Sourdough Starter
My sourdough adventure started with a request from my husband for a thick, crusty bread to eat with soup. I quickly got discouraged while looking for recipes online. All the recipes seemed so complicated, and the sourdough community seemed a bit snooty and confusing. 🙂 They all used special flours and terms I didn’t understand, and made it sound like keeping your sourdough alive was a tricky business and required a lot of attention.
A friend of ours gave us some sourdough starter, and I found a recipe that had a lot of pictures and made some sense to me. And guess what? It worked! I made a beautiful loaf of thick, crusty bread that tasted amazing too! Using just white flour, water and salt!
Sourdough is good for so many recipes: breads, pretzels, pancakes, English muffins, etc. And did you know that even if you’re gluten-free you may be able to eat sourdough bread? The carbohydrates and proteins in the wheat get broken down and made easier to digest.
I have come to realize that there is a lot of wiggle room with the sourdough recipes and how you handle the starter. It’s actually pretty low maintenance and doesn’t have to be treated with precision. You do have to plan ahead for many of these recipes, but it’s definitely worth it!
So now you probably want to eat some sourdough, but maybe you don’t have a friend to share a starter with you. Start your own! This recipe uses simple ingredients, and only takes 5-7 days to start, and you only need to feed it once a week!
To make a sourdough starter, start with a large jar or container. Take 1/4c of water and 1/4c + 2tbsp of flour, and mix it well. Cover it with a tea towel or cheesecloth and let it sit in a warm-ish place (the top of the fridge is a great place). Every 24 hours, add another 1/4c water and 1/4c flour. Continue to do this for 5-7 days, until a small spoonful of your starter floats in a cup of water.
If you are having trouble getting your starter going, try feeding it every 12 hours instead.
Once your starter passes the float test, it is ready! Use some now to make some delicious bread or pancakes, and put the rest in the fridge.
Each time you use your starter, take it out of the fridge and feed it. Aim for at least once a week (but I’ve let mine go almost 2 weeks before 😬). I take my starter out, pour half into a bowl. I add 1/2c water and 1/2c of flour to the bowl and let it sit until it’s ready to make bread, and then I add 1/2c water and 1/2c flour to the jar and put it back in the fridge.
If your starter gets a brown liquid on top, that’s means it’s hungry! I usually pour that liquid off the top before I feed the starter again.
So go mix up a starter and let it start the souring process! Over the next few weeks we will be sharing some of our favorite sourdough recipes!
-Kayleigh
1 comment:
Thank you so much for this simple way to make starter. I've wanted to make sourdough bread for long and I even went to a local workshop but found it still too complicated. You've distilled down the process nicely for us. I too have something which you and other make like because you can make home made artisanal bread in one hour or one hour and some minutes. I have begun experimenting with the loaf and now make loaves for daily use too. It's fantastic because it's so quick and the crust is well, crusty, lol. Just google no knead in a hurry bread and you should come up with a recipe or two. The key is the time from preparation to baking is approx. 1 hour. Thank you again for the sourdough starter recipe.
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