During this extended stay-at-home, many folks are exploring cooking, baking, brewing, fermenting, and other such hobbies. I know I have; unfortunately, my exercise has not increased apace, something I plan to change today.
One thing I cook with is sourdough starter. Recently, I’ve not done much with it except make a little side money. For years, I would bake bread, use it as the sponge for an incredible three-day pizza dough, and make sourdough pancakes. Those are my favorite; when things go well, they have a sharp flavor that is addictive. Since I put an extra egg into the mix, they are a good source of protein to offset some of the carbs and oil.
I’ve worked my starter a lot by heating it frequently, often to the point of death for the yeast culture, then tended it as it recovered. Repeated cycles have brought out a nice, strong sourdough flavor. Also, it’s a very active culture, often bubbling ominously on its own within the first couple of days of being activated. I’m a big fan of wild yeasts, so I keep the top of the jar open, covered with just a thin white handkerchief. This allows built-up carbon dioxide to escape, and allows wild yeasts floating in the air to join my colony of yum.
I’m sure you’re wondering what I meant by “side money” and “activated”.
I sell my sourdough starter on Ebay for fun, and business is hopping these days as more and more folks are looking for something to do that enhances home life. By hopping, I’ve sold 7 in the past week, and that’s after a two-month lull. It’s not making me rich by any means, but a little extra $ here and there is always welcome, and I enjoy spreading my love of sourdough, just don’t ask me how to bake a good loaf. My recent efforts have been sad, deflated, and uninspiring.
Once you get sourdough starter, it’s either a thick liquid (from a friend, often given in a glass jar) or it’s dry. I sell dry starter – I used my dehydrator to dry out a large batch of the liquid, and I ship these small packets of the pulverized remains. Occasionally, I pull a packet out of the fridge and activate it according to my instructions to ensure that it is still viable.
Narrator: It is always viable, it’s amazing stuff that will likely outlive us all.
Activating dried starter is as simple as adding it to warm water and flour (and a bit of sugar for day 1) and letting the colony grow. Each day you add more flour and water and in two weeks, you’ve got a full-flavored starter ready for action. Of course you can use it sooner, but the fuller flavors begin to shine after 14 or so days of growth. It is a live culture and needs flour and water to keep going, so folks tend it every day or two, keeping these starters alive for years-to-decades. You pour off part of the existing starter (or use it!) to make room for the additional flour and water otherwise you end up with a house full of starter!
Funny story – I was coming up with a name and chose “Hott Stuff” because I’m goofy and I used heat to stress the culture and encourage more of the super-yummy heat-tolerant yeasts to develop and take over. When I setup my initial Ebay store, I made some errors and so had to call support to get things sorted. The lady was gracious, but asked me the login name and I had to say “Hott Stuff” and almost giggled myself to death. She laughed too and had fun teasing me with “Mr. Stuff”, and “Oh, Hott…”. Turns out, since this is a hobby business linked to a gmail account and my personal PayPal account and not a full, incorporated one with documents, EIN, and bank account, the approach I’d chosen was wrong. She helped me change my account, laughing all the way. I still feel the residual cheek-blush as I type this.
So, on the off chance that you or someone you know is looking for a good, easy sourdough starter, please take a look!
Open thread. I won’t be around, in my bouts of free time today, I must put some seeds and seedlings into their containers and the furnace repair folk are coming soon. And quiche won’t make itself, now will it?
SiubhanDuinne
Open thread? It occurred to me late last night that yesterday was the one-year anniversary of our dear efgoldman’s death. Tried just now to phone Marilyn but the connection was terrible so I sent her a quick email:
Just thought the rest of the Jackaltariat would want to note efg’s yahrzeit.
WereBear
Love the name.
OzarkHillbilly
@SiubhanDuinne: In his honor, Fuck ’em.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: Fuck ’em.*
*You know what I mean.
SiubhanDuinne
I have heard of sourdough starters that are kept going for generations. Literally, family heirlooms. Any truth to that, or is it an urban legend? I suppose I could check Snopes….
Blue Galangal
This is fantastic. I will order some! I have a starter myself I’ve had only since 2013 but has been in active use for about 2 years. I love it. It’s a German starter and it’s kind of unstoppable. I bake about 1 kilo of pain de mie a week for the three of us with it. The absolute best part of sourdough baking is never having to buy yeast. I make English muffins, croissants, country bread, and, of course, our staple pain de mie. Sourdough is a LOT less scary than people think. I keep my starter at room temp (I use it a lot) with a backup in the fridge. It’s about 80g, and when I feed it, I take 25 g out and mix that with 25g of water and AP flour, and use the rest to start my levain. This method (I ran across it in the King Arthur blog) has been working well and I never have to throw away cups of starter (basically cups of flour – ouch!) – everything gets used.
SiubhanDuinne
@OzarkHillbilly: I wondered who’d be first.
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus: Time stamp says you’re in a tie with OH for getting there first.
OzarkHillbilly
@SiubhanDuinne: Truth.
OzarkHillbilly
@SiubhanDuinne: I beat him because he thought somebody might actually take offense and felt the need to asterisk it.
Tom Streeter
Back in the day I called mine “Keith Richards” since no amount of abuse could kill it. He was eventually portioned out among friends and, as far as I know, is still reproducing.
Much like the original.
Omnes Omnibus
@OzarkHillbilly: What the fuck was I thinking, right?
OzarkHillbilly
@Omnes Omnibus: :-) Never explain the joke.
Blue Galangal
@SiubhanDuinne: I do know of someone personally who’s had a sourdough starter for 25 years that she says came from her grandma. It seems likely that it can go on as long as you keep feeding it/don’t kill it.
Red Cedar
Yay! Just ordered some. I’d been thinking of trying to start my own but was a bit intimidated by instructions I read (warnings about how it could go bad etc). My son has been completely in love with sourdough bread lately, so it will be fun to make some myself instead of spending a fortune at the grocery store/bakery.
PenAndKey
@SiubhanDuinne: They’ll go indefinitely once they’re established and as long as you maintain a healthy feeding cycle, storage conditions, and use good flour to feed. Once the microbial colony is established it may have drift and mutation over time, but fundamentally it will stay the same as long as conditions allow.
Also, I’m not surprised that starters are selling well right now. Have you all tried to find dried yeast on the store shelves? It and bread flour have been out in my area for weeks. I have enough to last me the interim, but if I run out I may just end up cracking open some of my -80C long-term storage vials of neutral flavor brewers yeast strains and propagating those up for bread, or saving some back if I ever get around to making a batch of beer.
West of the Cascades
Thank you! I bought one, and you have inspired me to try baking – I love sourdough bread, and inherited bread pans when my mom passed away eight years ago, but never acted on that “maybe I should try …” impulse until today.
Highway Rob
Since an open thread, here’s an article about how a Texas grocery chain (love ’em) prepared for the ‘Rona in ways that would put the White House to shame if they had any. (Confession, I only read the first bit of it before it occurred to me to share with y’all. Summary is based on the promo tweet and the headline.)
https://www.texasmonthly.com/food/heb-prepared-coronavirus-pandemic/
Peter
I got my starter from a friend nearly 15 years ago and have used it regularly since then (I just fed it this morning so I can make bagels). In the years since I acquired it, I’ve given it to dozens of people, usually as part of a baking class, and I love hearing back about everyone’s successes and journeys into unlocking one of life’s great pleasures.
My friend Andrew, who gave me the starter, works at Cook’s Illustrated. He’s been coaching people on starting their own at home during quarantine using the hashtag #quarantinystarter He’s @wordloaf on Instagram if you want to learn.
And yes, pancakes made with starter are killer… I’m working on a comprehensive list of all the things I make using excess starter. It could honestly be a book in its own right.
Mom Says I*m Handsome
We go through a couple of loaves of Udi’s sourdough each week, and with the supply to our house threatened by, um, circumstances, buying a starter from Alain was a no-brainer.
I have heard that the yeast culture in sourdough bread does a much more thorough job of processing gluten, so much so that sourdough is practically gluten-free.* Is there any truth to that? Any devotees of Harold McGee want to set me straight?
* Not actually gluten-free, of course. My personal experience is that my tum is negatively affected by most breads (I consider myself to be gluten-sensitive-adjacent) but sourdough never causes trouble, ever.
Mom Says I*m Handsome
@Peter: I am interested in your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
cain
@SiubhanDuinne:
Wow, it’s been a year already? Amazing…
(on the other hand, a lot of stuff happened in a year that if I had known then I’d be flabbergasted)
Alain
Thanks for the orders folks – I ran the last couple out and snuck them into the neighbor across the street’s mailbox since the postman already came.
I hope you like – it’s a tasty, aggressive starter that we love dearly.
One side note – for those who have issues with gluten, I’ve read that sourdough can be much easier to deal with, something about those yeasts make gluten less nasty to deal with. My MIL seems to think sourdough is fine, and has issues when she eats normal bread, though I’ve not tested extensively.
Related, fermented foods are chock full of good things for your GI system, and sourdough is no exception. Beyond tasting yummy, it’s got some good micronutrients and such from all those yummy yeast lifeforms.
Alain
@SiubhanDuinne: Thanks for this reminder. I was just thinking about him yesterday, oblivious to the timing.
fmbjo
Warning, sourdough starter, once made will grab you, taunt you, “Use me, use me or I will die.” I had to quit it.
MoxieM
@SiubhanDuinne: Thank you for this. (I’m bad at remembering stuff like actual dates) — but he’s been often on my mind over the past year.
I’ll chime in with a hearty ‘fuck’em’! to the Plague Profiteers, and other nasties, and best wishes to jackals far, wide, and cooped up.
Peter
@Mom Says I*m Handsome: Long-fermented dough, as with other fermented foods like kimchi or miso, is partially pre-digested by microbial metabolism. That generally makes these foods more nutritious and easier to digest for us. It definitely doesn’t remove the gluten from wheat, though.
luc
Is your bread a “San Francisco” style sourdough bread (meaning vinegar sour) or “old world” style sourdough (lactic acid sour)?
E.
It’s easy to make. 50/50 by weight water and the freshest flour you have, preferably rye or whole wheat but white will work too. Mix up about 300 grams, let sit a day, remove all but a tablespoon and repeat. Depending on everything, from 5 to 14 days later you will have starter. That’s how I got mine, 15 years ago. We use it every day here at the bakery.
There’s a lot of nonsense on the web about starters. I am of the view that it’s pretty much all the same — there’s not a dramatic difference between the starters used in, say, the Middle East, and those used in France and San Francisco. A lot of very talented bakers have been traveling the world lately and sampling starters, and reporting they cannot detect a difference. Anyway, the whole thing is not as mysterious as some insist.
HRA
My favorite homemade bread besides my Mother’s was made by my Dad’s cousin with a starter. The starter ingredient was done with leblevi which are hard round Turkish items I called hard ceci beans as a child. My Mom would have the leblevi with raisinsas one of the offerings for meze. A few years ago I tried finding the recipe for the starter and the bread without any success. Then I went to social gatherings and one man had the recipe from his mother. I have the recipe somewhere among my files and now have the urge to find it so I can make bread again.
Juice Box
Here’s a good recipe that uses up some of that starter that you would otherwise discard:
https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/sourdough-crumpets-recipe
Kay (not the front-pager)
I didn’t get past paragraph 5 before ordering. I made rye starter several years ago.It took time and nurturing, but it was worth it. I was delighted to be able to make bread using nothing but flour, water, and salt. Really! I just used my flour/water starter, flour, and salt (and most of a day) to make my tasty loaves.
Now back to read the rest of the post.
Kristine
Ordered! That should make me attempt more bread baking
(I assume one packet is enough)
Kristine
@Peter: I would love the pancake recipe. And would dearly love that cookbook if/when.
Peter
@E.: Also, too, if you brought some SF starter home to, say, NY, in a matter of days it would get colonized by native strains and quickly change its microbial populations to reflect your area.
Peter
@Kristine: My starter is 100% hydration, i.e. 50/50 flour and water, which I find is a perfect thickness for pancakes. I add a pinch of salt and ladle out about a cup per flapjack into a greased iron skillet. That’s it! Eggs are not necessary since the gluten is so thoroughly developed. If you like, you can whisk a little oil into the batter when you mix in the salt, but it’s not essential.
Kristine
@Peter: Thanks!
Kay (not the front-pager)
I’ve been baking 2 loaves of bread a week since around Thanksgiving, usually using my bread machine for the mixing/rising, but baking in my “brick” oven (terra cotta tiles on the oven rack). For the last couple of months I’ve been using a recipe that uses cooked whole grains, as well as rolled oats, whole wheat and whole rye flour. The liquid is buttermilk, which gives it some tartness to go with the honey sweetness, but sourdough starter would take it to the next level. Can’t wait to get mine!
I did buy an extra 5 lb. bag of whole wheat and bread flours for my emergency supply box in February, and another bag of whole wheat flour in my regular shopping the first week of March, so I haven’t run low yet. And I still have a half pint jar of yeast in the freezer, as well as part of a jar in the fridge, so I can continue to use yeast if I have to.
My previous starter fell to my husband’s zealous pre-holiday cleaning spree. I will label this batch better, and threaten him more thoroughly. ;-)
J R in WV
Thanks for the Sourdough Clue, Alain! I too have intentions for my Kitchenaid mixer, flour and yeast. I fortunately picked up extra yeast packets both times I bought one more 5 lb bag of flour. Now I have 2 bags of King Arthur Whole Wheat (one of which I’ve been using for the odd coupla TBsps of flour for cooking) and one bag of Kroger’s all purpose flour. Along with 14 or 16 packets of dry yeast.
Will take a swing at sourdough in a little while, local bakery makes great sourdough country bread, but of course they are out of range for me now. Will be surveying old vac cleaner bags for use in home-made masks also too.
cleek
i’ve been making simple sourdough crumpets with my discard.
(from King Arthur’s site):
mix it up, it’ll bubble like a weak volcano, then fry it like little pancakes on a hot greased skillet. totally delicious.
Sab
Well this is timely. I was wondering about replacing my yeast. I can only stand quickbreads for a while.