After a few emails from people feeling daunted about spawning their own sourdough cultures, I created a simple photographic summary which you can follow. I included, along with the photos, an in-depth outline to clarify any obscurities that you might encounter.
I encourage you to start your culture now. Follow the directions below, and in about a week, you should be well on your way to the fabulous world of wild yeast risen bread. It's not difficult, costly or time consuming. For now, all you need is flour, water, and a reliable scale.
Have a look:
SUPPLY LIST
- Bottled spring water
- Medium or whole rye flour (not light), I use Arrowhead Mills or Bob's Red Mill
- All purpose flour, I use King Arthur
Day one
Weigh your empty jar, write the weight on the jar with a Sharpie. You will see why we did this tomorrow.
Place the jar on the scale. Tare the scale to zero. Mix to a smooth paste: 50g h2o, 25g rye flour, 25g all purpose flour. Put in a warm spot in the kitchen for 24 hours.
Day two
This was my starter after a mere 17 hours, and I thought I might share. Your starter may look like this, but it's unlikely, unless you live next door to a bakery. The reason mine is already active is because I bake bread often, so the presence of wild yeast in the air is greater than the average household that does not bake bread. Your starter may not look much different than when you mixed everything together the first day. Perhaps there are a couple of air pockets in the paste, maybe it's a bit frothy. Whatever the case, you are right on track.
Before you feed your starter, there is one other thing, aside from the appearance, that you should be looking at. Smell. Have a sniff. Mine was moderately sour smelling, pleasant, and with overtones of rye. The nose of your starter is something that you should check in on regularly. It should smell crisp and vinegary, though in the beginning, there will only be hints of these notes. When your starter is mature, it can burn your nose if you take a big whiff, not gravely, but like vinegar might if you shove your nose in it. It should not smell foul or funky or unpleasant at all. Remember, this is a fermented food, so it should smell pickled and sour. But there is a difference between sour and just plain gross.
OK. Its been 24 hours, you are ready for your first feeding. Put the jar on the scale. The number there is the weight of the jar PLUS the starter, of course.
Now you know why we wrote the number on the jar. Pour off or scoop out (into an awaiting container) enough culture so that the jar, with starter, weighs the gram amount of the empty jar PLUS 50g. For instance, my empty jar weighs 258g. I will scoop out enough culture so that my jar, with culture, will weigh 308g. See, I want 50g of starter to remain.
Once you make weight (50g of starter), you can safely toss the excess culture.
Toss this.
Now, tare the scale to zero. Add in 50g of bottled h2o, room temp, 25g all purpose flour and 25g rye flour.
Mix thoroughly and apply the lid.
Note: From here on out you will feed your starter every 12 hours, so pick a time when you will be awake for both feedings. i.e., 8 am and 8pm.
Here are a few more photos of my starter after just 21.5 hours. Pretty remarkable, but a little unfair. When you bake bread at home, there are more wild yeasts in the air than a home that does not bake bread, so a new starter has many more yeasts to capture in my home, which is what begins the fermentation process. Once you get your starter going and bake regularly, you will build the amount of wild yeast in the air, and this sort of crazy fermentation will happen for you quickly as well.
Notice how it is getting even more frothy than this morning, which denotes some serious fermentation happening.
OK. Enough showing off. And don't worry, yours will eventually look like this if it does not already.
Day three
You should have fed your starter twice yesterday. If you didn't, shame on you. It is crucial in the beginning stages of fermentation that you feed your starter twice daily, at 12 hours apart. Once it takes hold and predictably rises (and falls - the starter will puff up a couple of hours after you feed it and stay that way for several hours, before falling back down again), then you can play around with how often you feed it. But we will get into maintaining your culture and the options you have with that later on.
OK, today, this third day, marks our third and fourth feedings. I am going to show you what mine looked like on this third day, but go back to the photos above and keep following those feeding instructions for the next few days.
Here are the pictures after my feedings on day three:
Day 3: 6 hours after first feeding
Day 3: 10 hours after first feeding
This is what my starter looked like every day for the next six days, predictably rising and falling.
Fallen starter: this means that the culture has eaten all of the sugar in the flour. Time to feed it again.
Days four through nine
Every subsequent day my starter grew more 'tangy' in the nose, and it remained as active as the photos above. It also got thicker as the days progressed, and showed a network of gluten structure. I had to eventually scoop it out, whereas the first day it was a looser consistency that was easily poured.
After the 9th day of double daily feedings, provided you live in a climate of moderate temperature, you can reduce your feedings to once a day (in warmer temperatures, keep feeding the starter twice daily). You can also refrigerate your starter at this point (see information about this just below) if you plan to bake only periodically.
You will also change the gram ratio of flours to 1/3 rye and 2/3 white flour in your feedings. I feed my starter 13g of white flour and 7g of rye flour. You can certainly keep going with the 50/50 ratio of white and rye flours if you would like.
Now you see how simple it is to grow a culture. I used to share the same fear about growing and maintaining one, just like you. I had heard all of the urban legends, about how sourdough cultures were some fragile thing that would die dramatically (cue thunder and lightening) then come back to haunt you if one of multiple daily feedings was missed, or if you were one gram off in your measurements. I had also heard that you would have to spend a small fortune on flour, elevating it from a tedious to a costly pursuit. I'm happy to report that none of this is true. Bread baking and maintaining my starter, contrarily, has been one of the happiest choices I made in my cooking life, and I encourage you to start yours as soon as possible so that you can have fresh baked bread whenever your life calls for it. In my own life, that's pretty much all of the time.
Great, I followed your advice and it worked. Now how do I feed and maintain my starter?
My Starter is rising and falling quickly when it's hot out, should I worry?
I feed my starter every 12 hours in very hot weather because when the temperature rises, the bacteria in the starter eats the sugars in the flour a lot quicker than when it's cooler. It has been hot in L.A., so, I feed it once in the morning and once at night. If it's uber hot, I will feed it 3x in a day. This is not unusual.
Where do I store my starter?
I keep mine on the counter, next to the scale and my jugs of flour. I also keep a small 'dump container' handy, just a cheap plastic takeout container, where I scrape the exhausted starter and can easily pitch when it's full. You have to keep your setup efficient and accessible. If you have to dig out flour, scale, dump bucket and starter from a million different places, it will discourage you from keeping your bread baking endeavor alive. As well, now that my starter is powerful, I don't have to keep it in a very warm spot. When you begin your starter, keeping it in a warm place helps it to take hold.
Help! I have travel plans! My starter will die!
Don't worry. It won't die. Your starter is resilient. This post was designed to make you realize just how so. OK, travel plans: If I plan to go out of town, I pop my culture in the fridge and there it happily awaits, unscathed, until I come back. Why? Because colder temperatures retard the starter just like proofing loaves. The slower it eats the sugars in the flour, the less often it needs to be fed. When you return, simply resume feedings as you normally would.
A few key notes to ensure success
Water:
Begin your starter on bottled water. The wild yeast starter is very sensitive to chlorine in tap water. The chlorine can actually kill the bacteria that is required to grow your starter. I just used inexpensive Trader Joe's bottled mountain/spring water at 89 cents a jug. You don't have to use Evian. Once your starter is good and strong, you can switch to filtered tap, or even use tap water that you've let sit out for 24 hours, as this allows the chlorine to dissipate. For the record, I use water from my Brita filter with great success.
The Vessel:
Use a pint jar for this project, nothing larger. I found that when I used a really big jar, my starter did not grow as well, in fact, it didn't grow at all. It took me weeks to grow my starter, and then I started tweaking things, like, where in the kitchen I stored it (see just below), what sort of water I used (see above), and oddly, what size vessel I used. It was when I put my starter in a more appropriately-sized vessel that it began to take hold.
Where to store it:
Put it in a warm place in the kitchen. I stored my new starter in a cabinet just above the fridge. The warmth from the refrigerator's motor migrates upward and warms the interior of the cabinet. The perfect environment for my starter. I also use the cabinet as a proofing box in very cold months. If you don't have a cabinet above the fridge, ON the fridge itself is a good spot. It's pretty warm up there.
Flour:
I use King Arthur all purpose flour and either Arrowhead Mills or Bob's Red Mill medium (or dark) rye flour. Bob's is cheaper. And don't use light rye. It doesn't have enough nutrients, and the nutrients are what help your starter grow. Don't use cheap supermarket flour. It defeats the purpose of making artisan bread. Always buy the best quality flour that you can afford. King Arthur and Bob's Red Mill, which I use in the baking of my loaves as well, are inexpensive choices.
Quantity:
You don't have to maintain 100g of starter, in fact, I don't. See the guidelines below for further explanation.
How to maintain your starter
You have a couple of options here in the maintenance of your starter. Here are some scenarios that will help you along.
Before I continue reading, my starter is not as active as yours, and its been a week, what should I do?
The same as you have been. Feed it every day, every 12 hours. And make sure that you 1) use bottled water to start, 2) measure things as accurately as you can 3) store the starter in a warm place 4) use an appropriately sized jar. For the amount that we are making here, I recommend using a pint jar, nothing larger.
Before I continue reading, my starter is not as active as yours, and its been a week, what should I do?
The same as you have been. Feed it every day, every 12 hours. And make sure that you 1) use bottled water to start, 2) measure things as accurately as you can 3) store the starter in a warm place 4) use an appropriately sized jar. For the amount that we are making here, I recommend using a pint jar, nothing larger.
I feed my starter every 24 hours when the temperature is cooler, and increase the feedings to twice a day (every 12 hours) two days to three days before I know I will bake bake bread. For example, if I know that I will bake bread on Wednesday, I will feed my starter once a day on Thursday, Friday, Saturday. On Sunday, I will begin feeding it twice a day, once in the morning, once at night, twice again Monday and on Tuesday I will start my levain,
which is the preferment for the bread I will bake Wednesday. If I don't need a preferment, I will simply feed it twice on Tuesday, and thus, my starter will be at peak strength Wednesday when I want to make bread. If you plan to bake bread a couple of times a week or more, by all means, feed it every 12 hours so that it is ready to go at a moments notice.
My Starter is rising and falling quickly when it's hot out, should I worry?
I feed my starter every 12 hours in very hot weather because when the temperature rises, the bacteria in the starter eats the sugars in the flour a lot quicker than when it's cooler. It has been hot in L.A., so, I feed it once in the morning and once at night. If it's uber hot, I will feed it 3x in a day. This is not unusual.
Where do I store my starter?
I keep mine on the counter, next to the scale and my jugs of flour. I also keep a small 'dump container' handy, just a cheap plastic takeout container, where I scrape the exhausted starter and can easily pitch when it's full. You have to keep your setup efficient and accessible. If you have to dig out flour, scale, dump bucket and starter from a million different places, it will discourage you from keeping your bread baking endeavor alive. As well, now that my starter is powerful, I don't have to keep it in a very warm spot. When you begin your starter, keeping it in a warm place helps it to take hold.
Oh my GOD! I forgot to feed my starter for two days I think it's dead!
It's not dead. But try not to forget in the future. If you are not going to bake frequently, I encourage you to keep it in the fridge. Trust me, it likes it in there. As for your forgotten starter, just begin feeding it again as soon as possible. It will show signs of life quickly.
Geez, I added 2 grams too much water today and yesterday I added 5g too much flour, did I screw it up?
No, you didn't. This is not an exact science. Just continue to feed your starter, trying to achieve the gram weight indicated in the formula as closely as you can. If you're a gram or two off, nothing bad will happen at all.
Speaking of water, I used tap, is that OK?
In the beginning, I found that my new starter preferred bottled water. It was a baby, and more sensitive to the environment. But as your starter matures, you can use filtered tap from here on out, like, from your Brita pitcher. This is what I use. If you don't have filtered tap, use regular tap that has been sitting out for 24 hours. The chlorine will dissipate if the water is left to sit out for a few hours. And it is chlorine which challenges the growth of the bacteria in your starter. We don't want that.
Speaking of water, I used tap, is that OK?
In the beginning, I found that my new starter preferred bottled water. It was a baby, and more sensitive to the environment. But as your starter matures, you can use filtered tap from here on out, like, from your Brita pitcher. This is what I use. If you don't have filtered tap, use regular tap that has been sitting out for 24 hours. The chlorine will dissipate if the water is left to sit out for a few hours. And it is chlorine which challenges the growth of the bacteria in your starter. We don't want that.
Shoot, I was supposed to feed my starter at the 12 hour mark, but didn't get home in time and now its been 14. What should I do.
Just feed your starter as you normally would. I feed mine in the morning and at night, or once a day, dependent upon where I am on my bread schedule, and how hot it is. What time? Hm, who can say. The point is, it got fed. It's happy. And so is yours. Don't fret.
Help! I have travel plans! My starter will die!
Don't worry. It won't die. Your starter is resilient. This post was designed to make you realize just how so. OK, travel plans: If I plan to go out of town, I pop my culture in the fridge and there it happily awaits, unscathed, until I come back. Why? Because colder temperatures retard the starter just like proofing loaves. The slower it eats the sugars in the flour, the less often it needs to be fed. When you return, simply resume feedings as you normally would.
I don't plan to bake very often, maybe once a month.
That's fine. You can keep your starter in the fridge if you only want to bake periodically. Lets say that the last week of every month your grandmother comes to visit and she must have freshly baked bread. Fine. Just keep your starter in the fridge, and then 3 full days before she is due to arrive, take the starter out and feed it twice a day (every 12 hours) for the three consecutive days before her arrival. On the fourth day, you can bake bread with it. When granny is safely on the bus back home, feed your starter, then pop it in the fridge after a feeding. You don't have to think about it again till the week that she comes back. Just be sure that if you do plan to use the refrigeration method, you plan your baking in advance so that you have at least three full days of 12-hour spaced feedings before bake day so that the starter is running at optimum strength.
I want to bake once a week like you, but damn, it's expensive to feed my starter twice a day!
It doesn't have to be costly. Remember, you only need to feed it once a day if the temperature is moderate, increasing the feedings to twice a day just a couple of days before you bake bread. Aside from that, I keep a very modest amount of starter going. Did you notice the small amount in the jar pictured above? Here's what I do:
I only feed my starter(s) 20g of flour in a given feeding so that I maintain only about 60g of total starter at a given time (20g of water + 20g of flour + 20g seed starter = 60g of total starter; and just a note, I use 1/3 rye flour and 2/3 all purpose, that's 13g all purpose and 7g rye). That's only one spoonful of all purpose and one smaller spoonful of rye, once a day most months out of the year, and twice a day if its hot outside.
That's fine. You can keep your starter in the fridge if you only want to bake periodically. Lets say that the last week of every month your grandmother comes to visit and she must have freshly baked bread. Fine. Just keep your starter in the fridge, and then 3 full days before she is due to arrive, take the starter out and feed it twice a day (every 12 hours) for the three consecutive days before her arrival. On the fourth day, you can bake bread with it. When granny is safely on the bus back home, feed your starter, then pop it in the fridge after a feeding. You don't have to think about it again till the week that she comes back. Just be sure that if you do plan to use the refrigeration method, you plan your baking in advance so that you have at least three full days of 12-hour spaced feedings before bake day so that the starter is running at optimum strength.
Two refrigerated starters, fed once a month...or so
I want to bake once a week like you, but damn, it's expensive to feed my starter twice a day!
It doesn't have to be costly. Remember, you only need to feed it once a day if the temperature is moderate, increasing the feedings to twice a day just a couple of days before you bake bread. Aside from that, I keep a very modest amount of starter going. Did you notice the small amount in the jar pictured above? Here's what I do:
I only feed my starter(s) 20g of flour in a given feeding so that I maintain only about 60g of total starter at a given time (20g of water + 20g of flour + 20g seed starter = 60g of total starter; and just a note, I use 1/3 rye flour and 2/3 all purpose, that's 13g all purpose and 7g rye). That's only one spoonful of all purpose and one smaller spoonful of rye, once a day most months out of the year, and twice a day if its hot outside.
Sounds good, but I'm not only baking from the Tartine Bread book, and some bread books & websites call for 100g or more starter in the formula.
If a formula that requires a larger volume of starter piques my interest, I simply build the starter to increase its volume, instead of casting off the starter during feedings. For instance, we keep 50g of starter using the method I just explained above. If a formula calls for 100g, I would feed my starter with 50g of flour and 50g of water, which will equal 100g. Remember though, you also want to have some left over, right? You don't want to use all of your starter, then you have nothing leftover for future baking. Here's what I would do: So, I would pull 25g off of my starter and begin a new one, this becomes my 'mother culture', which I would feed as usual. And the remaining starter, 75g, I would simply feed 75g of water and 75g of flour, which would equal about 150g, ample for the 100g called for in your next bread project.
Why?
Well, preferments allow you to control the amount of zing in your bread. Using a large volume of starter (say, 100g) is going to make your bread pretty tangy. The mark of a successful artisan baker in France is an imperceptible 'sourness'. The French think that American sourdoughs are far too sour. There is nothing wrong with wanting a more sour dough, but there is a huge and interesting bread culture out there to research, and just like any other form of art, every creator has his or her own idea of what qualifies their art (bread). If you have ever eaten injera at an Ethiopian restaurant, you will agree that they revere the tangy quality in their flat breads. Injera, incidentally, is one of my favorite breads. So you see, every culture has their own idea of what the finished flavor of a bread should be. Not right or wrong. Just different.
The starter that I just taught you about is based on Susan's starter over at Wild Yeast Blog, who has some terrific bread formulae. I used her website as a learning tool when I began bread baking. Although Susan's formula calls for the eventual weening of rye from the starter so that you end up with one that it is 100% white flour. This is where I deviated. I still feed my starter 33% rye and 67% white flour, because I like a whole grain foundation for my breads. A rye-based starter is also pretty fool proof because of the high nutrient and fermentable sugar content in rye flour. I will not go into an exhaustive account of bacterial development and the different acids produced in sourdough cultures because I want to create a post that allows an achievable goal so that you can begin making bread as soon as possible.
If a formula that requires a larger volume of starter piques my interest, I simply build the starter to increase its volume, instead of casting off the starter during feedings. For instance, we keep 50g of starter using the method I just explained above. If a formula calls for 100g, I would feed my starter with 50g of flour and 50g of water, which will equal 100g. Remember though, you also want to have some left over, right? You don't want to use all of your starter, then you have nothing leftover for future baking. Here's what I would do: So, I would pull 25g off of my starter and begin a new one, this becomes my 'mother culture', which I would feed as usual. And the remaining starter, 75g, I would simply feed 75g of water and 75g of flour, which would equal about 150g, ample for the 100g called for in your next bread project.
Because I primarily work with the formulae from the Tartine Bread book, all I ever require is 1 tablespoon of starter for a given formula since Chad's loaves are based on the building of a levain (a levain is a preferment built from your starter that is used to raise your bread). So the meager amount is ample for me to work with. When I begin to work with other doughs and formulae, I will take the requisite amounts into consideration when I feed my starter. It is worth it to note that many of the artisan bread books that I have rely on preferments, which begin with only a small measure of sourdough culture.
Why?
Well, preferments allow you to control the amount of zing in your bread. Using a large volume of starter (say, 100g) is going to make your bread pretty tangy. The mark of a successful artisan baker in France is an imperceptible 'sourness'. The French think that American sourdoughs are far too sour. There is nothing wrong with wanting a more sour dough, but there is a huge and interesting bread culture out there to research, and just like any other form of art, every creator has his or her own idea of what qualifies their art (bread). If you have ever eaten injera at an Ethiopian restaurant, you will agree that they revere the tangy quality in their flat breads. Injera, incidentally, is one of my favorite breads. So you see, every culture has their own idea of what the finished flavor of a bread should be. Not right or wrong. Just different.
Some final words
On that note, I must admit, while I adore the Tartine Bread book, it is not as comprehensive as many bread books out there, so I did a lot of research during this trek, and I continue to increase my knowledge using other author's books to this day. Tartine Bread book is a wonderful resource, but it is only one resource, and you should try to educate yourself from as many points of view as you can, so you can gain a comprehensive understanding of bread. If you are anything like me, you will begin to build your library with bread books that will teach you everything you need to know about fermentation and wild yeast foundational breads. The Tartine Bread book is a beautiful resource to have in your repertoire, but I encourage you to also acquire Bread, by Jeffrey Hamelman, to really understand the undertaking of your new sourdough life. Peter Reinhart is another great author and bread guru who really gets into to whole grain bread baking in his Whole Grain Breads book. He is the author of the fabulous Bread Baker's Apprentice as well, which, like Hamelman's book, will help you immensely in the beginning of your path. In fact, these two author's you will rely on for the duration of your bread life, because you can never know too much about the art of baking bread. Daniel Leader is one of my personal favorites. His book, Local Breads details his incredible journey with bread and is an indispensable volume in my library. In fact, his first book, Bread Alone, was my very first bread book 10 years ago, maybe more. He operates a fabulous bakery in New York called Bread Alone Bakery, which you can and should visit if you're on the east coast. Maggie Glezer's Artisan Breads is also a fun volume that cherry picks some of the better loaves from artisan bakers in America, and the photographs are beautiful. I have made many loaves from her book with great success.
While I have a few, I don't usually use books whose formulae rely on commercial yeasts, because it's contrary to why I began baking bread to begin with. It might seem faster to use commercial yeast, but it's not as rewarding and the health benefits are just not present as they are voluminous in breads that make the use of wild yeast cultures. Nonetheless, I have had marvelous success in transforming some interesting formulae that use commercial yeast into breads that can be made using my wild yeast culture, and with a little trial and education about how your starter works, so can you. So, it's nice to have those books on the shelf that are designed to draw interest of people who don't necessarily want to get into bed with a wild yeast starter, just for the sake of ideas. Jim Lahey's My Bread, the baker who capitalizes on the 'no-knead' phenomenon these days, and Nancy Silverton's