Sour Dough starter

[TZ-Someplace]

Simple to make, flour saving and time saving sourdough starter.

I settled on this technique after watching several on YouTube and modifying the best to suit my energy level, knowledge, and common sense. I tried adding many different substances to influence the microbe fractions and taste profile (pineapple juice, orange juice, fermented sour kraut, home made yogurt, apple cider vinegar, molasses, inside inoculation, outside inoculation, super clean utensils/fingers, not super clean utensils, etc.). I made a lot of starters and ate a lot of odd tasting bread last summer.
I highly recommend Ben Starr's YouTube videos for the science and for simplifying a lot of things that many complicate about making sour dough bread.

Things you need
Jug of distilled/purified water
Bag of all purpose flour
Wild germs, aka microbes

Clean, lidded wide mouth container: 12 oz jar, 32 oz deli container etc
1/8th cup coffee scoop
Measuring cup with 1/8 cup fractions or use a second scoop for the water, or convert all to metric and feel superior to us Muricans for our backwards ways.
Thick handled ice-tea spoon (long handle) or strong chopstick, or some wholly inferior stirring device.

A room with room temperatures. The culture grows faster with warmth but the yeasts dominate faster with cooler temps, so as long as you are not cold or hot this will work. It's not a precision project, you don't have to turn in a lab report on Wednesday.

I have a strong science background and I looked up all of the different yeasts and bacteria at work here, read the pH pinapple juice study and the dominant yeasts from sourdough samples around the world, etc.etc so don't be scared when I refer to germs and goo as germs and goo. ['Germ' from the Latin 'germen' for seed, sprout, "Goo" from "gross" and "ooky").

The gist of this is you are starting with a lot of water and incrementally adding flour for food over the first week as the microbes grow until you reach 100% saturation of flour and water. Then you start taking out half and adding half fresh back in, which is more work than just stirring in flour. You need the half out and half in steps simply to judge rising rate near the end, but not at the beginning.

Day 1 - Let 1/2 cup (4 scoops) of water sit in a bowl outside for a day to catch native yeasts and bacteria (or you could just put in a couple of organic raisins). Inside, you get microbes from your body, your dirty laundry, your pets, the fish tank, etc. You don't want to think about any of that growing in your food even if you are constantly breathing and swallowing it anyway. The flour actually has all the bacteria and yeasts it needs from growing up on a farm in Kansas but you can pretend you got special local yeasts this way.

Microbe multiplication and yeast species stabilization process.

Day 2 - Transfer water to your lidded container and mix in one scoop flour - wait two days. The yeast seems to need an acidic bacterial environment to wake up and start multiplying so you are growing things like lactic acid bacteria (pickle fermentation bugs) first. They can get bubbly, don't get excited. Stir a couple of times a day to add oxygen so funky species can't grow well.

Day 4 - Add one scoop flour and mix in. This doubles the food so the microbes can double. Periodically stir to add oxygen. Yeast will be waking up and multiplying about now.

Day 6 - Add two scoops of flour - Total flour is now 1/2 cup to 1/2 cup water. When thick and sticky start mixing with the handle of the spoon not the scoop end. If no one from YouTube is watching, use your fingers to scrape the goo off the spoon back into the container. Periodically stir to add oxygen. Make sure your lid is on loosely or it will explode and scare the cat.

Day 7 - Add four scoops flour - Total now is (hopefully) 1 cup flour to 1/2 cup water, which is approximately 100% hydration (add a little more water if the mix too dry). Periodically add oxygen. I slowly roll the container to get the surfaces in contact with the air rather than using the spoon. It's more fun. The material will start out very thick/dry/sticky and then get runny over time. It might get weird, don't worry about it. Fuzzy mold growing inside is something to remove, or transfer a bit of the starter to a new container.

Day 8 - Discard most of the goo so you have about 1/8 cup in the container (or put about 1/8 cup in a new container), add 1/8 cup water and clean up the sides so you have a slurry in the bottom, then mix in 1 scoop flour so the yeast can double. Precise fractions are not needed with these small amounts. Millions of microbial cells are competing for dominance in every drop so it doesn't matter if you have a little or a lot of material in the jar for the doubling/competition steps, just have about equal parts new food/flour to active material. Hydration level (50% or 100%) only matters for the pros when they get to the mixing step for baking.

Day 9 - Add another scoop of flour and mix in (100% hydration now).

Day 10 - Add 1/8 cup water and 2 scoops of flour. Still 100% hydration.

Day 11 - Add 1/4 cup water and 4 scoops of flour. Put a strip of tape on the side of the container and mark the surface. Check in six hours to see if it has doubled. The volume of the container is the reason for taking out half and adding the same amount fresh back (approx 1/4 cup water and 1/2 cup flour). Do as many of these repeats as you need until you consistently get double volume or more in six hours. You can do two repeats/refills a day to speed up the process. You are just trying to make the yeast species that grows the fastest dominant at this point.

Practically, the starter is ready for bread baking once it can double its volume in six hours, but I found that the bread can leave a funny after taste until the dominant microbial population stabilizes. It may taste very "San Francisco" at first but with an after taste, and then later not be so sour but with no after taste. What I do if there is an after taste is to go back to the almost empty gooey container stage and start the doubling again from a single scoop of flour rather than waste flour doing a bunch of half container doubling.

Do you need special flour? No.
Do you need pineapple juice to set the pH? No
Those things might get your starter up to full speed a day or two faster but with the possible after taste problem and general human laziness, why bother if you don't have a deadline?

Can you use tap water? Maybe but why chance chlorine/chloramine making your microbes sluggish or dead.

Was this the way everybody captured yeast for bread back in the day? No. They used yeast skimmed from brewing, fruits/wine making, or they held back a piece of risen dough from the day before, sometimes dried it, added water and used that as their source of yeast. Bread made from letting a jar full of raisins go all floating and fizzy in water for a few days tastes pretty good.

If anyone wants I will describe the sloppy lazy way I turn this into edible bread.

[Mr.Fakename]

I've been making sourdough stuff for a few years, and to me your method seems overly complicated!


When I make a new starter, I do as follows:
1 - Mix equal parts water and flour
2 - Let sit at ambiant temperatures for 48h
3 - Discard most of the mix
4 - Add equal parts water and flour
5 - Repeat steps 3 & 4 daily, until the starter gets bubbly in a few hours
6 - At this point the starter is ready to use, either discard/feed daily or store in fridge when not needed


Works perfectly every time. I use about 100g starter in a batch of bread; so when I feed I add roughly 50g water and 50g flour.
The leftover in the jug is enough to keep the culture going and healthy.

I don't find adding things to the starter itself has a real impact, sugars get dissolved too quickly. Changing flours does though. I fed half wholewheat half buckwheat today, it's disgusting.

Adding a big spoonful of honey or seeds in the final mix really makes the taste pop more noticeably!

This book: Flour Water Salt Yeast — Ken's Artisan is a must read, it's fantastic. Ken also has a YouTube channel I believe.
This website is also a great source of information, to get started and to find inspiration: The Perfect Loaf | Bake Sourdough Bread

[estación seca]

How do you two find time to grow orchids AND bake bread?

[TZ-Someplace]

Same result Mr, Fakename, just without so much mixing and discarding. Lots of words to explain though.

Time? Mix it all together Saturday night, tear some off for pizza dough, let it sit over night to rise. Put it in a thing to shape for my oval pot for a couple of hours, Make/cook the pizza while heating the oven, put the shaped dough in the preheated pot and cook it. My pot is big enough for bread for a week or more.

Bread flour makes things so much easier than all purpose.

[Grautier]

Thats funny. Only last week I made a whole GRAIN half whole-grain-flour sourdough bread, supposedly to last this week ... Nothing left of it ... Already had to make a new one ... A simpler loaf this time.

[WaterWitchin]

I don't understand making a new starter. Mine is decades old. Why make new starter over and over? Am I missing something?

[TZ-Someplace]

I had none and made several at the same time using different additives trying to modify the cultures. Is that what you are asking?

[WaterWitchin]

Ah, you were doing sourdough starter for first time. I get it. You do know the older the starter, the better it gets, right?

[TZ-Someplace]

It got a lot better after I did some ten or so extra doubling cycles on it. It also gets pretty old between uses/ feedings 3-4 weeks.