Sourdough Starter Made Simple
Filed under: Cooking, Easy Recipes, Healthy Eating, Save Money, Simplify Life
There is nothing to compare to the tangy taste and chewy texture of sourdough bread. Buying a loaf of it in the grocery store will set you back $3-$6 depending on the brand. You can make that some bread at home — it’s simple. Making sourdough bread from scratch takes time and some patience, but it is easy.
First, in case you don’t know, sourdough bread uses wild yeast instead of store bought yeast to make the bread rise. The sourdough starter captures and feeds the wild yeast. It takes longer to rise since the wild yeast isn’t as vigorous as store bought, on the other hand the long fermentation allows the bread to really develop that unique taste and texture.
We start with the starter. To make a good and strong sourdough starter, we start with two simple ingredients — flour and water. You put 4 ounces of each in a bowl. Here’s the catch — that’s ounces as in weight, not ounces as in volume. Water is heavier than flour so 4 ounces of water is like a half of cup, maybe and 4 ounces of flour is over a cup full. The sour (the sourdough starter) needs lots of food, so you need lots of flour. You mix the two ingredients, cover with plastic wrap and let it sit for two days. After that you’ll need a kitchen scale to help you with the feeding the sour. (Once you have the hang of the look and feel of the right amount of water and flour to sour, you can fore go the scale, but it is handy for all bread making, so spend the $25 if you don’t have one.) To feed the sour use 1 part sour (it will take over your kitchen if you don’t discard some of it), 2 parts water and 3 parts flour. So, for instance, you decide to use 4 ounces of sour. That means you need 8 ounces of water and 12 ounces of flour. That is a lot, by the way. You will find that you get tired of swirling sourdough starter down your drain and quickly shift to 1 ounce of sour to 2 ounces of water to 3 ounces of flour.
You have to feed it every day, or store it in the fridge for use on the weekends. You can easily store the sour in the fridge for three weeks without worry. To make bread on the weekend, take the sour out on Thursday night. Leave it to sit and warm to room temperature until Friday evening. Feed it like usual. Saturday evening you’ll be ready to bake!
What kind of sourdough bread to make is the next question. There are tons of recipes out there, so experiment and see which one you like and find easy. The best sourdough recipes call for overnight, in the refrigerator, fermentation. This allows the bread ample time to rise and ferment and develop the distinctive flavor and texture. There are some shortcut sourdough recipes out there that use yeast in addition to the sourdough starter. These are fine, but you will lose almost all of the sour taste. It still makes lovely bread that tastes good, but it is nowhere near real sourdough bread.