Simply Sourdough

Sourdough is a wonder of nature. It was the first form of leavening used by bakers in Ancient Egypt, as long ago as 1500 BC. Ancient bakers used to preserve and store their yeast for bread making over long periods of time. This is called a sourdough starter. It was most commonly used to make Rye breads rise, but can be used with all types of flour and in all kinds of breads. Despite the availability of many types of leavening agents today, sourdough is still widely consumed because of its distinctive tangy taste and chewy texture.

In ancient Egypt bakers used sourdough starter to keep a supply of yeast alive and handy. They kept a pot of this live culture in a flour/water medium, and fed it daily or weekly so that the yeast remained alive and active. To understand how sourdough starter works, let’s look at how you can create a batch of starter using live yeast that is floating in the air. Yes, that’s right there is yeast all around us, we just have to capture it!

In a lot of ways sourdough is like us. It is a product of its environment. The sourdough I keep on my counter in Maine tastes and acts completely differently than a sourdough starter in San Fransisco. It is affected by elevation, humidity, age, and many other environmental factors. Some bakers have sourdough starters that are decades old. As long as you add some flour and water to feed it each week, your starter will remain stable, and tastes better and better the older it gets.

Here are a few tips to help you bring old-fashioned bread making into your home by starting your own sourdough starter. All you need is:
• A crockpot, ceramic container, plastic container, or a glass jar, with a loose-fitting lid or rubber band (any of these will work)
• A wooden spoon
• A piece of cloth (cheesecloth works well, but any clean cloth will due as long as it lets air in and keeps dust out)
• Some flour (preferably without any preservatives in it) and water

To start a culture, mix two cups of flour and two cups of water in a container. Lay a cloth, like cheesecloth or a clean piece of thin cloth, over the top and secure a rubber band around the rim of the container. Let it sit on the kitchen counter and wait as nature does its job. You see, there is wild yeast all around us in the air and some of this yeast will make its way to your flour/water mixture. It will then start growing and dividing. To help speed up this process, you can add an unwashed (organic) grape to your mixture. The white powdery residue on the outside of grapes is actually wild yeast. Yeast is present in many unwashed fruits, and can shorten the amount time it takes for your culture to start growing.

After 24 hours, you should pour off about a cup of the mixture and feed it with another cup of flour and another cup of water. In a few days, the mixture will become frothy as the yeast population grows. Around this time, you will begin to notice that signature sour smell. This is caused when the wild yeast eats the sugar from the flour, and creates carbon dioxide, lactic acid, and lactobacilli bacteria. (Don’t worry lactobacilli are good bacteria, also found in yogurt, that help our bodies fight off the bad bacteria). All of this is what gives sourdough its unique, delicious flavor.

Leave the starter on the kitchen counter for five days, feeding it a tablespoon of flour every day or two, and stirring it every day or two. Over the course of a week, the starter will become a thick liquid, like pancake batter. It will turn a slightly yellowish color.

At this point you can either keep your starter on the counter and feed it every day, or store it in the refrigerator to slow down the yeast. If you refrigerate your starter, you will only have to feed it a tablespoon of flour every 5 or 6 days.

If you’re short on flour, or just want to experiment a little, you can also feed your starter leftover cooked grains, like plain rice or even uncooked rolled oats.

If your starter starts to smell undesirable, or if it begins to develop a dark greyish discoloration on the top, just discard all the starter that is on the top of the jar and save a tablespoon from the bottom of the jar. Place this small amount in a new jar, fill the jar with 1 cup flour and 1 cup water, and start the process over. This is called “sweetening the pot.” A sourdough can be almost always be reinvigorated, as long as you can find a healthy spoonful at the bottom of your jar.

When it comes time to bake bread, add a cup of this live culture to the dough to provide the yeast needed to leaven the bread. Anytime you use your starter to bake, replenish the pot by adding back an equal amount of flour and water as you have taken out, and continue regular feeding.