Stop Wasting Time & Flour Maintaining A Sourdough Starter. This Strategy is Way Better
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It’s time to stop wasting so much time and money on the way we feed our sourdough starters. There is a cheaper, easier, and more …
gamechanger!! thank you for your excellent videos and valuable tips
How do you make a starter?
ur doing it wrong
You actually don't even need "sourdough starter" to make sourdough. I came up with a much easier, no maintenance method to make sourdough with no starter to maintain at all. All you do is use the same plastic or wooden bowl to ferment your sourdough dough in and never wash it. Just cover the empty bowl with cheese cloth to keep insects out and let the tiny amount of residual dough remnant dry out between batches, so mold can't grow. When sourdough yeast dries, it just goes dormant like any other yeast and the tiny residual amount dried on the walls of the bowl is plenty to inoculate the next batch, even weeks after sitting dried in the bowl. So to summarize, all you need to do is "season" a plastic or wooden container with sourdough yeast and never wash it so the yeast continuously lives on the walls. Then all you do to make bread every time is just add flour, water, and salt to the container, mix and let ferment for 8-24 hours. You actually don't even need to leave any remaining dough in the bowl to dry out. There will be enought residual dust and yeast that remains in the container to jump start the next batch. The trick is to swish a small amount of warm water around in the empty container before each batch to dissolved and catch any residual yeast on the walls, to hydrate and activate it, and then just add your flour, salt, and remaining water. One tip, if you're using a new smooth plastic bowl as your container to season for sourdough, rough up the inside of the bowl slightly with a scotch pad or some 200 or 400 grit sandpaper, just enough to create a slightly rough surface that the yeast can cling to and help retain yeast residue in the walls. As long as the bowl dries out completely between batches, or you have consecutive batch after batch going, nothing harmful can grow in the bowl. The only way bad stuff could start to grow in your container is if you were to allow any moisture to remain between batches, such as covering the container with an air tight lid during storage so don't do that. Also, this method might not work well im extremely humid environments like Florida. I've only tested it in the western U. S where the climate is dry.
I freeze my starter. It takes a day or two to re-activate, but it is perfect for those of us who only bake sourdough from time to time.
make sour dough pancakes
For occasional bakers, the absolute easiest thing to do: dry it out and freeze it. I just used some 27 month-old starter and it worked perfectly. Just make a batch of starter, let it rise until it's at its peak, then spread it out onto parchment paper, put another parchment on top, and roll it out until it's tissue-paper thin. Unpeel the two parchment papers, and let it completely dry. It should flake off in chunks. Crush that down into as fine a powder as you can get, bag it and freeze it. When you're ready to bake, just pull out however much you need to make a batch of new starter (5-10 grams starter powder + fresh flour + water) and you're off to the races. Your starter will never grow mold, you don't have to worry about feeding, and you'll have scads and scads of starter for the rest of your life.
With your latest experience feeding the starter only 50 gr of water and 50 gr of flour, would that also work for the building of a new starter?
Where can I get some sour dough starter? My wife made sour dough bread with some starter back in the 80's. But it got to be too much for her and she flushed it down the drain. Now, we would like to start back, but haven't any starter.
Pls can someone tell me what consistency the sourdough starter should be . I’ve heard everything from pancake mix like to stuff so that it won’t pour out of a mason jar. Also which flour is best ?
I've had a starter for nearly 3 years. I keep it in the fridge most of the time as I'm only baking every couple of weeks usually. I have left scraps for 3 months before and after 2 feeds it was back up to normal activity
All the feedings was why I stopped sourdough. It was hard to get flour during early pandemic.
I simply leave around 100 grams in the fridge, and feed it once a week around 50 flour n 50 ml water, sometimes I've not fed for months and it still doesn't die, so never have a problem with using too much flour ever
I leave mine for up to 7 days in the fridge before feeding and it bounces right back. You absolutely do NOT have to feed it every day
This is a terrible idea!
Signed, All the Flour Producers
A novice baker, I still cannot see all the waste in ant method–are you throwing out all they used starter? Is the reactivation 24hrs. The reason you are adding jar after jar to your refrigerator or something, instead of using up what's up you already had? Just wondering, as I bake pastries, or use yeast envelopes for regular bread and thought much admired sourdough was too hard. Sounds like my mixing up pounds of pie crust, using half of it, and stacking the rest in plastic wrap in fridge instead of using it next day. Have heard if 100yr old bakeries using add-on starters for generations–never heard of any if it getting wasted, thanks.
I agree. I guess I'm was too dumb back when I was making bread all the time, but I just left some in the container, dusted it with flour and, today I would keep it in the fridge. I used to just put a lid on it and set it aside. A few days before, or at least 1 day before I was going to make bread, I added some water and some flour… to wake it up, adding some water and flour each day, or part of a day. I didn't discard anything, just added some more flour and water to increase the volume, a little salt, and let it rise again till it was the way I wanted it folding it (I called it kneading it) and soon it became big enough till I made some loaves, scored them and baked them. That's what you get for not knowing what you're doing. lol
Mine all keep dying it’s maddening I followed all the directions. This was very helpful
I have left my starter in the fridge for months and pulled it / fed it and woke it up. A lot of times I do a lazy method where I add that cold starter to my bread mixture and it could take 12-24hrs of a bulk ferment to be ready to shape.
Great video but wish it had cups, tablespoons, etc. Takes too long to try & figure out grams to the other measurements.
please show how to make starter from scratch
This video NEEDED TO BE MADE. Didn't sourdough bread develop from necessity and sparse ingredients?
I don't currently have a starter so how do I proceed?
Thanks so much for your informative video! I tried making starter and baking bread with it half a year ago but sadly it didn't work out at all. The bread was super dense and rose only minimally. Do you know what I did wrong?
How much starter do you add to your flour and are there certain things you have to pay attention to?
Watching your video and reading the comments makes me wanna try it again
Thank you
I've had success feeding my starter and immediately putting it in the fridge. You could do the same with your scrapings, just give it a mini-feed, pop in the fridge so it doesn't exhaust, and that will keep it going. You can freeze some, too, as a backup.
Massive appreciation here from a new baker …..im learning a lot from channels like yours
I tried this and lost all of my sour flavors. I found by keeping a 100 g or so of wet starter in the fridge, taking out half for my baking got it back. I feed the kept started and put it right back into the fridge. I give the baking starter 1 feed and use it in bread and it baked wonderfully. Also no waste.
I never discard, and I never really ever did and my starter is 13 years old. I hate waste of all kinds. My strategy is to keep a tiny amount, about a half an ounce, maybe 12-14 grams or so. I build that up to the quantity I need, plus that minuscule amount that is to go back in my tiny, widemouthed jar (to which I can fit a tablespoon or skinny spatula into). I am one of those who have also left mine in the fridge for several months. It's still kicking, but it is very well established. I have dried it out and revived it, just as an experiment, and revived it. Once I broke a jar and it spilled all over the road when I was unloading a truck when moving. I scraped some dried starter off a shard of glass, and it was revived. My least favorite aunt also threw it in the garbage in -30 C weather, and I told her I wasn't going to be the one to fish it out. It's a miracle I still have this starter today, and I'm looking forward to passing it onto my daughter.
Can you put translate bahasa Indonesia on video?
The key to any of this is "a good strong starter" If your sourdough starter is meh, your better off babying it with a more conventional method until it is a good strong starter. Or even starting over again from scratch.
Lol..I could build a house with how much flour I've wasted to get it going! Thx!!
I've been doing the "scrape" everyday for eight years. After using what I need, I feed, store at 12c and it's ready to use 23 hours later. I have minimal waste, depending on baking demand. Maybe throw out 30-50g a day
my sourdough always ends up being dense do you have any recommendations for this?
What do you do do with one bread each day?
THANK YOU SO MUCH! for me, this honestly is a game changer!
It would help a lot if you had ONE SINGLE CLUE about how to maintain a sourdough starter. Your video is worse than useless.
I bake bread once or twice a week, and have been doing so for years. I used to constantly feed like you, but a few years ago, I started keeping about 50-150 grams in the fridge. I feed it 100g of flour and 100g of water when I want to bake. I put it in my range hood microwave with the range hood light on – this makes a great proofing machine. A warmed oven with the light on works too. This way my starter is ready in a few (2-3) hours. I use 300g to bake, then feed 50/50 and put it back in the fridge.
I use my discard to make crackers a few times a week- that way I am not wasting anything! My son especially loves them and much cheaper than healthy store bought crackers.
My “recipe” (I don’t measure anything)
2 ish cups starter in a 4 cup Tupperware
Add 2 spoons melted coconut oil
Salt
Pepper
Spices (my favorites are garlic and onion powder, Rosemary, dill, marjoram)
Sprinkle chia and flax seeds
Enough whole wheat flour to mix everything into a biscuit-type dough
Cover and let sit overnight – or longer!
roll out thinly on parchment paper, sprinkle salt over top, and cut into squares.
Bake at 350F for 25-35 minutes until firm to the touch and golden brown.
Just watch yt channel Our Gabled Home. She's got the simplest German tried and true sourdough starter, no mess, no discard recipe.
If you don't bake bread daily or every other day you can keep starter in a very small jar. I have three of different sizes and whenever I predict I will not be baking for more than couple of days I move my culture to a 50ml jar with 1g of starter, 5g of water and 10g of flour. Yes, that is 50% starter and it means it is rather stiff dough that you can work with your fingers. It does not grow so fast and it keeps for longer. When I finally think it would be nice to bake a bread I can quickly multiply this. There is no need to feed the starter 1:1. You can feed it 5:1 and you can grow from 15g to 90g in one day which is more than enough for me to bake two loaves of bread. As a bonus the starter is more lively.
I tried to make the starter twice but i think is failed, first day, second n third day is very good rised triple n the texture also is very good but the next day become down to normal level n watery, i feed it until next 24 hours also still in same level not rised at all, same the next day too, can i ask what the problem, have any advice for me? bcoz twice i tried to do it but have same result, Thank you.
I grabbed my starter recipe from Massimo Nocerino, a pizzaiolo from Italy, living in UK. He advised to use 150g of pizza flour, 100 g full grain flour, 300 g of water, first days on the table and after that fridge. And then feed it once a week if you're not using it a lot, and feeding it with 50:50 ratio of flour and water (30:30:30 might be more descriptive) but not with specific amount, then grabbing 100g of starter for 1 kg of dough when baking. Sounds similar to this in the terms of rather low maintenance and only building up for the need.
Daily feeding sounds rather ridiculous. If the bacteria was that quick to feed, we would have beer and wine ready to drink on a day's notice, and the bacteria in general would die in a flash if left unattended. We'd probably have no hurry to clean or eat leftovers either.