Listening to: Rituals- Rotting Christ
Step up your baking pleb, it’s time to learn to use sourdough.
This simple magical goop is made of flour, water, and wild yeast that grows on every surface. Pioneers usually made it by accident by leaving out dough and letting it ferment, this was how bread was leavened before commercial yeast was available. Ask me for a piece of my starter, I am happy to share. If you’re far away, you can make your own. Soon it will become a part of your family and will keep you company. Name your new friend and feast upon its cooked flatulence.
Why keep a sourdough starter if I can just get yeast at the store?
Yeast at the store is just fine and works quickly. Sourdough is much less convenient, but the taste it brings to your baking can’t be matched. There’s so much to learn with sourdough recipes and see how you can make more homemade items. The starter I use isn’t particularly “sour” as with commercial bread, but I can taste the tang when I made crackers or pizza dough.
If you enjoy experimenting with baking the slower, more old-fashioned way, this is for you. Many recipes will call for commercial yeast as well as starter, so don’t dump your packets or jar of commercial yeast just yet!
How to take care of a starter
- Find a good sized glass, ceramic, or food-grade plastic crock for your goo to live in. Depending on how much you need, try for at least 1 or 2 qts.
- “Feed” the starter: Use a food-scale to tare your container and set the units to grams. Add all of the starter you have, add equal parts water and flour, in that order. Add the water first, as you can always remove some if you add too much, THEN the flour, as it it much more difficult to remove once it’s incorporated in the mixture. Make sure to mix it very thoroughly until there are no lumps of flour. The yeast that is in the starter now has food, and will start to foam up.
- Keep an eye on the starter. Sometimes it will open the lid to its container and shit all over your counter if it’s really excited. Once it’s really frothy and bubbly, it’s ripe and ready to use. This can take a few hours, depending on how much it’s been fed.
- Keep the starter in the fridge when you’re not going to use it for a few days. Chilling the starter will let the yeast remain dormant if you’re not going to bake for a while. Make sure to bust it out at least the night before you plan on baking and feed it.
I have too much starter, wat do, WFMH?
Fear not, young headbanger. For baking purposes, you might only need 100g or so of starter, depending on your recipe. You’re going to have a lot extra. Don’t dump the excess, you savage! Plenty of recipes call for “discard” sourdough or unfed starter. I make focaccia, waffles, crackers, popovers, and plenty of items that use the discard. Those recipes will come in due time, my dude.
The only time you want to throw away your starter is if it gets moldy. That, my brutal buddies, is no bueno. If your starter has been in the fridge for a while, you’ll notice that some of it has separated, a sort of black liquid \m/ on the top, which can just be drained off.
Bread is an expansive topic and can merit its own metal-themed blog, so I’ll only post the basics and my favorite recipes and let you do the rest of the research if you want to get more into it. King Arthur Flour is definitely an authority I refer back to time after time. You can get as fancy and into the hobby as you want, or just do the basics and you’ll still have homemade delicious bread.
I acquired my starter from the bakery I used to work for and have since shared chunks of my starter with at least half a dozen pals. I named mine Rodger, he is a part of my little family.
If your bread isn’t perfect the first few times you make it, don’t worry, just repurpose it. Seasoned croutons, bread crumbs, bread pudding, or French toast are all options to reuse sub-par bread. Worst case scenario the bread isn’t great but your house smells like a home.