SOURDOUGH! Calling all bakers!

[CGB]

So... I was intrigued by this thread and decided to begin a starter. I finally made it to the store today and bought the appropriate flours. It's going. I know it'll be a bit before I can use it, so I'm going to figure out what to name it while exploring recipes.

 

[bcla]

Making bread has always alluded me, not that I haven't tried. I've always wondered about Sourdough starter...is that something you buy at a specialty store or make or what??? How does one go about the starter, and it seems like something people keep around for a long time?

It's kind of a art form from what I understand. There are sources for starter. This company claims that they'd kept theirs going for years in New England.

https://shop.kingarthurbaking.com/items/classic-fresh-sourdough-starter

The big sourdough makers have their "mother starter" and they carefully cultivate it for years keeping it going.

https://boudinbakery.com/our-story/​

We are The Original San Francisco Sourdough™. Today, we still bake our sourdough fresh every day using the same mother dough cultivated from a gold miner’s sourdough starter.​

Probably the best known Boudin's in San Francisco. They claim that the original source was from a California gold miner in the 19th century and that they've cultivated it for well over a century. This is the starter that's provided to their satellite bakeries, including the one at Disneyland.

 

[Hisgirl]

So... I was intrigued by this thread and decided to begin a starter. I finally made it to the store today and bought the appropriate flours. It's going. I know it'll be a bit before I can use it, so I'm going to figure out what to name it while exploring recipes.

Well how exciting!!

I love Brian Lagerstrom's beginner recipe for sourdough on youtube. The only thing I do different that he didn't do, is I ALWAYS put my dutch oven on top of another pan to prevent overbrowning.
Also, I do 3-4 stretch and folds, not the 2 he calls for. I do what is called the 'windowpane test' and today, after 3 stretch and folds I could tell my dough could use a tad bit more time so it rested another 20 minutes and I did a 4th set of stretches. There are so many good videos! The key is using your starter at its peak to create either the dough or the night before mixed up levain.

 

[bcla]

Love Sourdough and have been thinking about doing a starter this coming month. As an fyi, a true sourdough has no added yeast. It is simple flour and water that ferments and creates its own yeast. That is what gives it the “sour” taste.

Sourdough starter should be a combination of wild yeast and bacteria, where the bacteria produces the acidity. So the starter includes yeast that should replicate if given enough time to rest in the dough. It's not going to be like commercial yeast where it's a lot of yeast and it's maybe an hour to rise. Sourdough obviously needs to rest a lot longer.

Similar bacteria cause the fermentation of sour beers, sauerkraut, and kimchi. But in many case these weren't cultured but assumed to be in the air.

 

[CGB]

I did it! I've baked lots of bread in my life, but never sourdough. The starter took 7 days, but I didn't have time that evening to work with it. So, I fed it again and I'm glad I did. It looked and smelled awesome last night. (I fed the starter and left it out in case I screwed it up and had to start over tonight ) . So, I mixed up the dough, gave it some time, did four folds and then let it rise until bedtime. Then, it went into my downstairs fridge until this evening (roughly 20 hours). I used an old cast-iron dutch oven that has been sitting by the downstairs fireplace for years! (It got quite a scrubbing last night.) I did use parchment paper to line it, but I was impressed with how well it did. It was pretty tasty with the cheeseburger soup we had for dinner tonight. Thanks for the encouragement. I've always thought about trying it, but just hadn't done it. I'll keep playing with it for the appearance factor, but the taste was spot on with a chewy bread and hard crust.

 

[Lord Manhammer]

I haven't read all of the posts so I apologise if this was asked but how wold I go about making a sourdough starter?