Does the thought of starting your own Sourdough Starter from scratch make you break out in cold sweat? Don’t let it because it’s EASY!
Looking at the blog’s stats, there’s a constant stream of people who pop in here searching “sourdough starter” and it is becoming apparent that it may be helpful for me to finally get one written up.
Instead of starting an experiment “from scratch” and sort of poking my way around the technique and making a lot of guesses, good or bad, in the process, I figured it would be more logical to take a very well researched and detailed account and simply follow along, giving an illustrated account of what’s happening in my kitchen.
After doing a fair bit of searching, I have chosen to follow a formula designed by Debra Wink who is not only an excellent home baker but also a trained microbiologist. The combination of interests seems to me the best source of information to get both the “what’s actually going on in that paste” and “this makes great bread”.
The formula that she created, with help from a number of other sourdough enthusiasts, follows this basic philosophy:
A simple flour and water paste can be made into a sourdough starter but offers a good environment for much more than the specific strain of yeast and bacteria we desire; these other organisms can impede the growth of our “friendly” critters and make the actual development of a viable starter take much longer than it needs be.
Primarily, the formula introduces an acid, in the form of pineapple juice, which immediately lowers the pH of the flour paste to levels appreciated by the yeast and lactobacilli, the two friendly critters we want to cultivate. This jump starts their development – although the yeast will likely not awaken for several days yet – and get you to the end product you want much faster by skipping the confusing 1st stage growth of other bacteria, the foul smells and other distractions you might see in a plain flour-and-water medium.
For a VASTLY more in-depth description of “what the heck is really going on in there”, I’d suggest you take some time to read Debra’s blog posts on TheFreashLoaf, located here (part 1) and here (part 2). Be sure to also read the comments/Q&A under these posts as much more info and FAQs you might be wondering about are addressed there.
For this project I’m following the instructions in Debra Wink’s post over on TheFreshloaf.com . Please make sure to read it and even print out a copy so you can follow along. I’ll also build two versions of the starter at once: one with juice and one with plain water, side by side, to make comparison easier.
I also thought a Starter Step-by-Step would be helpful for those people taking part in the Bread Bakers’s Apprentice Challenge (who don’t already have a starter going) to have at hand as we near the Sourdough section (albeit that’s not due until December). Because you do want to give your starter some time to mature, it may be a good idea to fire this puppy up at least a month or two ahead. And it also gives you a starter to play with and make great bread, even before you get to the Sourdough recipes in BBA. Although Reinhart has instructions in the BBA for starting a starter (which he incorrectly calls “barm”) there have been problems reported with those instructions. This is, in part, what prompted Debra Wink to do research noted above.
But what we have here is, it turns out, straight forward and simple to follow. Let’s get started, shall we?
I’ll include the specific bits I’m following from Debra’s instructions as we go, that will be the RED TEXT while my own running commentary will be in regular text style. I will also split this up into separate pages for each day so it’s not too gigantic a post.
Day One: Getting it Together
Day Two: Mid-day Surprise
Day Three : Trading Places
Day Four: Going on a New Diet
Day Five: Waking Up
Day Six: Breakfast of Champions
Day Seven: The kids are all growed up
Starting a Starter: Final Thoughts
Want to point friends to this Starter info? Copy this easy-to-remember short link back to this tutorial:
http://bit.ly/StarterFromScratch
DeQuincy Gardens
Since I started the Bread Baker’s Apprentice I have been actively reading about sourdough starters. Very curious where your travels take you with this. I have actually started my first one but it ended up developing a very strong almost vinegar smell. Do you have any idea what could have caused that? I tried again and it seemed to work fine and has a good smell.
The acidity in the flour soup is brought on by bacteria, including the ones we want, Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis. This is actually something you want to happen as the acid production is what lowers the pH to a level the yeast we want like. Had you kept the first batch going, it probably would have evened itself out once the yeast got active and the symbiotic relationship between or desired bacteria (the lacto) and the yeasts got more settled in and they were better able to control, along with your feedings, the environment that’s best suited for the pair.
But if you started it all up again and you’ve got past that, then it’s somewhat academic. We’d need someone like Debra Wink in here to get into the nitty gritty and explain exactly who did what in your previous batch.
I’ve been using KAF website as my only source of education/recipes.
Their starter method, which can be found here
(http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/start-your-own-sourdough-starter-recipe),
is basically 2c water to 2c flour, active dry yeast, and sugar. let it
ferment for 2-5 days, stir down, and refridge.
Well, I thought this was strange, so I’ve been giving it daily
feedings of 4oz water to 1c (5oz/141g) flour (after discarding 1c).
Its been going good actually, nice aroma, but it’s very thin. Like, a
touch thicker than milk. Should I be pouring off the alcohol? I’ve
been thinking of storing in the fridge and maintaining per your
schedule, but most of their bread recipes call for “1 cup fed starter”
(8oz) . Does yours have that much?
Thanks,
Nick
Hi Nick,
Hi Nick,
I won’t go into the issues I would see in the KAF starter formulat and how it doesn’t even juve with Jeffrey Hamelman’s routine – and he’s KAF’s master baker. So I’ll just tackle the following.
It looks like you have a couple of issues you’re facing here:
1) the starter is way too thin and
2) you’re getting hootch/alcohol
Let’s look at #1:
Since you say you built the starter with 2 c of water and 2 c of flour, your actual starter’s hydration is very close to 200%, a seriously wet starter. 1 c of water weighs 237 grams where 1 cup of flour is ~127 grams, so this ratio of water to flour is 186%, way too wet.
#2:
Although you’re reducing that starter to 1 cup, you’re not feeding it enough to give the yeasties enough food to keep going. And hungry yeasties make hootch.
To a cup of that very wet starter (about 228g) you’re adding 118g of water and 141g of flour. This is a feed ratio of 1: 0.5 : 0.7 (about) which is very low. We want to see at minimum a 1:1:1 ratio and better still 1:2:2.
Here’s what you could do to solve both issues.
Take 10g of your current starter (which is an unknown hydration but we know ‘too wet”) and give it 20 grams water and 20g flour. Although we don’t truly know the hydration of that 10 grams, it’s going into a larger amount of flour/water at 100% hydration so eventually it will even out well.
Now set this 50g of starter on the counter and see when it reaches double size and when it (maybe) gets even larger. If it can do this in about 4 – 6 hours, your starter is good and lively. If it needs 12 hours, to peak, it was still a little weak – and it’s a good thing it got a good feeding.
When the starter has peaked – meaning it’s reached it’s max and juuuuust started to decline – reduce it again. In a new small jar, take 10 grams of this and add 20 g of both water (stir) and flour. Again, we have 50 grams of 100% (or close enough) starter.
If you prefer to keep a 125% starter (say your fave recipes want 125% starter) then you’d do 20 grams flour and 24g water.
With a larger 1:2:2 feed, your starter shouldn’t go hungry and develop hootch. You’ll also be keeping a more logical 100% (or mabe 125%) hydration starter which isn’t as runny and more likely to work in most recipes. And finally, by reducing your starter to about 50g, you won’t need to keep – and feed – 2 cups of starter.
I hope this helps out!
Paul-
Thanks for the info! The starter did indeed seem very weird. Coincidentally I tried making one of their loaves with it (rising right now), and the dough turned out to be very wet. Had to had a lot of flour to make it workable. We’ll see how it turns out.
I did a 1:2:2 feeding just now. Unfortunately I’m going out of town Friday, should I keep feeding it daily then on Friday throw it in the fridge?
Thanks!