Bubbles and butterflies
This whole sourdough thing has always made me a bit nervous, and deciding to jump into it, finally, almost gives me butterflies. What if I mess it up? After banana bread, sourdough baking was probably the main activity of people stuck at home during the heights of the Covid pandemic. I know there is tons of content out there on sourdough baking and you don’t necessarily need me to guide you through this, but I think I want to be here more as a fellow newbie for this one, than any kind of authority. Maybe you’re a bit overwhelmed too? Shall we just take this from the very beginning? Let’s hold hands and learn about fermentation, bubbles, rising and naturally occurring yeast together.
So first off, I knew you needed a starter. This magical, mystical “starter” that people get all obsessed with, name, protect, and boast about. But I thought it was some really complicated thing that I possibly couldn’t make myself, and that I needed some generous soul to gift me a bit of their starter for me to be able to cultivate my own. Uh HELLO?! You’re now telling me it’s just a matter of some wholemeal flour and warm water? I feel equal parts stupid and relieved. Reading the incredibly helpful tips on The Clever Carrot (who also have a book on sourdough bread baking!), which will be my guide through this process, I started realising that hey, I can do this too. Why did I ever think I couldn’t?
Still, even though it’s not as magical and mystical as we might have feared, there’s quite a lot to take in if it’s all as new to you as it is to me. So my contribution is to break it down in real time (more or less) with where I’m at in the process, and hopefully you can follow me as I go through these steps. Warning though: I might mess it up and need to adjust or even start again, so until I’ve mastered this I can’t give you any guarantees that I know what I’m doing (because, well, I don’t!).
Anyway - here we go: You can, it turns out, totally make your own starter. You need wholemeal flour (whole wheat is the same!) and warm water. That. Is. It! Oh, and a fairly large jar that you can close properly. The process of making a living starter takes about 7 days - but it can take up to 2 weeks as well, depending on many factors. To break it up and make it super easy to follow, I will share the day by day steps here until I have a starter, and what you need to do further on if your starter is not quite ready at exactly the same time as mine! It’s important to keep in mind that lots of factors play a part here when you are creating your own yeast, like temperature, geography, water and flour quality.
Day 1: Make your starter
Day 1, here we go. You need a completely clean jar (around 750ml or bigger), 1/2 cup of wholemeal flour (other types work too but this is the safest!), and about 1/3 cup of warm water, possibly a bit more. Mix it with a fork in your jar, until you have a thick and gooey mixture. Then you close your lid and leave the jar in a fairly warm place, the ideal temperature being around 23ºC (75ºF), which is just over regular room temperature. I created my starter in the hot summer months, but even in colder times there are ways to keep it warm. One way that works really well is to put it in your microwave with the door ajar so the lamp stays on, or even under a regular lamp in your home. (Don’t worry - you won’t have to keep it warm forever!)
Day 2: Check for bubbles
Day 2 is probably as easy as it gets. You want to check if your starter has any bubbles on the surface, which is an indication that the fermentation has started. But even if you can’t really see any bubbles, don’t worry too much. Just leave it in a warmish place for another 24 hours. If a dark, smelly liquid has built up on the top of your starter (this is called hooch), don’t worry. You’ll pour this out tomorrow, but for now leave it as it is.
Day 3, 4, 5 and 6: Discard and feed
Now it’s time to do some work. Every day now up until day 7 you want to follow this same procedure:
Discard of about half of the starter (you can be meticulous and weigh it - keep in mind that you’ll need to know how heavy your jar is to begin with - but weighing is possibly not that important)
Add about 60g of lukewarm water (ideally filtered water!) and 60g of flour. If you have measuring cups, that’s about 1/3 cup of water and 1/2 cup of flour.
You can put a rubber band around the jar towards the later days of making the starter, so you can see how much the starter is growing (or maybe even sinking!).
Day 7: Feed and test!
On day 7, do the same discarding and feeding again, and give the starter a chance to rise and bubble (maybe a few hours). Now you can, if the starter is growing and bubbling, do the float test. In a glass of water, drop a teaspoon’s worth of starter. If it floats, the starter is ready to be used for baking! If it sinks, don’t worry. You just need to give it another day, feed it again, and try anew!
Just note that starters are alive and are all different. My starter was ready to use on day 8, but yours can be ready on day 7 or maybe not until day 14. Don’t give up - if you keep feeding it, it will be ready to use eventually. There are lots of things that can happen with your starter though, that can be confusing and possibly frustrating, if you are totally new to it all, so check out my troubleshooter list to figure out what might be missing!
Have you tried making a sourdough starter? How is it going? Message me on Instagram @TheFromScratchBody!
