One last thing … if you do have discard and since you make kefir … Sourdough Naan Flatbread … I use kefir in place of the milk and yogurt in that recipe, i.e. add the recipe amounts together and use that much kefir. Also, I stick to recipe ratios … sometimes I have just a small amount of discard so say that is 50% of recipe amount, I mix 50 % of all other ingredients. It is a versatile dough. If you read the comment thread, you will see what people have used it for aside from “Naan”.
No, but I read someplace that starter can be frozen. Has anyone out there done it?
Liz already linked my demystifying post where I describe how I manage my starter, but I’ll reiterate that I keep a tiny amount of starter in a jar in my fridge which I feed about 1/3 of a cup of flour once every 3-4 months whenever i happen to think about it. I do discard when I feed, but it’s honestly not enough to make a single pancake, so I just feed it to my chickens.
When I bake a loaf of bread, I take maybe a gram (I don’t weigh it, I just literally dip the end of a teaspoon into the jar and use what sticks to the spoon), straight from the cold, unfed jar in the fridge, and mix it in with my dough. It takes longer to get going than if you are using a larger amount of active, recently fed starter, but once it takes off, it leavens the bread just as well. It really doesn’t have to be a big deal, or at all wasteful, to maintain a starter. I totally ignore my starter. It still loves me.
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Hi Liz - sorry it’s taken a while to get back. I wanted to thank you for the amazing resources you’ve posted here. Immensely helpful. So…there it was The Entity (sourdough starter) staring me down in the fridge. I thought okay I have got to try this a second time and see if I can produce a 2nd loaf. As far as feeding all I’d done was what the starter recipe instructions dictated: “what you remove for your loaf, replace with equal cups of water and flour, allow to sit at room temperature and refrigerate until ready to use again”. The lady who wrote this recipe had had her starter going for 35 years. Again I refrigerated the dough overnight, baked it this morning and voila!
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YEA!! Another beautiful loaf!! I’m happy to hear you gave it another go.
I remember that when I first started with sourdough … and I’d baked yeast bread for 40 years prior to starting sourdough 5 years ago … I thought the entire process a bit overwhelming. But as you (if you do) keep doing it, it becomes somewhat 2nd nature. And bonus: delicious, healthy (fermentation!! and no unpronounceable ingredients) bread that even costs less than store bought.
And you’re welcome. It can frustrating to week through all of the different approaches to starter as well as the baking procedure. One of my favorite “Paul-isms” (@homebreadbaker ) is something along the line of “there are lots of ways of doing ‘whatever’ they are all wrong except for what works for you”. I’m paraphrasing from memory, but that is the gist. Happy bread baking!
Thanks, Liz. I wish I had said that because I totally agree with it, but it was @MTJohn who wrote what I think you are paraphrasing in the demystifying post comment thread:
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Try making and using a pate fermentee - another type of pre-ferment.
Pate fermentee.
I make my bread, add a bit of flour and water to the starter and refrigerate it till I want to make bread again, and sometimes that might not be for a couple weeks or more. I might only have a couple tablespoons left in the jar after making bread. I add 1/2c unbleached flour and 1/3 c water and mix it up, put lid on jar and stick in fridge. That’s all. If I don’t use it for quite awhile it’ll take longer to activate, or just adding a bit of flour and water and sit out in warm place will activate it better. If a grey watery top on the surface, just pour it off and mix in the extra bit of flour and water needed for the consistency you like (I like my sourdough thick). The amount you add will also depend upon how much you need for a loaf of bread. My recipe calls for about 100 gm. I either do the no-knead artisan method (in 5 minutes a day book), or the mix and then fold about 4 times, then let rise method - and either bake that day, or refrigerate in the bowl and bake the next day. Sourdough is very forgiving and it’s almost impossible to kill. Even if left in fridge, unfed for a long time, removing the crusty yucky top to the bit of good stuff underneath can be rejuvinated. I’ve heard of freezing or dehydrating it, but I haven’t. My sourdough is at least a decade old.
No idea if this will work but I was just playing around with teff, trying to make Injera. Basic recipe is mix water and flour, let stand with loose cover for 24-48 hours (depending on the particular flour and ambient temp etc) and it’s ready. Mine only took about 24 hours to be a frothy, bubbling, sour smelling ferment. Probably could use some of that as starter with whatever flour you are using in your dough; just add “some” to the dough mix and see what happens…
When you make a sourdough starter it is common to see a quick burst of bubbling up. This is predominantly bacterial. Yeasts show up in greater numbers a few days in. Breads like Injera make use of this quick off the mark activity whereas a sourdough starter will have to be nurtured till the PH drops, the bacteria and yeasts form a symbiotic culture and its stronger. In fact its quite common for a starter to slow down and even stop before it matures fully. For Injera it will be fine but for your regular sourdoughs not ideal. Might be a bit of a hit and miss with some off flavours due to what can be leuconostoc bacteria.
Abe, thank you for the clarification. I was wondering if there was some perhaps less common bacteria in the teff. This has happened three times now in my three injera experiments; the growth was what I would call explosive. I’ve created 3 or 4 sourdough starters from scratch, using rye and kamut on different occasions and each of those took several days and gradually started to bubble. The teff just went “crazy”! The first batch, I’d only read one recipe that for some odd reason said to leave it sit for 4-5 days and longer was better. I not sure there were even any solid flour particles left by day 4 it was just a bowl full of foam and far too “sour” to be palatable. I could have tried cutting it with more flour but I just tossed it and only let the next batch go for about 24 hours and it tasted quite good.
I’ve never made Injera Geoffrey but its a sourdough “flat bread” and this enables it to be made from scratch with the quick off the mark burst of activity. You’ll get a slightly raised yet bubbly bread with more flavour and all activity (or most of the activity) is coming from the lactic acid bacteria which shows up first when making a sourdough starter. Yeasts need a bit more time and start to take hold once the starter becomes acidic which takes a few days. After which the bacteria that live in a sourdough starter take over, keep at bay other types of bacteria and live symbiotically with the yeasts. Breads like Injera will have the advantage of a lactic acid fermentation which will add more flavour, some extra lightness from the bubbling and will be more nutritious which is gotten from this relatively quick ferment but because it has no gluten one isn’t looking for a rise like we think of in a leavened bread so no need for a fully matured sourdough starter.
When flour becomes more available I think I’ll give Injera a try.
I had in injera once many years ago in Ethopian restaurant of course, in San Francisco. Could it really have been 45 years ago??? YIKES!!! I was immediately hooked. Soft, spongy texture the is just plain mouth (and hand) fun to eat and its own, unique flavor, partly from the ferment but also teff has quite a distinctive flavor all its own. I also love the “bread as the eating utensil” thing that is common to many cultures; more fun!
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Go to You Tube and look for Bake with Jack . Look for a vid about his “scrapings” technique for managing your starter. He has a ton of of other good info that will get you going.
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A little pricey but enough to last you and your friends for quite a while😁
I’ve frozen “Herman” (that meek mild sour dough starter that begins with commercial yeast), it worked just fine.
It stayed in the freezer for nearly a year after my first kid came along, and then it lived and worked happily for another year and a half until kid #2. Back in the freezer for a while, then out again until I started working nearly full time. I gave it away to a friend who either had more time than I did or used her time more efficiently.
As soon as the weather warms up enough that there is someplace that’s a steady 70 degrees in my house, I’m going to start a new Herman.
I’ve never made sour dough starter from scratch because I don’t trust the wild yeast and whatever else that would be floating around in my house with a cedar/ash swamp on one side, a river on the other (not to mention the assorted critters wild and domestic). Things get moldy very fast at my place and I just don’t feel confident trying to catch the ‘good’ airborne beasties.
No matter how you start your starter … as it lives and you feed it in your location … it becomes a critter of stuff from your location, i.e. it does NOT retain the characteristics of whatever you might buy or be given.
I live in NW MT woods and feel like my starter is very robust BECAUSE it has stuff from the woods, my well water (untreated, but from 225 feet down in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains), minimally processed local to me flour … plus whatever from me and my pets. Granted, it is not swamp or humid, moldy river whatever, but I’m guessing you are breathing in that same air and microbes and your starter is also 
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I made two batches of sourdough starter, spread them out on some nonstick Reynolds Wrap and allowed them to dry out at room temperature overnight. When the starter was completely dry, I pulverized it in my mini food chopper. I keep it in a sealed mason jar in the fridge. When I want to bake a single loaf of sourdough bread I reconstitute it as follows to get 100 grams of starter:
- rehydrate 1 tsp starter in 1 tbsp lukewarm water for 15 minutes,
- Stir in 1 tbsp rye flour.
- When doubled, stir down and add 2 tbsp rye flour and 2 tbsp warm water.
- Repeat step 3 - when doubled again, stir down and add 2 tbsp rye flour and 2 tbsp warm water.
- When it has doubled use immediately or refrigerate overnight in a sealed jar and use within 24 hours
I use half a recipe of Bake With Jack’s Sourdough for a beautiful boule or batard. https://youtu.be/vmb0wWKITBQ
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