Not all of us are so lucky to have a sourdough starter passed down to us from our bread-baking forefathers and foremothers. Thankfully, making a fresh batch of starter is as easy as stirring together some flour and water and letting it sit. That's right! No expensive heirloom starters, mashed-up grapes, or mysterious rituals required — just flour, water, and a little bit of patience.
What Is Wild Yeast?
Before you get started, let's talk about wild yeast, which is the key to a sourdough starter.
Before we had active-dry yeast or instant yeast, we had wild yeast. Actually, we still have wild yeast. It lives everywhere — in the air, in a bag of flour, on the surface of grapes. Domesticated commercial yeast replaced wild yeast for most baking because it's easier for companies to mass produce, it's easier for bakers to store and use, and it proofs our breads and pastries in a fraction of the time.
By contrast, wild yeast can be fussy and finicky. It needs a medium, a sourdough starter, in order to be useful to bakers. This medium has to be constantly maintained and monitored. Wild yeast also likes cooler temperatures, acidic environments, and works much more slowly to proof breads.
So why bother? Because wild yeast is amazing stuff! The flavor and texture we can get from breads and other baked goods made with wild yeast are no contest to breads made with commercial yeast — the flavors are more complex and interesting, the texture is sturdier and more enjoyable to chew.
What Is a Sourdough Starter?
A sourdough starter is how we cultivate the wild yeast in a form that we can use for baking. Since wild yeast are present in all flour, the easiest way to make a starter is simply by combining flour and water and letting it sit for several days. You don't need any fancy ingredients to "capture" the wild yeast or get it going — it's already there in the flour. (Also, the yeast adapts to whatever environment it is in. So even if your cousin in San Francisco gives you some sourdough starter, it will eventually no longer be true San Francisco sourdough, but rather New York sourdough or Austin sourdough or London sourdough.)
After a day or two, bubbles will start to form in the starter, indicating that the wild yeast is starting to become active and multiply. To keep the yeast happy, we feed the starter with fresh flour and water over the next several days, until the starter is bubbly and billowy. Once it reaches that frothy, billowy stage, the starter is ready to be used.
Sourdough starter is simply a paste of flour and water. When exposed to the elements, the paste captures the wild yeasts and friendly bacteria that give sourdough bread its tangy taste and beautiful texture.
The starter would always turn into this very soupy, vinegary, runny mess by the end of the day. How do we keep your starter firm but not a dry lump of flour in a jar? The key here is to ensure you’re using equal parts water, flour, and inoculation (leftover starter from previous feeding). You might need to adjust your flour amount a few grams up or down from there depending on how dry your climate is, but that is the general rule.
When you do your feeding and start to vigorously mix everything back together to incorporate all the dry bits of flour, it should actually be a bit challenging to get it to mix together but after a minute or so all the dry bits will disappear. The mixture should be firm enough to almost hold a mound shape in the bottom of the jar. I will typically stir the newly fed starter around a few more times after incorporating all the flour to clean the sides and create the mound in the middle.
Sources@ http://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-your-own-sourdough-starter-cooking-lessons-from-the-kitchn-47337
@ http://www.agardenforthehouse.com/2015/03/how-i-make-sourdough-starter/
@ https://www.theperfectloaf.com/7-easy-steps-making-incredible-sourdough-starter-scratch/
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