Starting sourdough..starter

A lifelong California girl, my family and I have made our home in the Appalachian mountains, WV, for the last two and a half years. To say it was a culture shock is putting it midly. My life was turned on its head. I will go into more detail in future posts but the farmlife just wasn't something I naturally fell into. It took two years before I was officially ready to try my hand at all things homesteading. In my mind, I was ready for a new adventure, a fresh start in a place where the mountains were plenty and the leaves changed in the fall. I wanted the chickens, the garden, the fishing and yet...nothing could prepare me for the amount of work this actually required. After trying my hand at owning a restaurant, becoming a working mama and finally settling into a routing as a stay home mom, I found myself with more time on my hands...time to think, to pray, and to really hone in on what life here looked like- to me. It started with a few things- chickens were first. For some reason, rasing chicks and building a coop, collecting eggs every morning and awakening to the sound of a rooster cockle-doodle-doo-ing, just felt like country life. And so it began. With trial and error, purchasing chicks, hatching our own and butchering a few naughty roosters along the way, we figured it out. Now with our flock of eleven hens, we enjoy fresh eggs daily for our and our neighbor's use. But I wanted more. I realized that the Bible gives SO much insight as to what a Godly and PLENTIFUL life looks like! And it doesn't look like relying on the grocery store for every single thing. Especially when we have the tools at our fingertips for so much more. Abudnant living! Could I do it? Could I plant a garden and harvest vegetables when I could barely keep a houseplant alive? Could I learn to can? To preserve freshly hunted deer meat? Could I EAT DEER MEAT?? I put myself to a little test. This is where the elusive sourdough enters the stage. Sourdough has always been something I've enjoyed eating and I really, really wanted to try my hand at it. So after several attempts, a moldy starter, an inactive starter and many, many articles and recipes later, I decided to try again. I mean, what else was I doing?? So it began. If you think sourdough is too fussy, starters are too confusing and scientific, then stick with me because sister, I FEEL YOU. I began to understand sourdough at its most basic level and if I can make a beautiful loaf of homemade bread, anyone can. While I have a stubborn streak and am typically pretty committed to things once I start, I can also be verrrrrry impatient and breadmaking is not for the impatient. It's for the woman who can sit at the table and journal with a nice, hot cup of tea and look out the window reflecting on life, allowing starter to bubble, dough to rise, and bread to bake. But move over, girl, because THIS woman drinks high octane coffee, cannot wait for yeast to bloom, starter to start or dough to rise! It's been a (VERY GOOD) practice in patience. What I've discovered is that you don't have to sit idle for hours to make sourdough bread. You can do it step by step, in between your other tasks of the day. And you don't have to be a stay home mom or have lots of extra time to do it, either. You can most certainly make bread and even homestead for that matter, with the time that you do have. I'll make more posts like that in the future, about bite-sized homemaking tasks but for today, I want to encourage you that sourdough isn't as hard as it's cracked up to be! To get started...what IS starter?!? Starter is what you are going to use in place of a traditional yeast, used to make bread rise. Starter is a combination of flour and water that is allowed to sit out, collecting natural occuring bacteria in the environment that will cause fermentation and rising. I began my starter in a clean, glass canning jar. I used approximately 1/8 cup regular white flour and 1/8 cup whole wheat flour. Through trial and error, I've found that the whole wheat flour seems to bubble and work more quickly than just white flour but it's totally up to you. Plus, I bake a lot with whole wheat flour, so it makes sense for me to do it this way. But because whole wheat flour can be more dense, I use a half and half ratio. To that I added 3 tablespoons filtered, room temperature water. Now, I do that same thing every day. I do not "discard" any. I simply allowed the starter to work away on my counter and after about three days I started using it. Here's the thing- most people "discard" some of their starter simply because they want to avoid having a huge mass of starter at the beginning that is not ready to be used, but I've found that because it becomes active fairly quickly, a cup or two of starter is not "too much" to use up. So..what is discard? Most people will refer to "discard" as the starter you remove and throw out before feeding your starter with flour and water each day to allow for a smaller amount leftover that needs to be fed but I've never done this. The term discard, to me, is just confusing but because it's used so much in the sourdough community, I felt like I should explain. (If this is still confusing, let me know in the comments or read on. I'll try to break it down even further..) To sum it up, if you begin with a small enough amount of starter, use it to bake items 2-3 times a week, then this ratio will work for you. I bake 2-3 loaves of bread per week for my family of five, use the starter along with yeast sometimes or baking powder or soda (to make things like english muffins that don't need as much rise, or things like cinnamon rolls which need a GOOD, BIG rise!) If you have a bigger or smaller family, adjust accordingly. The biggest piece of advice I can give you is try and try again until you get it right! Everyone's environment is so different that there is not a one-size-fits-all recipe to give here but once you get the basic idea, then you can play with it until it works for you. So back to my method- each day I "feed" my starter by adding 1/4 cup flour (half wheat, half white) and 3 tablespoons water to my starter, stir it up well then cover the top with a tea towel and keep that on with the canning jar ring. If I am going to bake, then I pour out about 1/2 cup for my recipe before feeding my starter. Then for my recipe, I mix up the dough until it comes together and allow to sit for about 2 hours before going back to knead it, shape it and cover again for several more hours, or until the dough doubles in size. This will take a while. Because sourdough is slowly fermenting, it will take significantly longer to rise than traditional store bought yeast. You will NOT be able to bake a loaf of sourdough without planning ahead so remember that. But the longer the dough rises, the deeper that sourdough taste will be. It's worth the wait! I usually feed my starter first thing in the morning (say, 7am..) placing about 1/2 cup aside in a bowl for bread. Here is my recipe* and time frame for bread:
1/2 cup starter 2-2 1/2 cups flour 1 tablespoon honey 1 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup water 2 tablespoons olive oil *All of this is approximate. You have to play with your recipe to see what works best depending on your geographic location, climate, humidity, personal preference...etc. Mix everything together then cover with tea towel (approximately 7am) 2 hours to allow dough to relax and come to room temp. Then go back, (9am) dump dough on floured surface, knead, shape, and place in baking dish. Cover with tea towel until dough has doubled in size (approximately 4-6 hours, now it's 3pm) The dough can sit for longer if needed as sourdough is much heartier than traditional yeasted dough so you don't have to worry too much about dough overproofing (expanding to completion, then deflating and ruining the dough..) but if you change your mind or do not want to bake that day, it will keep in the fridge just fine. Bake at 350 degrees until bread is 195-200 degrees internally (I swear by a food thermometer!) I usually bake the bread right around 3 so my kids can have a warm slice right as they walk in from school or right before dinner but again, once you get the timing down, you will be able to plan for your bread needs accordingly. Now, if you notice you are not using your starter frequently enough, it's getting unmanagable, you don't want to feed it every day, or you're going to be out of town, then store it in the fridge. This will slow the fermentation process and the starter will not need feeding daily. I haven't tried this yet but it's what I've heard. Also, be aware that if your starter gets a liquid on top, has a smell of alcohol, is moldy, or just looks or smells "off", then throw it out and start again. It's not worth getting sick over! Also, I transfer my starter to a new jar every week or so, just to keep things nice and clean. A healthy starter will have tiny bubbles on the surface, will have a "pancake batter"-like consistency, and have a nice, beer-ish smell. So...that's it! LOL! I hope this has helped to demystify sourdough and gives you the motivaion to try it yourself. There really is a deep sense of satisfaction the first time you pull a homemade loaf of beautifully risen, healthy, delicious sourdough bread out of the oven. Good luck!