I'm going on a road trip...

CO; NE, Chicago, IL; RT 66 to Santa Monica, CA.

Then, I'm travelling up PCH (Hwy 1).  It's a no-brainer that I'll find starter in San Francisco (though I'd love an address or two!;-D).  I'll follow Hwy 1 to OR then on to WA.  I will then continue through ID, MT, and WY, the going home to CO.

Anywhere I can find starter (that tastes of that location...AKA SF sourdough) would be much appreciated.

Don't worry about the exact city.  I can filter those.

sadears59@comcast.net

Thanks,

Steph

I am just starting to experiment with making bread and made my own yeast by mixing AP flour and water together and feeding it daily (twice daily at the beginning) per the Joy of Cooking instructions.  It's been 2 weeks and I have what I think is a nice looking bowl of wild yeast - it's pretty fluid (not runny) and has lots of holes on the surface and it smells pretty "yeasty" I think.  Whenever I feed it, it deflates and puffs right back up about 12 hours later. 

 I continue to feed it daily, but I'm not sure if

a) this is considered my "sponge" or "starter" (is this a poolish or a biga?

b) do i have to add commercial yeast when making a loaf if i use this yeast?

c) if i don't have to add more yeast, what is the typical ratio for substitution i.e., if a recipe calls for 1 tbsp of dry yeast, do i add 1 cup of my "wild yeast"?

Thanks for any advice you can provide.  This site has been a tremendous help!

I am looking for info on an unusual rye "old dough" starter...my 75 yo dad (born in Hungary/Slovenia) recalls his mom starting her rye breads with a hunk of old dough that was permitted to dry out.  A day or two before she was ready to bake, she would crumble this dried dough into water and once it started to form a "sponge" she was ready to bake.

I will have to check with him if the bread was 100% rye, but I suspect so...they were poor and wheat was hard to come by.

 I have looked in various books (by no means exhaustive, yet!) and the closest I've seen was Nancy Silverton's liquid starter which can be dried into flakes.

Anybody?

thanks,

Paula 

Astrid from Paulchen's Foodblog selected oat as theme for this month's Bread Baking Day.

I got inspired from zorra for this recipe & the method from iban.

For more information about sourdough starter you can read Susan post about Sourdough Starter from Scratch .

60 g (1/2 cup + 1 Tablespoon) oat flour.

374 g (2 1/2 cups) whole wheat flour.

670 g (4 1/2 cups) high gluten white flour.

1 1/2 teaspoons salt.

2 teaspoons sugar.

2 teaspoons yeast.

46 g (1/2 cup + 1 Tablespoon) milk powder.

2 Tablespoons oil.

90 g (1/3 cup) sourdough starter.

3 cups water.

1) Place all ingredients in the bowl of mixer; beat 10 minutes to make soft dough.

2) Cover dough and let rise in warm place until doubled in size, about 1 1/2 hour, stretch & fold every 30 minutes.

3) Divide dough into 2 pieces

4) Shape each piece into round loaf, cover; let it rise in warm place until doubled in size, about 40-60 minutes.

5) Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 500 F.

6) Before baking dust flour over the top of the loaf, slash the bread.

7) Reduce the heat to 400F, bake for 15 minutes with steam, & another 15 minutes without steam.

zainab

http://arabicbites.blogspot.com/

For Thom Leonard's sourdough bread recipe, it states that the starter should be activated ~ 8 hours. If I activate it at 10 PM and begin making the bread at 9 AM, the starter is no longer fully active. Can one activate it fully for about 8 hours and then refrigerate it overnight and use it the next morning?

Thanks!

I'm a telecommuter who works from home, and I bake bread for my family two to three times a week. Occasionally, I'll make a loaf with commercial yeast, but typically, I make sourdoughs. Also, on the weekend, I like to make sourdough English muffins and sourdough waffles.

Keeping my starter in the fridge meant I was constantly trying to remember when I needed to take the stuff out to rev it up for bread, and I'd often realize too late that I didn't have enough starter for the muffins or waffles.

After some tinkering, I finally decided to keep the starter on the counter and feed it once or twice a day, which means I've always got at least enough active starter for my overnight whole grain sourdough, and, if I'll need more for a daytime sourdough, I've got enough to seed a bigger amount that can ripen while I sleep. The regimen that I now follow also has the advantage of not wasting anything, because I use all the extra starter stored in the fridge to make all the waffles and English muffins I want. Since both of these recipes derive most of their rise from the interaction of acids and baking soda, using week-old starter from the fridge has enough oomph for leavening and flavor, given that it's gotten pretty acidic already.

Anyway, I'm not saying this is the way to maintain a starter - it's just what works for me at this time in my life, at least for my primary whole wheat starter. (I also keep a rye starter and some white Carl's 1847 Oregon Trail starter in the fridge that I only take out when I want to bake special breads.)

I usually feed it twice a day, once in the morning and once again before bed. Sometimes I forget, though, and only feed it once a day, but it doesn't seem to mind much. I keep it at 60% hydration, which is pretty stiff, but I find it's less messy and stands up a bit better that the wet stuff would to a missed feeding here and there, due to my forgetful nature. Here's how I feed it (it's a 1-3-5 ratio for starter-water-flour).

In the morning, it looks like this.



It hasn't risen much, but it feels puffy, and when I break it open, it's clearly aerated inside.

It weighs about 45 grams, so I take 5 grams of it (about the size of a small marble) ...



... and put the rest in my fridge bowl. These leftovers will find their way into waffles or English muffins later in the week.



Then I add 15 grams of water and mush it up until it's soft and the water has turned somewhat milky in color.



Then I add 25 grams of whole wheat flour.



Finally, I mix it all up with a spoon, take it out and knead it a bit in my hands, which consists of folding it over on itself four or five times. I then roll it into a ball, snap on the lid and let it work.



That's it. I've found it's not that much of a hassle to feed it twice a day and is much less annoying than realizing I can't make a sourdough because I forgot to take my starter out of the fridge and feed it. Since the overnight sourdough I make requires just 40 grams of stiff starter, I'm pretty much always set.

Anyway, it works for me.

One note: for what it's worth, I haven't detected any difference in flavor or performance for the starter on the counter vs starter rev'd up from the fridge.

Second note: Since I'm working with stiff starter, I increase the liquid in both the sourdough muffins and waffles by about 1/4 cup or so.

So, I got incredibly sick of really boring tasting bread, and decided that I would do something I've wanted to for a while, and make a wild yeast starter.  I'm... 4 days in, I think, and my baby is now having troubles.  I started with equal amounts of rye, whole wheat and unbleached white flour, and a few whole rye berries, and warm filtered water. I had bubbles in the first 24 hours, (and it was starting to smell a bit sour.) I've been feeding 1/3 cup of starter every 24 hours with 1/3 cup of white, unbleached, organic flour, 5 tsp of dark organic whole rye flour, and 1/3 cup of skin temp tap water. I rinse the jar, just so I don't get a bunch of dried junk on the walls and can see in, then I put it back in the jar, cover it with a dishtowel, and let it sit.  Its definately yeast in there, it smells like it. (ok, it smells kind of vile, like a yeast infection or something, but very very YEASTY) I've been feeding every 24 hours.  In terms of temp, its been fluctuating a lot. we've had days where its probably 85 or so, and then days when the house temp is probably closer to 65.  I'm not really sure how to keep the temp constant and warm. can't set it on top of the fridge because there is a cabinet there.

 so the problem is, its starting to die one me! or at least, its bubbling less. and it never really increases in size hardly at all.

does anyone have any suggustions? do I need to keep my baby warmer? how? do I need to feed it more often? something else? should I cap the jar instead of draping a towel over it?  Thanks :D

I'm starting this blog to track the events in the life of little Audrey 2, a reluctant starter that began as a rather wet batter form and, as recommended by Mini, was transformed into a ball of stiff starter. In a forum thread I started in order to get help figuring out why my then 13 day old starter was doing nothing, Mini's thought was that possibly I was underfeeding the starter in the wetter form (basically I was doing 50% starter, 25% each water and flour for each feed) which may have been the reason it went all hoochy rather fast: not enough flour to feed the yeasties and the acid bacteria was overtaking - or that was my thought on it anyway.

I'm also doing this as a blog so the forum thread isn't taken over by too many images and so it's easier to follow along, should anyone care to.

Since this starter, third time trying over a three month period btw, was pretty much destined for the recycling bin anyway in favour of starting yet again with a recipe Mike has on his site (Professor Calvel's Starter) as a likely successful candidate for starter if the previous verion failed. Since this was try #3 and I was already on day 13 with no real success, I was game.

So while I was/am waiting to locate a source for just 5g - about a tablespoon - of malt extract (it seems to come in 600g sizes or bigger running at nearly $10 a pop) to follow the Clavel reicpe, I got going with the stiff starter. So here's the saga.

As per Mini's sugegstion, I took 30g of the "going nowhere" batter starter, added 50g of water and "enough flour to make a stiff ball". Out came the flour and off we went.

Here's our first image, Audrey 2 after being mixed up. In all, I added about 88g of flour to get to this.

I now think that 88g of flour was too much but that's where we were then, so on we go. I had followed Mini's suggestion to drop the ball into the flour and coat it so that any developing cracks would be obvious which is why, even though it's a ball of wet rye, it looks very pale.

Three hours later:

At this point, there's either a shrinkage of the surface or it's expanding a little. Since the surface was still moist-ish to the touch, I'll say we had expansion.

At the six hour mark:

More activity although the ball is showing no signs of softening and flattening out as Mini suggested it would. I'm starting to think I went too far with the added flour.

At the 10 hour mark:

Definitely some activity and expansion has occured but now I'm sure the ball was made TOO stiff. Yes, the critters have lots of flour to munch on, but nothing to drink. Because I wasn't staying up much longer, I decided to do feed #2 at this point so it was time to cut up our ball and see what was going on inside.

Even manhandled like this, the ball is stiff enough to stay in shape. Slicing it open, thetexture inside is realtively smooth, if there are any bubbles, they're hard to see and distinguish from the texture of the rye flour. There's little sour aroma to this, mostly it smells like wet rye.

Time for feed #2...

Well, I'm on attempt #3 and into month three of trying to start a starter. Almost 8 kilos of flour into it and still nothing to show for it. Ignoring the two previous attempts here's what I've been doing:

Day 1: Start with organic, stone ground rye, 60g and bottled spring water, 60g. Wait 24 hrs as it sits atop the fridge.

Day 2: Add 60g water, 60g rye, place on fridge, wait 24 hrs

Day 3: Discard all but 120g, add 60g water and rye, place on fridge, wait 12 hrs

Day 3.5: Discard all but 120g, add 60g water and 60g unbleached all purpose.

Day 4: Bubbles and slight foaminess, but I'm suspecting this is unwanted gas this early in the game. Smells like flour and water, no alcohol. Feed normal 120/60/60 ratio (half old, half new). Oh, I wash the container every time I feed it, too.

Day 4.5 and onwards: repeat cycle. Bubbling subsides, eventually begin to get alcohol smell, very minor bubbles in batter could just as easily be from mixing in air. Occasional SLIGHT growth, at most just under 1/4" on about an inch of mix. This eventually subsides and hootch shows up. Alcohol smell gets REALLY strong, little to no activity yeast wise.

I'm now on week three, as noted and thinking this is going nowhere fast. Or slow, actually.

What should my next step be to try and get this thing to grow? Does it make sense to thicken 'er up at this point (1:1:2 perhaps?) to try and stave off excess hootchiness?

And I'm calling it Audrey 2.

I've given you sunshine
I've given you rain
You've given me nuthin'
But heartache and pain
I'm begging you sweetly
I'm down on my knees
Oh please... grow for me!

(seriously botched lyrics from the musical
Little Shop of Horrors (1982))

This website is great. I recently starting making my own bread using Mark Bitman's NY Times no-knead recipe. I've had tremendous success with it and I am using a clouche. The crust and crrumb almost perfect and I am creating some nice loaves.

I wanted to try a sourdough loaf at the request of my 10 year old daughter. I used Mark Shepard's Simple Sourdough formula/recipe for a starter and the bread.

I am able to get a pretty good starter, it bubbles has a sour smell, has hooch and looks a lot like the pictures posted on the web sites I visit. I also am able to get a pretty good sponge. Its a little too wet but again its bubbly, has a sour smell and when stirred has a pretty good body.

My problem is when I make the dough, I am not getting a good rise. I let it sit in the gas oven with the pilot on for 4-6 hours. It looks like it is rising or doubling is size but when I go to put it in the clouche or a loaf pan it just lies flat. I follow the directions and start out with a cold oven and set it to 375 and let it bake for 55 minutes.

The loaf comes out as a flat disc that is very dense. The last one I made had a an alright crumb, nice holes in it but it was very dense. The flavor was pretty good too but not nice and airy like the other bread I've made. I am using King Arthur Whole Wheat flour for the starter and for the dough.

Any suggestion to get a good rise would be greatly appreciated.

btw, i have ordered the starter from Carl Griffith's page and am thinking about ordering the starter from King Arthur.

 I have the starter in the refridge now and it looks pretty good.

 thanks

alex