Hello, you sourdough bakers and makers. How’s it going? I’d love to hear.
I’m going to carry on with our starter tutorial (though for those of you not on the baking bandwagon, I’ll be writing about something else tomorrow). Here’s day four onward.
Day Four: ¼ cup unbleached or bread flour; 1/8 cup water.
Mix with half the starter (throw out the other half).
Day four was my waterloo. When I woke up and checked, the starter hadn’t increased much at all. It certainly hadn’t doubled. And yet, I was supposed to wait until it doubled to add the four and water suggested for day four. Also, it still smelled bad. I can understand why people give up at this point.
I was very glad to know this might happen. Again, if you used pineapple juice, you might not be dealing with this slowdown and bad smell. See our previous post for more information on that.
The instructions I was following said you could add a bit of rye flour to boost activity, so I put in two teaspoonfuls of flour and a teaspoon of water and mixed it up. Then I put it back in the oven and hoped for the best.
Happily, when I woke up the next morning (now officially day five), the starter had doubled (see below). It had actually peaked while I was sleeping, but I could see from the marks left on the glass how high it had gone.
I mixed in the day four additions and carried on and all was well. Lesson to learn: the starter is in charge. Don’t rush the timeline. Wait for the starter to double before moving forward.
Day Five (day six for me): 3/4 cup unbleached or bread flour; 1/2 cup water.
Mix 1/4 cup of starter with the flour and water, throw out the rest (or give to a friend!).
Once you stir in the day five additions, your starter should double again. Mine happened quickly, in less than six hours, though it really depends on the temperature your starter is being kept at. Once your starter doubles the second time, you can consider yourself a successful starter parent. Congratulations!
While your starter is now established, it will continue to strengthen and develop its flavor as time goes by. When you first use it, you may be disappointed that it’s not sour enough. Give it a few weeks and this should gradually change.
As far as maintaining your starter, it really depends on how often you want to use it. I bake about once a week, though sometimes not that often. I keep my starter in the fridge, taking it out the day before I want to use it and feeding it.
I do what is called a 1-1-1 feed, which means I add equal amounts starter, water, and flour. The following day I remove what I want to use, feed the starter again, and put it back in the fridge until the next time. It’s a good idea to feed your starter weekly, though to be perfectly honest I have let my starter languish in the back of the fridge for more than a month. It does take some regular feeding to get it back to full strength if you’ve ended up neglecting it.
Some people, including those who want to bake on a more regular basis, leave their starters out at room temperature. You’ll want to feed it on a daily basis if you do that, discarding roughly half the mixture and feeding equal amounts water and flour. This seems like a good way to blow through a lot of flour, unless you’re going to bake on a near daily basis.
Some things you might want to be aware of: your starter may develop a dried crusty top if you are leaving it out on the counter. That’s fine. You can either break it up and stir it back in, or have that be part of the starter that you discard. You may also notice the starter separate and develop a clear liquid layer at the top (sometimes with foamy bits of top of that). That’s fine too. It’s called “hooch” and you can just stir it back in.
And that’s it! Some people think you should wait awhile before you use your starter for bread, others say go ahead and start playing now. I decided to go for it, and made one of the best loaves of bread I ever have. I’ll tell you about the recipe next week, but just to urge you on, here’s a picture of what I pulled out of the over this evening. Yum.
How’s it going with you guys? Any questions? Leave them in the comments.
As for me: sourdough success! Hoping the same for you.
To enter the contest, please comment on this post (anything!), and I will choose the winner with a random number generator on Friday, April 8th at 10am CST.
