I haven't posted in a quite a while. Since Habib has recently ventured into the mystical and moody world of sourdough baking, and I have recently gotten the urge to start a small indoor herb and vegetable garden, I decided to impart some well learned wisdom on growing things.
Sourdough Starters
A sourdough culture is a combination of the natural yeast that exists on wheat and in the air and the much beloved lactobacillus bacteria, the kind found in yogurt. To grow them, most people use a process where they mix dough and water, and keep throwing away half, and adding new flour and water to replace. I tried this, and it works. However, I felt decidedly annoyed about needing to throw away so much flour to get my culture, and thought surely, there must be a better way!!
Well, there is, and it worked for me several times so I'm going to share it.
You'll first need a clean glass jar. Add to the jar 2 Tbs of flour (same flour as you'll using for your bread, i.e. if you're making whole wheat bread, use whole wheat flour), and 2 Tbs of water. Get some plain yogurt, and add a 1/4 tsp of yogurt as well. Mix properly until the flour and water are well mixed and no clumps remain. This is useful as it'll prevent the mixture from separating later on.
Only if you are in summer and it's pretty warm, and/or the jar is in a pretty warm spot (not in front of an A/C for ex.) feed the jar twice per day. Otherwise feed it once per day.
Everyday, around the same time, add to the jar 1-2 Tbs of flour and the same amount of water. Mix it well. In 2 weeks you'll have about 1-2 cups of starter culture. It should look fairly frothy at this point. You can keep going or start baking, up to you.
Two days before bake day, take 1/2 cup of the starter and put aside, the rest put in the fridge for future bakes. For the 1/2, place in a bowl, add a 1/4 cup of flour and another of water the first day and cover loosely. The next day do the same. On bake day you should have around 1 1/2 cups of starter. Enough for any loaf. If you're baking additional loaves, take as much starter aside as you need.
For future bakes, take the starter out of the fridge, double in quantity with flour and water and leave outside for at least a day. Then split in half, one use for baking, feeding it 2 days in a row with a 1/4 cup flour and another water as mentioned earlier, and put the rest back in the fridge.
If your starter separates into brownish water at the top and dough on the bottom, you can either re-mix it, or (if it's really bothering you), carefully throw out the water on the top and scoop out any remaining water. Then pour out the starter into a bowl, clean and dry the jar well, and pour it back in.
If you get black mold, clearly orange water, or any other suspicious color beside beige and brown, throw it out and start over from scratch.
Sometimes your sourdough culture can get too specialized or inbred. Once a year, I suggest making a new batch, and mixing it with the old. Introduce some fresh healthy competition.
Thanks for sharing :)
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