The starter

What should be a festering pot of things that make you very sick is actually a symbiotic relationship that turns carbs into such complex and tasty acids. This is a fairly easy process that involves mixing flour with water, pouring most of it away the next day before adding more, and takes about a week until it's ready to bake with.

A mature starter works because of wild yeasts and lactic acid bacteria (LAB). Both the yeasts and bacteria release enzymes that break down the flour into various sugars. They both feed off these sugars but they prefer different types and don't need to compete for food. Yeasts like sucrose and glucose, LABs prefer maltose.

There are many many more other harmful bacteria (like e.coli) competing for those sugars in the flour but these will die off in the maturing of the starter. This is where the symbiotic relationship of the flour and LABs kicks in. 

Yeasts produce ethanol and the LABs produce lactic acid. Yeasts can cope with high levels of lactic acid and LABs can cope with high levels of ethanol, so neither poisons the other. All the other bad stuff will die because of either the alcohol or acid or both. This leaves the tiny proportion of yeasts and LABs in the initial mix to exponentially grow until the sugars in the flour are used up.

This hive of complexity is surprisingly easy to make and is very resilient to neglect once it gets going. People have revived starter mixes from Egyptian times so don't worry if you forget to feed it for a couple of days or so. 

It is important though to do it properly for the first week until you build the yeasts and LABs that'll keep it good for the rest of your days.

We need to talk about flour. For years it was thought that the yeasts in a sourdough starter came from the air and you'll still see that quoted on a lot on various sourdough websites and books. It then transpired that in fact they came from the surface of the wheat and were ground into the flour when it was milled. To complicate matters further it seems that later studies show many do indeed come from the air. The situation now seems to be that most come from the flour but a few come from the air.

Every starter is different because of the combination of wild yeasts and LABs and your starter will directly yet subtly affect the taste of the final loaf. You don't get to decide what yeasts and various LABs get into your starter but since yeasts seem to form initailly on the outside of the wheat it make sense to start with some outer husk in the flour, and by husk I mean brown bits. You could (and people have) use just regular white flour and water but I'd recommend not to.

I started with this initial method.



However, since you will probably throw most of your starter away each day it might seem more prudent to make do with something more practical than buying rye four just for starter. Although I started with this method I have since omitted the rye and gone with wholemeal (which is used in the sourdough recipe anyway even if you used rye for the starter). I bought one of these but basically buy anything with a fitted lid that takes 3kg+ of flour (2 * 1.5kg bags).

Buy something like this



and this..



and mix them together in a big container. Then follow the instructions in the vid but use this mixture as a substitute for the total volume of flour (rye and white) he uses in the vid. In the last couple of days you will throw nearly all of your starter away, leaving just 25g or so. This is barely the stuff stuck to the glass after you've poured it all in the bin but fret not. The amount of wild yeast and LAB in just that small amount is thousands/millions/billions/trillions/whatevs greater than the initial few days and it's enough to eat the new flour and grow just fine.

If you want to buy rye then go for it but it's not needed right now. You can do all that when you become a sourdough snob. Also remember UK tap water is fine and all our white flour is unbleached by law.

It might seem a faff but after 7 days you basically just tip it nearly all out (I've stopped measuring) and add equal parts flour mix and water. Whenever it's running low just buy another bag of each and tip them in to your flour container of choice. Keep doing this forever.  This might mean you have grains of flour in there that are 30 plus years old but don't fret, the symbiotic jar of amaze will sort out all the bad stuff for you.

If you do neglect your starter because you're going on holiday for a month or something it's not a problem, just tip it nearly all away as you would before a feed and you're good. You don't need to put it in the fridge (although you'll hear that a lot). Tip it all out leaving 25g or so as normal and leave it until you come back. It'll take a couple of feeds to get back to normal and you're good to go again. As long as you get a rise and fall it's fine.



TLDR: CO2 by-product from the yeast fermentation rises the loaf (texture) and the LABs produce the sour complexity (taste). Together they kill all the bad shit. Mix equal parts flour and water and throw most of it away the next day before repeating. Include some brown flour in the mix because it'll contain more natural yeast than the whiter stuff.

A general overview of the process

So you have a healthy starter - one that rises (by at least double, but preferably *2.5) and falls within 24 hrs. An elastic band is useful so you can set it before the rise and guage how much it's risen by.

Now is the the bread proving day (tomorrow is the baking day) and you're going to need to be home for at least 8 hrs, but not constantly. This seems like a massive time investment but as you get better at it you can keep halting the process by sticking it in the fridge and work the sourdough-making around your life rather than the other way around. At first you're going to need to be there though.

There is a four hour gap in the beginning though between stage 1 and stage 2 where you do not need to be there. Plan your day accordingly. Once you get good at it you can spread it over a couple of days if you like. The point is it doesn't take much hands on time at all, but it takes time to do it's thing and you need to be there to change from one process to the other. On the plus side it's really rewarding. Once you understand your dough and can relax a bit it's positively beneficial, like yoga or something. 

In the meantime prepare for a bumpy road. If this was easy everyone would be doing it because the end product is so good and too cheap to not do it for the rest of your days. I'd say it will take about three or four loaves to get a great loaf and that's a fairly heavy time investment, but once you do you'll fall in love with it. You'll make sourdough pizzas quite easily once you have the loaf skills, or sweet stuff, and you might even start making loaves with 120% hydration like glass bread, which is godlike. It all starts with sourdough loaf skills.

There are a host of things that can go wrong and it's identifying what did go wrong that will probably make up the bulk of the posts once I've detailed all the steps. 

Thare are 2 things that most people trip up on so I'm giving you fair warning. 

1. Over-proofing the bread before it goes in the fridge. We are not looking for a doubling in size. People who successfully bake other things with dry yeast struggle the most with this because they're used to certain habits.

2. Shaping a wet dough. Sourdough is a highly hydrated loaf which means it's sticky as fuck. It will stick to your hands and scraper but don't worry, there are things you can do. But it will take practice.

Once you've done all the steps for that day you'll put it in the fridge overnight, or 24hrs, or 48hrs if you like. This will give it a complex taste you won't find in loaves using dry yeast, which can be made in within 4hrs or so from scratch.

If you have the time I'd watch this vid. We're not going to do some of the things shown but it will give you a general idea of what to expect on the day.

4

6

8

10

You’re all the way up to 11, can’t go higher.

This is why we need a new forum like phpbb so we can have sub topics under a general heading like food.

Armitage_Shankburn wrote:

You ruined it elf. You always ruin things.

An eternal truth

Also elf is barred for all the usual reasons.

Make it yourself old bean.

Armitage_Shankburn wrote:

Main issue I have is fucking dough. Dough is disgusting. It's sticky and icky. Just make fucking flatbread, that's what I do. Thin fucking flatbread. Pita basically.

Dont be silly. A properly made and living dough is wonderful and feels brilliant. 

Good choice of video by the way. I came across Rosendahl last year. He gets quite in depth but is pretty good at explaining all the steps.

Depends on what shit they put in it. A sourdough has the acid that keeps it good for around a week.

Dinostar77 wrote:

Question, how long would a homemade sourdough or any loaf of bread last before it gets mouldy?

It will probably go stale before mouldy. So if your bread is starting to dry out, use it up asap. Sour dough has about 4 days of shelf life when fresh, other breads vary. 

In terms of helping get to the 4th day - a bread box will help, wrapping your bread is another helpful way to keep it from drying out (which then leads to the mould). Cling wrap is good for this. Some say You can also put your bread in the fridge to prolong it but this is only good for commercial breads. A proper fresh bread will go mouldy just as quick, if not quicker,  in your fridge. You also slice it up and freeze it in packs. This is good if you live alone. The quality suffers a little but really not as much as you might expect.

The best advice I can give is only buy or make enough bread for a day or 2 and consume it as fast as you can. If you are making a dough yourself, you can freeze the dough before baking it. I haven't done this with bread dough but I have for pizza / focaccia dough and it works fine.

It keeps a long time in the fridge. Tip 75% of it away and feed it. Next day tip 80% of it away and feed it. When you're seeing a good rise and fall every 24hrs it's good to go. Then tip nearly all of it away and feed it. Keep doing this.