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german sour dough starter

flourgirl51's picture
flourgirl51

german sour dough starter

I recently returned from Germany and a friend sent me home with both the wet and dry packaged sour dough starters. I won't be baking for the market again until April and am wondering how often I will need to refresh the starter to keep it alive until then. I have never made sourdough bread before. Thank you.

LindyD's picture
LindyD

For at least the first two weeks to make sure your wet levain is viable and strong.  

Then start baking with it so you can judge how it's performing as to taste and raising your bread.  

I keep my own starter at around 50-60% hydration and stash it in an unheated bedroom in between feedings.  That lets me go up to 72 hours between refreshments.  If  I need a levain of say, 100% hydration, it's easy to build that from a portion of the starter.

Since you're in Minneosta, am betting probably have a room in your house that's quite cool.   :-)

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

They may be a one time use product.  can you photograph the packages and post them?

Mini

flourgirl51's picture
flourgirl51

They are all in German.

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

(and?)    :)

Sorry, can't make suggestions on feeding knowing so little about it or whether they are active live starters.  Name and product information can be looked up.  Do you see a web address on the package?   

If it is a low pH flavoring, it can be used with flour & water to start a starter, setting up the culture environment for bacteria and yeast growth.  That would take a few days of patience and no feeding just like when starting a sourdough starter.  I think you can assume they contain roggen mehl/schrot (rye flour/broken berries.)