Sourdough bread

Katie Dee wrote:I have what I think is a cool method.  After starting my own sourdough colony (rye/wheat flour mixed to a paste and set in my garden till it started getting bubbly, then feeding it as normal inside), it got a little too large and vigorous for my limited space.  I found (somewhere on the internet) instructions for long term storage by very thinly spreading some of the starter mix on plastic, letting it dry, and storing the completely dried flakes in a glass jar with airtight lid (think canning lid, not plastic).  It stores indefinitely at room temperature, and can be restarted by adding a teaspoon of flakes with the normal flour/water feeding.  It does take a week or two to completely wake up and start actively multiplying, but last year, when there was no yeast to be found in the stores (yeah, COVID panic buying), all my neighbors got gifts of local variety sourdough starter.  I feel a little better knowing I have a good flavored colony in "dry sleep" for awakening if need be.

I've got some backup dried starter that I made the same way.  It does take extra time to wake it up but I have successfully woken part of my stored yeast a couple times.  Now that it's cooler weather and I'm more inclined to bake I should wake up more!  

I read about using kombucha to get a sourdough starter.  I used my live home fermented (from honey) kombucha with fresh ground kamut to try it.  It was bubbly after one overnight wait , smelled yeasty and fruity.

Being newish to sourdough I am in the “now what do I do with it?” phase.

I made “pancakes “ with the discard starter when I needed more room in the jar , rather than throwing it away. ( Kamut is very expensive these days!)

The fried starter is yummy, and great quick food.

I thought this was the thread where I read about ways to use the discard, which is what inspired me to fry and eat it, but I didn’t see it this time through.

Probably one of the “similar threads” I will find once I close the reply box.

 I just wanted to mention the kombucha option:  use it instead of the water to start a starter.  If you have lots of sediment on the bottom of your fermentation vessel, that was suggested as superior in the thing I read about kombucha sourdough.

Thekla McDaniels wrote:I read about using kombucha to get a sourdough starter.  I used my live home fermented (from honey) kombucha with fresh ground kamut to try it.  It was bubbly after one overnight wait , smelled yeasty and fruity....

Wow, lots of great info there!  I've been wanting to get some kombucha going again.  Maybe it's time for me to do it and try it in sourdough!  Thanks for posting!

I love sourdough rye bread (with the sour taste). So I thought it would be good to start making my own.
I quickly read through a sourdough recipe, which included making a starter. Thinking I understood how it worked I mixed some flour (half wheat flour, half whole rye flour) with water. Added the same amounts of the same flour mix and the water daily.

After a few days I saw bubbles coming. What was the next step again? Let's have a look, youtube will surely show something ... But it was too confusing watching some different people giving very different advices and recipes there!

1. they all use white wheat flour. I want whole rye bread.
2. they all use different (large) quantities. I only need one small loaf of rye bread a week.
3. they all throw away most of their sourdough starter every day. I don't want to waste good food ingredients.
4. they say the right temperature for the starter is between 21 and 25 degrees Celsius (most of the time they say it in Fahrenheit: 70-77). My room temperature is lower. There is no place in the house with a higher temperature. Will this work???

Please give me good advice.

Hey Leonora! There indeed is a lot out there in terms of conflicting opinions.

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:
1. they all use white wheat flour. I want whole rye bread.
2. they all use different (large) quantities. I only need one small loaf of rye bread a week.
3. they all throw away most of their sourdough starter every day. I don't want to waste good food ingredients.
4. they say the right temperature for the starter is between 21 and 25 degrees Celsius (most of the time they say it in Fahrenheit: 70-77). My room temperature is lower. There is no place in the house with a higher temperature. Will this work???

1. while I know people use various other flours for their starters, it seems to be more reliable with white (or rye) flour to get the starter going. Of course, you can use that starter to make any kind of bread.
2. I scaled my starter down to fit into a ~400ml jar, which I keep about half full. This gives me about a cup of starter to use in recipes and a bit to keep the starter going. There's no reason you can't do that!
3. during the starter development stage you're trying to coax the starter into existence, and you have a week or so of lots of discard, it's true. It troubles me too: flour is expensive now. save what you scoop out in the fridge: we have at least one good thread about ideas for using leftover starter. In my house it becomes waffles, cornbread, or lunchy flatbreads. But if you use it only once a week you should be able to get on a weekly schedule- you mix up your dough on Monday, so on Saturday you freshen your starter, maybe.
4. In the winter I have the same issue, cold house, but I find that is important really only in the beginning when you're growing the starter (in that case I'd keep it wherever there is warmth from electronics (near the back of my fridge) or worst case scenario, in a cooler box or oven with a hot water bottle. It can live just fine in cooler temps (my sourdough lives in the fridge for most of the year when our inside temp exceeds 18C-ish or else I have to feed it every day, and this year it was forgotten during the winter for 2 months and lived there all year round...).

There is so much variation in advice because it's very permie: lots of variables. You can totally do one small loaf a week with a small volume of starter, and you can start with rye, or shift to rye, or use white flour starter in rye.

I find the videos and instructions online are much more helpful for addressing problems (why didn't my loaf rise nicely, how to handle the loaves, etc) than for starting from zero: too much noise out there!