Starting the Starter
THE PLACE WHERE SOURDOUGH STARTS...
Have you ever wondered how bread rises? To any home baker, including myself, the experience of watching the dough double in size is still one of the great things about breadmaking.
It's also a sort of preliminary litmus test as to how successful your recipe or technique has been. To get the dough to rise via sourdough, we need to create a fermentation process. Fermentation involves the culture and growth of naturally occurring funghi (yeasts), as well as bacteria and other micro organisms. When fermentation occurs in the dough, carbon dioxide is given off as a natural bi product. The carbon dioxide gas is captured in the gluten network we create when we knead dough. The bubbles of gas expand and cause our bread to rise.
Sourdough Starter is the thing which begins and feeds the fermentation process in dough, as it is rich in bacteria, enzymes such as amalyse and naturally occurring yeasts. This combination provides a perfect medium for the fermentation process, which generically is called ‘leavening’.
LEAVENING FOR BEGINNERS - HOW BREAD RISES
There are lots of ways to make bread rise. If you use yeast alone, without bacteria, the yeast will produce CO2, and the gluten network will also capture this, as per the sourdough method mentioned in the previous paragraph. These ways of making bread rise are both referred to by this term, leavening. Effectively, the common denominator is the gluten network, which is basically bubbles made of gluten, filled with gas, expanding.
Dough can also be made to rise via a chemical reaction. You can add bicarbonate of soda, and force the carbohydrate in the dough to expode. This is how cakes rise. It is also how Irish soda bread is made. These things are truly ‘yeast free’.
I would argue that anything caused to rise via a bicarbonate process is technically not bread, but cake.
By definition: Bread is expanded gluten bubbles. Cake is exploded starch. Think about it.
Refined yeast, known as Saccharomyces Cerviseae, is used for leavening most types of bread; indeed, this single celled funghi is the most widely used rising agent in the world - because it's easy and fast to manufacture, and can be controlled by adjusting simple variables like temperature, moisture or acidity.
It also can be fed in such a way as to make bread rise strongly and quickly via the use of another ubiquitous commercial bread additive, Bread Improver. I'll be writing about this in future articles, but there are strong arguments for and against the use of bread improvers. Some of this information needs to be shared, and I'll be putting some of these here in coming months.
Commercial yeast is designed to be very bland in flavour. Saccharomyces Cerviseae can trigger infections within the body when left to replicate in the stomach of a human being. The temperature inside us, combined with our intake of sugar and liquids, can prove to be ideal for the growth of candida albicans; a common form of yeast infection leading to many allergic reactions and gradual immune system depletion. It's not all that good for you. When you couple the use of refined yeast with yeast foods and gluten strengthening agents such as those found in commonly used bread Improvers, the potential for long term ill health is multiplied many times. Bread improvers amplify the candida issue because they cause gluten to change in a chemical way to make it stretch further. This change makes it very hard for our digestive system to break down.
An altogether healthier and tastier option, sourdough starter can be used instead of yeast, bread improvers and bicarbonates to leaven dough. It can made or purchased quite easily, and can replace commercial yeast or baking powder to make the dough rise when you want to make home made bread or cakes. I've already talked about my own starter in this website, and now I want to provide the basic information you'll need to establish one yourself.
You can get the 7 day sourdough starter recipe right here.
THE FUNDAMENTALS OF SOURDOUGH STARTER
Sourdough Starter not one kind of yeast, as with commercial yeast, but quite a few different kinds, which vary according to the conditions they find themselves in. Often, sourdough starters are actually powered mainly by the same yeast we mentioned earlier - Sacccharomyces Cerviseae.
However, in this context, the cerviseae is actually held in check by the microrganisms surrounding it. There is a complex micro ecosystem at work in sourdough starter, and so for all of it to survive, internal balance must be reached. Like many fermented foods, a sourdough starter is a ‘symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast.’
Frequently, too, yeast cultures within sourdough starters mutate over time to incorporate different strains of yeast. This is often temperature or food driven, and can be compared to wine in the way that changing microflora dictate the character of the bread produced.
Sourdough Starter is also a culture of 'friendly' bacteria. This culture helps to create the ideal conditions for the yeasts to multiply, by dealing with some of the bi products of the cell division process. They keep everything clean and moving freely - kind of like cultural street sweepers.
A healthy Sourdough Starter has a relatively stable microbiology; it's a living thing which, with the right conditions, can be trained to produce consistent and great tasting bread every time. Not only that, but most experts agree that sourdough bread is easier to digest and provides better nutrition than ordinary yeasted breads. So lets get started
Once you understand the fundamentals of Sourdough Starter, you can keep it living and thriving and working to produce great bread for you as often as you wish.
Initially, you are looking to gather airborne and flourborne yeasts, to culture and grow them, and then to use and feed them in a regular rhythm for home breadmaking. The process of building a starter takes from one to two weeks (and sometimes longer), and once established, the starter can be fed and used on a daily basis if desired.
However, you can be making flavoursome bread using your starter in a week by utilising the Semi Leaven Technique. The section about this technique has lots of recipes where it's not essential that the starter be strong enough to cause bread to rise. These recipes use tiny amounts of yeast in the final dough to accelerate the process, so you get great bread every time.
BASIC SOURDOUGH STARTER RECIPE
Liquid Sourdough Starter has the simplest of recipes:
one part flour to one part water!
You can try just about any kind of flour (or even cooked grain).
The rule of thumb is consistency - it should be a very thick batter to start with, so it just pours.
If it's runny, it's too thin, and if it's a dough, it's too thick. You can vary the consistency later, when you know what you're doing. But for now, work within these parameters for best results. I will explain more about consistency later.
TYPES OF FLOUR
Another point which has been made in other texts on the subject is that starter should only be fed on the type of flour you wish to use predominantly.
While I agree this does produce the most consistent results, I have enriched my starters with things like brown and white rice, cooked barley, potatoes, millet and oats, raisins and sultanas, and the water these have mascerated in.
I have used all types of flours, including spelt, rye, white and wholemeal wheat flour, and other flours besides. If you like to experiment like I do, then don't hold back! The worst that can happen is you'll have to pour off m ost of it and start again. Different flours have different properties, and you will arrive at a favourite which suits you over time.
A HOME FOR YOUR STARTER
If you have a plastic container with a loose fitting lid, about a litre capacity, then you have the perfect vessel for starter to live in. If you only have, say, a honey container with a tight sealing lid, fine. Starter doesn’t need much air. By opening the lid once a week, you will be providing enough air for the starter to breathe for another week.
Ultimately, this will become your starter's abode. It lives in your refrigerator between uses, and will be left out before use to thaw slightly, so as activity is happening. If you are in a warm climate in mid summer, you will need to only bring the starter out of the fridge for an hour or less when you are making bread. If you live in a cold climate, the starter may live out of the fridge all the time. This of course something which you will adapt according to your experience - but I have found that the fridge is the best default storage area, as they run at a consistent temperature and are reasonably immune from airborne contaminants.
Some tips before you try the recipe
In the early stages of fermenting a starter, you might get some wastage, as you need to pour off some of the batter as you go, in order to feed it with fresh food. This batter you pour off can be used in your regular yeasted dough, a semi leaven recipe from this site, or in pancakes or gravies, if you prefer to waste nothing at all. The 7 day recipe on this site has virtually no ‘discard’.
To minimise wastage, start very, very small. We're talking a tablespoon of flour to start with.
The warmer the starter gets, the more activity there is, and so the more often you'll need to feed it. The lower the temperature, the slower the fermentation process. If the temperature is too low, fermentation will be overtaken by mould and the starter will become suffocated. However, even at temperatures below 5 degrees celsius but above freezing, fermentation can still be occuring. The mould which grows on the surface will dry out, and can be peeled off and discarded to no ill effect. The remaining batter can be fed and re established quite quickly, and become active and useful again virtually overnight. In fact, the healthy starter underneath the mould is often ready for use straight away. If unsure, feed with just a bit of flour and wait a few hours.
The flavour of starter is strongly influenced by the amount of times it passes through a certain temperature threshold - sourdough starter becomes more sour each time it returns to a chilled state after being fully thawed.
Equally, the flavour is also influenced by how thick the starter is - if it's made as a dough or thicker, it will ferment slowly but will make more full flavoured, classic sourdough bread.
Starter, despite much talk to the contrary, is actually close to immortal. Once established, it is really hard to kill off. Even a dormant starter can be revived rapidly with a good feed and a bit of warmth. A liquid starter is a bit easier to hurt than a dough starter, which is pretty tough and doesn’t need feeding as often.
In the early stages, however, a starter is very fragile - but over time they grow stronger, as local yeasts and bacteria take hold. The most important thing in the early days is not to 'drown' the starter with too much food. Similarly, a watched pot never boils. It's better to leave it alone to do its thing than to fuss over it all the time. If things take a bit longer than I've stated, relax! The best action is inaction. Wait another day. Lash out if you like - wait two! What the heck! Wait a week. It'll be better for it.
Starter will be sweeter when fed more frequently, but will take longer to leaven your dough. Conversely, it will be more sour when fed less often, but will get the dough going fairly quickly.
Wanna save some time? We have live sourdough starter available from our School of Sourdough website for freighting anywhere in Australia for no extra cost.
Overseas orders are not possible due to varying and complex quarantine requirements. Sorry!
Sourdough Workshops are held bi monthly at our Mid North Coast NSW School. Why not check out upcoming workshops and book in for a comprehensive 2 day intensive workshop?