How to make your sourdough starter

Hello all. So, all ready to make your starter? Come, let’s do it in a systematic and efficient way with minimal wastage. I had embarked on a sourdough journey four years back. I baked around a dozen boules and then my journey ended abruptly when my refrigerator malfunctioned and my starter died 🙁 And somehow I was never able to make a starter again due to some or the other reason. Also four years earlier, I didn’t have the confidence to blog about it or share my recipes. But I guess now after baking breads (of course with commercial yeast) regularly for 4-5 years, I am in a better position to venture into sourdough baking and blog my experiences. I am all excited to share whatever little I know about it and shall try various combinations of flours and flavours. I shall post a separate article on what exactly is a sourdough bread and what are the terms used in general.

The procedure to make a starter is quite simple and you  do not need any fancy equipments or ingredients. All you need is some flour, water and a clean glass jar and yes loads and loads of patience, discipline and perseverance. You will need to maintain a proper schedule of when to feed  your starter. Remember that your starter is like your baby or your pet. You will have to feed them properly according to a fixed schedule. It’s better to maintain a diary and note down all your observations for around 14-15 days before you actually bake your first sourdough bread. See when your dough doubles, find out whether it triples or not, does it fall after rising and various other things. Our Indian weather is quite hot as compared to other places, so our starter will behave quite differently from other places.

So, let’s quickly start with the process.  If at any point of time you feel that your starter is smelling foul or there is some mold growing on it, please discard it. Below is the date and schedule that I had followed.

Ingredients:

• Whole wheat flour
• Water

Tools:

• Weighing scale
• Glass jar
• Spoon and spatula
• Rubber band or tape

Procedure:

Day 1: 6th January 2021 (11 a.m)

• Choose a particular time of the day and stick to it as far as possible.

• Take a clean glass jar (atleast 500 ml capacity) and weigh it.
• Add 30 grams of whole wheat flour to it and add 30 grams of clean water. Try not to use heavy chlorinated water. Mix well.

• It will be a very stiff dough like mixture. Do not worry, it will become like a smooth batter by the next day. 

Ignore the weight displayed on thd weighing scale 🙂

Day 2: 7th January 2021 (11 am)

• Around the same time when you added the flour and water on Day 1, take your jar and mix the starter. It would have loosened up a bit than Day 1.

• From the 60 gram mixture in the jar, remove half (that is 30 gram).
• Now to the 30 gram batter, once again add 30 grams of flour and 30 grams of water.  So you have 90 grams in the jar.
• Mix well. This time around, the batter would be much loose than Day 1.

• Cover and keep aside. Do not be disheartened if you don’t any activity in the starter.
• But I could see some small bubbles at the end of Day 1 and early morning of Day 2.

• Incase there is absolutely zero activity on Day 2, you can skip the above steps and not add any fresh flour to the mixture.
• My starter doubled on Day 2 in 3-4 hours.

Day 3: 8th January 2021 (11 am)

• Once again take the jar, observe and smell the growing starter. If at any point you see any pink or green mould growing, please discard and start a fresh batch.
• It should smell fruity and like yeast.
• Stir well, remove 60 grams from the jar and once again add 30 grams fresh flour and 30 grams water to the remaining 30 grams of mixture. Once again you have 90 grams in the jar.
• Mix well and keep aside.
• On Day 3, my starter took 7-8 hours to double.
• You can tie a rubber band on the jar to see the rise.

• I have two bottles of the same kind and so every day, I measure and take 30 grams batter from the previous jar to the fresh jar and then add flour and water to it. (Btw, one of the bottle broke the day I wrote this post 🙁 )

Day 4: 9th January 2021 (11 am)

• Repeat what you did on Day 3.
• Take a note of the behaviour of your starter. See when it doubles, when it falls, whether it triples or not. Record your observations neatly. This will help you to understand your starter better.
• My starter doubled in 4-5 hours and almost tripled in 7-8 hours

Day 5: 10th January 2021 (11 am)

• Repeat Day 4.
• Starter doubled in 1.5 hours. And tripled in almost 4 hours.

Day 6–Day 10

• Repeat and observe the activity.

By the end of ten days, you will have a clear understanding of your starter behaviour. And with all the good wishes of nature, you will be in a  position to bake your bread without any commercial yeast. Or well maybe,  you can try some hybrid breads in the beginning. “Hybrid” in the sense that use some instant or active yeast along with your starter.
I know, the most nagging question in your mind would be “What do I do with the batter that I discard each time?” Well, there are many ways in which you can use it.

• One of the most simplest and easiest way is to add it in your idli/dosa batter. No one would even notice the difference.
• Check out this sourdough discard cracker recipe. It tastes delicious.
• This is another simple recipe using the discard. These pancakes are very versatile and can be made in various flavours.
• You can add a small quantity to your regular chapati dough. Try making tandoori rotis on tawa.
• Try using it as a leavening agent in nans and kulchas.
• Replace the curd in any tandoori roti recipe by the discard.
• Reduce the quantity of yeast in a pizza or focaccia recipe and add some of this discard instead.
• Try out this hybrid loaf bread using the discard.
• Have you ever thought of adding some of your discard to chocolate cookies? If not, then this is the right recipe for you. Absolutely yum 🙂

21st January 2021: Well, everything was going fine and I made some subway style sandwich loaf and a whole wheat bread, a semolina whole wheat bread with the discard and a very small amount of instant yeast.  Made a batch of sourdough crackers too. My starter was nicely doubling in 2-3 hours and not falling much. I was quite happy with my starter too and was planning to bake a bread without any commercial yeast. But, at times things don’t happen the way you plan.  On Saturday afternoon (16/01/21), we got a message that Sanjeev’s uncle was serious and in a critical condition. Immediately, I kept the starter in the refrigerator and we left for Coimbatore on Sunday early morning. We reached Chennai yesterday late evening and I removed the starter from the refrigerator and thawed it for around two hours.
At around 9 pm, once again I discarded and added fresh flour to the remaining. Now I guess I will wait for  two more days before I try out a bread.

Did I tell you guys, that we have named our starter “Nemo“, cute, isn’t it? So henceforth lets call it Nemo  instead of calling it starter each time.
I guess these are all steps and information needed to make your sourdough starter. You can make your starter with apf, bread flour, wwf or a combination. You can use the same starter to make an apf bread too.
I shall soon post more bread recipes using my Nemo.

When to use your starter:
Well, different people use different conventions. According to me, the best bet would be to use it when it is at its peak and ripe. That is, use your starter when it doubles or triples after feeding and before it falls.

How to know whether your starter is ready to be used?:

• Well, there is no 100% foolproof method. As your starter ages and matures, it will get stronger n stronger.
• One way to test is by using the “float method”. Add a spoon of starter into a glass containing water. If your starter floats on top, it means that your starter is ready. If it doesn’t, feed for few more days.

How to store your starter:

• If stored in good hygienic conditions, a starter can live for over hundred years.
• If you do not make bread daily, there is no need to feed it daily after two weeks or so.
• You can store a small amount in the refrigerator in a clean container.
• Maybe two days before you plan to bake a bread, take it out of the refrigerator and feed it. Repeat the steps given in the beginning (that is discarding and feeding) for a day or two or till it’s active again.

When to store the starter in the refrigerator:
Now you might want to know when and in what state you should refrigerate the starter, isn’t it?
Suppose you are ready to bake your bread and till now the starter was at room temperature and you have been feeding it daily. You feed it as usual early in the morning. Then when it is at its peak, take out whatever is required /to make the levain and then you can refrigerate the remaining.
Feed your starter once a week using the same discard and feed method. With one of two feeds, you should be in a position to bake your next bread. I am sure you will figure what how these things work with a couple of trials. You can store as little as ten grams of starter.

Additional Notes:

• At times you might observe a brown liquid on top of your starter, it’s called “Hooch”. Just throw it (the liquid) away.
• It’s better to maintain a very small amount of starter if you are not very sure how long you will continue this journey or you don’t bake breads that often. Always remember to use same amount (by weight) of water and flour.
• You can use mild lukewarm water if your place is quite cold. This will help your starter to rise quickly.
• Be sure to use a weighing scale. Cup measurements will give you different results, as 1 cup water and 1 cup flour do not weigh the same. In a 240 ml cup, 1 cup water is around 240 grams whereas 1 cup flour is around 120-130 grams.
• You can use glass or plastic container to store your starter, but I would suggest you to use glass.
• You can use Nutella bottles or olive bottles. No need to buy new ones.
• Lastly, patience….. Patience is the biggest tool to deal with sourdough. Don’t think of baking a bread in the first week of starting your starter however quickly it rises. As it gets older and older, it gets more potent.
• Don’t be disappointed if the earlier breads don’t turn out as expected. Treat each bake as a learning experience.
• Don’t ever throw your discard. Think of new and innovative ways to use it.
• If I get or remember any more points, I shall add it to this post 🙂