Sourdough Starters

Sourdough starters come in many different varieties. This is one of those things that everyone has their own preferred method of doing. Absolutely the best way to get a good starter is to have a friend who has one give you a bit of theirs. A spoonful is all you need, mix it up with equal parts flour and water and add a dash of any variety of sugar, honey, or molasses. The yeasts and bacteria in the spoonful you were given will multiply and begin fermentation and soon your bowl of flour and water will be a slightly acidic starter.

If you do not know anyone who keeps a starter then you have a couple of options. First, you can order one online, you will end up with a very good starter that you can keep going for years and get much enjoyment out of just trying Google shopping yields many different options. Buying will get you a start of yeasts and bacteria from different locations which will give your starter a unique flavor. As it ages it will take on local yeasts and bacteria and its flavor will change, but if you really want a starter that has a certain flavor ( for example like San Fransisco sourdough) the only way you will get that is to purchase a starter packet.

However if you are interested in trying to make you own to see what your kind of sourdough flavors your local environment provides then there are a couple of different ways to do that. The basic choices are: a potato starter, a milk starter, a basic starter, or a starter you prime with commercial yeast.

When you make a potato starter you boil potatoes and use the potato water (sometimes the potato skins or the potato's themselves) to help to attract the yeasts. Potato water is quite starchy and a good medium for wild yeasts to grow in. An example recipe would be:

1 1/4 cups potato water (from boiling potatoes)
1 cup flour (The flour is food for the yeast and any type will work. I usually add 1/2 whole wheat and 1/2 white to my starter, however, oat flour or barley flour would work as well as wheat)
1 to 2 tsp sugar or honey (I usually add honey, especially raw honey may have its own yeast cultures present and will improve your stater)
1 tsp salt

Mix these ingredients well.

As stated some people add mashed potatoes or potato skins instead of just the water. I prefer not to do potato starters because in my experience they are more picky about going bad on you. And you have to be much more careful with keeping them at the correct temp, and using and feeding regularly.

Another way to do a starter is to replace the potato water with milk or add milk or normal water and half a cup of yogurt. This encourages more bacteria (remember this is a lacto-fermentation process) and will make you starter more like a San Fransisco starter, though likely not quite that sour. This method makes a delicious starter, however, I have the same problem as with the potato starter, it seems to go off more easily. If your are planning on using your starter at least once a week either of these methods will make a delicious starter for you. I am a cook busy with many other things and usually my starter gets used once every other week, though sometimes not for a full month. So it has to be resilient.

What I normally do is a basic starter, or a starter primed with yeast. For a basic starter, follow the recipe above but use normal water instead of potato water, make certain to use honey (raw honey is the best), if you want to make certain the fermentation process is going to start just add 1/4 tsp. commercial yeast. Your starter will still collect wild yeasts but you will be certain that you won't have to make a second attempt at making a starter, sometimes the wild yeast colonizes and everything takes right off but the starter medium can go bad if this process does not start quickly enough. A small amount of commercial yeast could be added to any of the talked about starters, and if you wanted to get really creative you could do a 1/2 potato water, 1/2 milk, with a bit of yogurt and commercial yeast starter. You get the idea. This recipe can be scaled up or down easily so you can make as much or as little as you like. I would recommend having at least 1 1/2 cups of starter on hand for cooking.

After you have decided on what starter you want to make and mixed everything up, put these ingredients in a jar with a lid that has some room to breath (poking holes in the lid works) or another container with a breathable lid. My mother had a special container custom made for my starter by a potter she knew, however, anything that is not metal will work to as a container. I used a plastic mixing bowl with a loose fitting lid for years. Do not use metal for your container, or as a utensil to stir your starter (stainless steel to stir seems to be OK, but there can be reactions between the acidity of the starter and other metals which can damage both your metal and the flavor of your starter). The starter will expand to at least 2 times its size as it starts fermentation so make certain there is plenty of space for this or else you will have an escaped sourdough starter all over your counter. Between 3 days and one week your starter will have begun to get sour and is ready to be used for the first time. If at this time you can't use it or don't have time, stir it up, and put it in the fridge.

When your starter is getting going I would suggest taking it out once a week or so adding just a bit (1/4 cup or less) flour and water and a dash of sugar or drop of honey and letting it sit on the counter for a day. This will keep the process going as the yeasts go dormant in the fridge. If you have a well established starter, it can stay in the fridge for a month or more. It will likely separate and you will have some dark looking water on top and the flour on the bottom. You can just stir it up from here, add equal parts flour, water, and a bit of sugar or honey, and leave it alone for an hour or so before using. However, if the dark looking water grosses you out, just pour it off the top, add more water, sugar, flour etc. and let it sit for an hour or so before using. Starting to get the idea?

Most recipes call for at least 1/2 a cup of starter, if you are making something that calls for more starter than you have, just add 1/2 flour and 1/2 water to your starter and let it sit for a bit. Voila, more starter. When you done cooking, make sure you add a bit more flour and water to your starter to get it back to the right quantity (feeding), let it sit on the counter for a bit, and then store in the fridge until needed.

Next, Sourdough Pancakes!

All About Sourdough

So, what is sourdough?

Sourdough is cultured, or fermented flour product that and can be made in a number of ways and used for a variety of purposes. Most people are aware of sourdough bread and have tasted different versions ranging from chewy and astringent San Fransisco Sourdough, to the tamer commercial varieties that can be purchased at most grocery stores. What many people may not realize is that before Louis Pasteur's germ theory and the discovery of cultured yeasts, sourdough was bread. Almost all bread was made through a process of lacto-fermentation where the local yeasts and local lactobacillus act upon the starches in the flour, ferment, create CO2, and rise the bread.

Real Sourdough takes on the essence of the place it is in. A Sourdough starter attracts the local yeasts and bacteria and all of these have their own distinct tastes. Like beer, different yeasts produce different flavors and you get different yeasts from different places. You can order sourdough starters from San Fransisco, or Alaska, to start with those particular flavors. But as your starter ages(they can be kept going for hundreds of years), it will collect the local yeasts and bacteria as well, and its flavor profile will change. Breads in many places are still made mainly from natural cultures, they do not all have that flavor those of the San Fransisco school would consider 'sourdough', however, they are quite distinct from modern cultured yeast breads.

So why is there sourdough still in San Fransisco? The root can be traced to the California Gold Rush of 1848, Pasteur's work on fermentation was not completed until the 1860's and these miners in their mountain miners camps used a starter the collected the wild California yeasts and bacilli and created San Fransisco Sourdough.

The next generation of these miners in turn carried the sourdough tradition to Alaska where the word 'Sourdough' still can either mean a miner or a starter. In Alaska people will still talk of 'the old Sourdoughs' and they are not speaking of flour products. Today, you can purchase sourdough starters from either San Fransisco or Alaska which date back to the Goldrush days. That's the thing about sourdough, you don't throw it away when your done. You take a bit out from your starter pot, 'feed' your pot, and then save it. I know a lady in Alaska who claims the origin of her sourdough starter from one carried over the Klondike pass (think White Fang) in 1898. The stories goes that the miners carried them in their vests next to their bodies to keep the yeasts warm and happy so the Sourdoughs could have sourdough (bread, pancakes, doughnuts, etc.) when they made camp. My current starter is a starter I made in Indiana that received an addition from a starter a friend made in Minnesota. I've had it going for about 2 years now.

Now, as mentioned a couple of times, sourdough is not just for bread. One of my favorite, and most common uses for my sourdough starter is pancakes. Alaskans have all sorts of crazy sourdough concoctions from doughnuts to chocolate cakes. If your interested in exploring the great variety of uses for sourdough I'd recommend Alaskan Sourdough by Ruth Allman. I've tried the sourdough chocolate cakes and some other oddities but generally I stick to the sourdough classics, bread products, pancakes, and waffles.

Now, making sourdough products is time intensive. Well, the time you invest is not that substantial, you have to wait to let the yeast do its work. The longer you keep your sourdough starter going the better it tastes, the longer you let your sourdough sponge work on your bread the yummier it gets. So why bother? For me there are several reasons: its a family tradition (my Grandpa Russ was quite the sourdough baker--more about this in some other post), I was born in Alaska so its a local cultural tradition, and, most importantly, sourdough is delicious.

If the delicious is not enough to persuade you than you might be interested in some of the health benefits. I've been told about the health benefits my whole life so I was a bit surprised I they were not mythical when I started to look them up. When you consume sourdough you are consuming a product that has already been broken down through lactofermentation. Lactofermentation makes vitamins more digestible (just type 'benefits of lactofermentation' into Google). Additional claims I have heard and found at least somewhat substantiated are that sourdough is higher in protein, has a lower glycemic index and causes less of a blood sugar spike, and like a bottle conditioned beer is very high in B vitamins--speifically B6. What I know is that when I have a Sunday morning breakfast of sourdough pancakes it holds me through much better-- and I feel better-- than if I ate a breakfast of traditional pancakes. And, if your starter is ready, it's easier than Bisquick!

Next, starters.