What is a Sourdough Starter??

With everything going on lately I have gotten a pile of messages asking me about my sourdough. Especially with many stores selling out of bread and yeast. To most people The whole process seems a little daunting and confusing. So I wanted to share what exactly Sourdough Starter is and how it works. I think that when people understand how something works, it really helps make the process easier! I will also link the blog I use for my starter and sourdough loaf recipes.

What is Sourdough Starter (S.S.)?? S.S. is just a mix of Unbleached Flour and Chlorine Free Water. When you add the water to the flour it activates the yeast microbes and they begin to feed on the sugars and create carbon dioxide, which is what will leaven your bread.

So let’s start with the ingredients, why Unbleached Flour? Yeast is a microbe that is found in flour, but most of the yeast is killed off in the bleaching process. Flour has to be aged to be ready to sell, using chemicals and “bleaching it” helps speed up that process. Because the bleaching process is faster, it also makes it cheaper and more readily available. Unbleached Flour is naturally aged, therefore taking longer but also allowing the yeast it contains to live. And of course, the longer process makes it more expensive. Unbleached Flour also contains one more very important character, Lactobacillus. Lactobacillus is a good bacteria that will feed on the sugars in the flour and will let off Lactic Acid; that give the sourdough it’s signature tang!

Why Chlorine Free Water? Simple, the chlorine will kill the live yeast you need. NOTE: I have a Brita water filter and noticed that it says it removes the “chlorine taste”… So be careful of what filter you use, and if it doesn’t actually remove the chlorine then you can just boil your water, which is what I do.

So what’s with the “feedings” and “discards”? Since the yeast is a living organism, look at it like owning a pet, once they have eaten all the sugars in that flour they will get hungry again! So you need to refresh the flour. I read once that there is about 50 million yeast in just a teaspoon of sourdough starter!! That being said, when you add in more flour and water to feed the yeast, you are also adding more yeast! This is simple math, the more yeast you add the more you have to feed, so pretty soon you are going to be adding bagfuls of flour if you don’t discard some! Discarding half of your starter will preserve some of the yeast that you have fed and strengthened while also keeping your population down so you don’t end up with too much starter. Now there are times I don’t discard if a recipe calls for more starter than I keep on hand.

Here is my S.S.! I keep it in a mason jar with single layer of fabric to cover. Now, when I lived in the desert I had to set the metal mason jar lid on top (without the band) and then put the fabric over that. It was so hot and dry there my S.S. would often dry out on top, so the lid sitting on top helped it retain some moisture. I also like to keep a band around my jar to mark where my S.S. is when I feed it and then I can see how much of a rise I’m getting. You can see the little list I have sitting near by, that is a list of my daily feeding weights while I’m building my S.S. and it has the weight of my jar written on it too. I keep my water at room temperature after I boil it, and after finding a gnat in it one morning I realized that needed to stay covered as well.

Here’s my S.S. a few hours after a feeding during a rise. I currently have two starters, both snoozing in my refrigerator. I keep one for loaves of sourdough and the other is used for random recipes (like waffles!!). I had to put them in the fridge after the stores ran out of unbleached flour.

Helpful Links:

Click HERE for a link to the site I use for my S.S. instructions and my loaf recipe. This blog, Foodbod Sourdough, is written by Elaine Boddy. She has mountains of helpful information and easy to follow instructions!

Click HERE for a link to my favorite scale. Besides being a great product I use daily, this company is based in my home town of St. Louis and portion of your purchase goes to fund the Global Orphan Project!