Sourdough Success

Jan here, with a hard-won recipe success!

I've been experimenting with sourdough off and on for years. Check out this post here, and this two part post here and here.  Those earlier tries met with varied degrees of success, but the disappointments out-weighed the determination to keep pursuing sourdough perfection. *sigh*

But I decided to try one more time.

Living in the country is a new thing for me. I spent my first five years living in the parsonage of a country church in central Ohio...and spent the next fifty-five years trying to get back to the open spaces I loved during my early childhood. Believe me, my memory didn't deceive me! I love living here!

A red-breasted nuthatch in our front yard.

But living in the country has its challenges, like trying to get to the grocery store when winter storms cover the roads with ice and snow. Or not being able to stop by the store to grab that one ingredient I'm missing from the recipe I want to make tonight.

And our current situation means that many, many people are discovering that the isolation we enjoy in the country has become a way of life, even in the middle of the big cities. Empty grocery store shelves have become normal. 

A simple help in times like these is sourdough. If you have some basic ingredients on hand, you can make your own bread, even in the most dire situation. It's also a good skill to learn if you like to write historical novels...

So, here's what I've learned along the journey from sourdough failure to success:

1) I've learned that sourdough isn't that hard! I had been trying to over-think it. But sourdough (unlike most baking) is more art than science.

2) I've learned that sourdough is a living organism. I'm beginning to understand why some people name their sourdough starters! Once your starter is mature (and this will take several weeks,) you learn how it communicates. It tells you when it's hungry, it tells you when it's too dry (or too wet,) and rewards you with wonderful baked goods!

3) I've learned that you can start with someone else's sourdough recipe, but every kitchen is different! Different temperatures, different native yeasts floating around, different levels of humidity.

How can you make your own sourdough starter?

Easy-peasy lemon-squeezy!

1) Start with a clean glass or plastic jar (not metal,) like a one-quart canning jar. 

2) The next ingredient is flour. I found that rye flour works best to catch the yeast floating in the air. To get my starter up and running, I used one of these bags over a two week period. 

After you've gotten past the first week or so, you will want to use bread flour. I buy mine at Sam's club (it's from a local Montana grain mill.)

But remember - easy-peasy! You can use whatever flour you have on hand...except self-rising!

3) The third ingredient is water. Some people will say to use only filtered water, or only spring water. But I use tap water with no problem.

4) The fourth ingredient is time. Your sourdough starter will be up and running after a week, but it takes several weeks to mature into your best kitchen friend.

Start your sourdough starter by mixing 1/2 cup rye flour with water. How much water? Well, that depends on a lot of things.

This starter didn't have enough water:

This one does:

I've read that the basic flour/water ratio should be 2:1. But I've found that the humidity in your kitchen makes a huge difference. We live in a semi-arid part of the country, so I use a 2:1.75 ratio - almost 1:1. As you work with your starter, you'll discover its happy place as far as that ratio is concerned.

After you mix your flour and water, cover the jar loosely and set it out of the way. In the early stages, I like to use a coffee filter held on with a rubber band. After a week or so, I just set a lid on the jar loosely.

Now comes the hard part. After your sourdough starter has spent a day fermenting on your counter, discard all but 1/2 cup and mix in another feeding of rye flour and water. Do this for five to seven days. When you run out of rye flour, start using bread flour to feed the starter.

Yes, it's painful to discard all that flour and water...but you won't always do this. For these first few days, you're making room for your baby starter to grow. If you didn't discard the extra, you'd have quarts and gallons of starter taking over your kitchen! 

Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating.

After five to seven days - or maybe longer - your starter will begin to smell fruity/sour. That means it's working!

And after it starts working, you can begin to use it!

But what if something goes wrong?

One thing that can go wrong is that your jar isn't completely clean. It might have a bit of soap residue or whatever in it, and the starter can mold rather than ferment.

This is not pretty or safe. :-( Throw it away and start over.

Another thing that can happen (and it happens often - I don't have a picture, though) is that your starter can develop a brown watery layer on top. It seems to come from nowhere! But no worries. That liquid is called "hooch," and it appears when your starter is hungry. Pour off the brown liquid, then feed your starter. You might feed it again in a few hours, just to give it a boost.

A third thing that can happen is that you might want to go out of town someday, and leave your starter behind. Or maybe you don't want to bake EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. No problem. Your starter doesn't need constant care. Just stick it in the refrigerator (to slow down the growth rate) and feed it about once a week. You can even leave it for two or three weeks, and it will survive. Just be sure to feed it and let it get some of its vigor back before you try to bake with it.

The starter you have now is still young. 

You can make bread with your immature starter, and it will turn out fine - just not as beautiful as it will be when your starter matures.

These loaves are a bit flat, but the artisan loaf I tried turned out well:

I also made these biscuits with immature starter:

But if you remember, I mentioned that one of the ingredients of a successful sourdough starter is time. It takes weeks for a new starter to mature to the point where you can consistently produce a good loaf of bread.

I figure I'm about half-way to that perfect loaf of bread.

The goal: A mature starter

This is what a mature starter looks like - bubbly with a fruity odor:

I've been working on this starter since the middle of February, so about two months.

But there is a short cut!

You can get some mature starter from a friend who uses one. Or you can buy it! One on-line source is King Arthur Flour. 

And finally, the big question: where do I find recipes?

The King Arthur Flour website is a great place to start. They even have a sourdough tutorial here. 

There are also a lot of recipes on Pinterest, or you can do an internet search.

But my favorite place for recipes is this new cookbook I bought, written by a Mennonite baker. Her website is here.

And don't forget that learning to bake bread, especially sourdough bread, takes practice. And that's the part my dear husband loves!

What do you think? Will you become a sourdough aficionado?

Jan Drexler is an author by day who is addicted to counted cross stitch and sauntering through the Hills with her dear husband and their puppies - goofy corgi Jack and growing-fast border collie Sam. You can find Jan's books and other fun things on her website: www.JanDrexler.com.