Bread Starter and All About It

I love making bread. It has been a good two years since I started and it has not been an easy journey. I had a rough start and there was time when I was ready to give up. I am glad I did not. It might seem silly but any time I make bread and the heavenly smell fills the room, I feel I have achieved something important.

Making bread is an ongoing process. Every time I learn something new. Because every time is different. Sourdough is a live organism filled with bacteria that are beneficial for us. They react to the weather, humidity, even the way you work the dough.

For baking sourdough bread, you need time. You can’t rush it. But as far as I am convinced, anything of a value requires time and effort!  

The starter is essential for sourdough bread. And not only for the unique sourdough taste. The bacteria that grow inside optimise our intestinal microflora and therefore are very healthy for us. Moreover, they help us to digest the gluten. In fact, the living microscopical organisms work on the gluten already during the process of rising. Many people with gluten intolerance don’t have any problems when they eat sourdough. The bread also stays fresh much longer. The starter is a community of living bacteria that need to be fed on regular basis but once you have it, you can bake wonders. You will have to take care of it, otherwise it will die but fortunately, it’s not very needy!

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How to prepare the starter

All you need is:

1. water          
2. flour

Flour: Use bread or whole grain rye or white (spelt or wheat) flour (white flour should contain 12% or more of protein). I would strongly recommend to use an organic flour for your starter to be healthy and chemicals free.

Water: Water for the starter has to be room temperature, not too cold and not too hot. Tap water is fine to use unless it contains too much chlorine. If it does, let it sit for a while or boil it first to make the chlorine to evaporate. 

You also need a glass container, a carafe or a bowl. 

 

Method

Day 1: Mix 125 g (4.4 oz) water with 100 g (3.5 oz) flour. Mix it well, cover the container with a plastic foil (but only loosely so the air can get to the batter) and leave it on a counter in a room temperature till next day.

Day 2: Add 100 g (3.5 oz) water and 100 g (3.5 oz) flour to the batter from previous day.

Day 3: Add 100 g (3.5 oz) water and 100 g (3.5 oz) flour again. Mix it well.

Day 4: The starter should be alive now, it should have bubbles and should smell sour. Now add only 50 g (1.8 oz) water and 50 g (1.8 oz) flour.

Day 5: At this point the starter is full of lovely bubbles and it smells sour.

You are ready to bake!

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How to store the starter

When using the starter for baking, never forget to put one or two spoons of it aside, in a small glass container covered loosely with a lid (so that it doesn’t dry out but is not completely airtight).  Keep the container in the fridge where it can last a couple of weeks without being fed with flour and water. But I recommend that even if you don’t bake for a week or so, you revive it (feed it) over night at least once a week. By feeding the starter often, it becomes more powerful and makes baking easier and better. In fact, we can say that starter is like wine, the older it is the better.

How to revive the starter

Take the starter from the fridge in the evening before the day you plan to bake. Add about the same amount of water and flour. Mix it well. Make the measurement according to the recipe you want to use so that you have enough starter for baking, plus a little extra to put aside for next time.  After adding water and flour, the starter is slightly denser than a pancake batter. Then cover the container (big enough as it will rise) with plastic loosely (to prevent it from drying but letting the air come in) and leave it on a counter in a room temperature. In the morning the starter is full of bubbles and smelling pleasantly sour.

When you go away for a holiday

Add flour to the starter and make it dense. Like that, less liquid, the starter will last longer in the fridge.

Starter for dark versus white bread

There is no need to have two extra starters, one for white bread (white flour starter) and another one for dark bread (from rye flour). When you want to bake dark bread, revive your starter with rye flour and when you want to bake white bread, use white flour to revive it.

 

My starter’s diary

My starter is over two years old and I made it from rye bread flour. It is very powerful, smells lovely sour and makes an amazing amount of bubbles whenever I feed it. I keep it in the fridge but take it out and feed it at least every other evening before I go to bed. Not only when I want to bake bread next morning but also when I want to bake anything that requires commercial yeast: pies, tarts, cakes, pizza. For all that, it works perfectly. Better than the commercial yeast and on top of that, using it leaves me with a happy feeling that I eat healthy. My starter is a real treasure to have. We definitely have a relationship after two years of living together and so naturally, I came to a decision to name it.  After considering some name options (an obvious choice was that my starter was a female), I thought perfect name fit for my starter was Siva, also known as Ziva. Siva (Ziva) was the Slavic Goddess of life and fertility. And Ziva means alive in my language. And because we Czechs love to put names in diminutives, I started calling her Zivenka.

Even though my starter is two years old (which might seem a lot), she is still very young for her kind. The oldest starter is even 122 years old! It belongs to a woman called Lucille who is 83 years old herself. (So I and Zivenka, we both need some time to catch up!)

But people’s memory is short and after two years some details of how I made my starter faded away. When people started asking me for help with their first starter, I decided to make a new one from scratch because I wanted to be sure about the process and also to see if a fresh starter will be able to create as good bread as my old powerful starter. 

And I wrote my starter’s diary.

1.day

I use whole-grain rye flour this time. In the morning I take my glass carafe from Ikea and mix 125 g (4.4 oz) tap room-temperature water with 100 g (3.5 oz) flour. The batter is quite thick, muddy. I cover it with plastic loosely and put it on a counter.  As much as I am trying not to pay attention to it, I keep observing it and smelling it. However, there is no trace of the familiar sour smell, no trace of bubbles, no trace of life. It looks hopeless. I am having doubts. Is this going to work?

 

2.day

I get up and rush to see what is happening with my starter. But there is no change. No smell, no bubbles, nothing. It doesn’t look any more promising than the previous day. I feed it anyway, with 100 g (3.5 oz) water and 100 g (3.5 oz) flour and mix it well. But very soon, already after lunch, I see bubbles and I see that the batter doubled in size. I give a sigh of relief. 

 

3.day

The morning is full of hope. The starter is bubbling, it has risen up a lot and I am actually starting to worry that my carafe is not big enough. I feed it with 100 g (3.5 oz) flour and 100 g (3.5 oz) water again. By afternoon the wriggler almost overflows the container. 

 

4.day

In the morning I can smell sour scent. I see many bubbles. The stater is very much alive and I am very happy. I feed it with only 50 g (1.8 oz) flour and 50 g (1.8 oz) water this time. 

 

5.day

No doubts that the starter is ready. But is it really strong enough to make a beautiful sourdough? I decide to give it one more day and feed the starter again with 50g (1.8 oz) flour and 50g (1.8 oz) water in the morning and again with 50 g (1.8 oz) water and 50 g (1.8 oz) flour in the evening.

 

6.day

I take my chances and bake my San Francisco Style Sourdough Bread.

And…the result is excellent. I cannot really tell any difference between bread from my old starter and the new one. It is a good news for anyone who wants to start!