half, add 1/2 c. lukewarm water and 1 c. flour. Stir and let sit at room temperature for 2-4 hours. (If your kitchen is warmer in the summer, this sitting time will be less. During the cooler winter months, the starter will need to sit longer.)
Repeat the feeding and rest cycle. After this last rest, the starter is ready to rumble. You can either start baking or you can put the starter into the fridge to store it. I recommend a wide-mouthed quart canning jar. Any non-reactive crock or bowl will do. The starter should be loosely covered.
I’ve read a few stories of starter actually exploding tightly closed canning jars as the starter expands and produces gases. The way I account for added pressure is quite simple. Instead of a regular canning lid under the ring of the canning jar, I put a double layer of plastic wrap. When the starter expands in the fridge, the plastic wrap puffs up and stretches. So far, no explosions have occurred in my fridge…much to the disappointment of my teenaged sons.
To use the starter in a recipe:
Let the starter sit on the counter until it’s room temperature. Pull out your cup of starter for bread. Then stir in 1/2 c. water and 1 c. flour. Let the starter sit on the counter 2-4 hours before returning to the fridge.
If you plan to use starter every day, you can leave it on the counter. If you plan to go several days or even a couple of weeks between uses, put the starter into the fridge. Feed your starter at least once a week. Be sure to discard or use at least a cup each time you feed it.
If the starter gets too dry, you can add extra water to thin it down a bit. The thinner the starter, the faster it bubbles and feeds. Thicker starters are actually a bit more stable because they feed more slowly. If you plan to store your starter in the fridge for a couple weeks, it will stay more robust if it’s thicker rather than thinner.
Reviving an old starter: If your starter has languished in the fridge for a long time, you can still usually revive it. Last week I pulled two jars of starter out of the back of my fridge. One was a starter than Nate and I started in Colorado about 3 years ago. The other starter was one I got from my father-in-law about 8 years ago. Neither had been used in over 2 1/2 years. Both had a thick layer of liquid (called hooch!) sitting on the top of the starter. I poured most of that liquid off and discarded all but 1 c. of each starter.
One of the starters smelled very strongly of acetone. I googled and read and googled some more on acetone smells in sourdough. I learned that there is a certain type of bacteria that likes to take up residence in the liquid (hooch) that sits on top of a dormant starter. One website suggested adding a tablespoon of plain yogurt to the starter as it revives. I did this and within about 12 hours, the acetone smell was completely gone.
I followed the same method to revive the starter as I outlined above. I actually let these two starters sit on my counter for about 5 days as they grew stronger again. I kept dividing and discarding (didn’t bake with that stuff yet) and feeding. I also carefully kept the two starters separate and labeled because each one had a distinct personality.
What I’ve read, however, and what I am also seeing, is that all three starters (the two revived ones and the one from Clair) are pretty quickly becoming alike. This is due to the fact that there are a lot of wild yeasts in the air as well as on the grains themselves. These yeasts are actually taking over and becoming dominant (and unique to my home). I expect that in another couple of weeks, I’ll just combine all the starters and have one large starter instead of 3 separate jars.
Starter gone BAD: Sometimes starter goes bad and there IS no reviving it. Obviously, a strong acetone smell isn’t reason to discard, but there ARE some reasons to throw starter out. If the starter turns pink or orange or grows mold on top of it, just throw it out.
Sometimes starter will turn greyish. This isn’t necessarily the end, so if that happens you can still try to revive it. If the starter gets a lot of greyish hooch on top, pour that off and follow the directions for reviving starter. The starter might smell sour, strongly fermented, or alcohol-ish. This isn’t a bad thing and you should attempt to revive the starter. If it smells moldy or rotten, toss it.
There’s actually a really comfortable margin for error with sourdough starters. The one thing that you should NOT do is let the starter get too warm or hot. If it gets too hot, the yeast and bacteria that MAKE it starter will die. Then, too, you just need to dump it and start over.
Barb
3 Comments
May 28, 2008 at 6:35 pm
[...] sourdough as THE food for gold miners.) This recipe is pretty flexible but it does require sourdough starter and a little advance [...]
April 5, 2009 at 4:25 am
Thank you for the tips. I searched everywhere for an easy explanation of how to revive my neglected sourdough…yours made the most sense. I’ve got an acetone smell in mine…so I’m going to try your yoghurt suggestion.
May 1, 2009 at 2:40 pm
[...] The Care and Feeding of Sourdough [...]