Easy Sourdough: No feedings, no discards

hey this is Anya here at the kitchen table at our Gables home comm and today I want to talk to you about sourdough starter if you don't really like the idea of having to take care of your sourdough with daily feedings and if this idea of throwing out your sourdough starter everyday creating these discards is something that you don't like this video is for you I have an older video that I've done a long time ago which is not one of my proudest moments so don't go look at it in which I taught you how to make your own sourdough starter [Music] now Who am I talking to you about sourdough starter well I basically grew up seeing my mom make sourdough bread and my mom learned it from my grandmother and my grandmother learned it from her great-grandmother and I don't know how many generation it goes back but it does go back a long time and when my mom was making sourdough bread that was maybe once a week however fast we went through the sourdough and we never had any daily feedings we never had any discards and you may know if you've been following me that I grew up in Germany and when I came to this country and everybody is doing feedings I have keeping their sourdough starter on their countertop and they are talking about discards so I researched it and there is a lot of reasons for that method and if you're somebody who bakes with Sauter every single day that method may just be fantastic for you and may be great but if you're somebody who bakes once a week or maybe once every two weeks what are you doing with your salad or started in between so this is my method that I learned for my family that has been in my family for generation and that produces a fabulous sourdough baked product now here you can see that I have actually two starters and no I have not named them yet I think if I would I would call one bubbles but anyways I haven't named my sourdough starter this is one that I actually made in the video that I made some time ago that I'm asking you not to look at and this is my whole-grain sourdough starter and I make a european-style German style very heavy dense bread with it and this is the starter that I made this the same starter and then I have a you can't really tell from the jar here but I have them in two different drawer so I know which one is which I could label them but that would be too simple anyways and then I have this one which is a white sourdough starter which I may my more art is on style white or a lighter sourdough bread with that my family actually likes a little bit better than the denser I like the european-style bread so there's something for everybody so I have two sourdough starters and here's my method it is so simple once you have your starter and you are at that point where you would keep it on the counter I basically just leave about maybe a golf-ball size of starter in my jar or it could be a little bit more it's not super exact and then I simply add a whole lot of flour to it I'm simply using a spoon or a fork and mash it all up until it's very dry and it doesn't matter if you have more flour in it than you need because as you can see here I actually have flour sitting on top and I've done the same with my whole grain starter you can see here that there is I'm using white flour for the whole grain starter because I just have it there and I grind my own grains and I usually don't remember to keep some whole grain flour for having to start it down so once I've done that I just put the lid back on and put the starter in my refrigerator how long can I keep it in there I have kept it for as long as six weeks with just a little bit long but anywhere from one week to week is absolutely perfect and I don't do daily feedings I don't do discards with this method sometimes I you know I use my sourdough starter for something else making pasta and then I switch up my method a little bit but this is what's really worked well so now how do you continue from there if you actually do want to bake something now we all know that sourdough is something that you typically don't just get and do this is what baking powder does or yeast gives you a the results I will do something I need to plan above the head so with this method you plan just a little bit further ahead and if you want to bake bread let's say on Wednesday I simply take out my salad or starter Tuesday night and I add some water to it and mix it up because I have a lot of flour sitting on top that basically feeds the sourdough starter and with the water on top we make it more active again and I stir it up to the point where it's it's probably a lumpy but you can see it's incorporated and then just let that sit overnight and typically it's ready the next days sometimes if I won my salad or started to be even more active and more bubbly I will actually do what most people do and pour some off create a discard add some flour and some water same ratio and let that sit another day then it's really super active and bubbly but you don't have to do that and like I said for decades I have never thrown anything out I've never had a discard so once you do that you just simply use your sourdough starter often it's about a cup or so that is used for a recipe you add it in there and either you have some left in the jar that again you use some flour and thicken it up to the point where it's really dry you add some extra flour on top put the lid on and put it back in the refrigerator if you didn't have anything left if you used up your whole starter what you can also do is let your bread rise and before you put it in the loaf pan or in your Dutch oven or whatever vessel you're baking your sourdough in or whatever you're doing with your sourdough you simply take a little bit off because that's very active and put that into your jar again use the flour method put the flour on top mix it up make it really dry and dense add a bunch of flour on top lid on top and then goes into the refrigerator so you see it's really easy it's super simple it's perfect if you don't want to do something with it every day or let's say you're traveling you're having any other reason why you're not baking or using your salad or starter on a daily or let's say every other day basis so this is perfect if you have any questions about this please let me in the comments below I'd be happy to answer those because this may be completely new to you and you may be wondering well how to do this and how I do that so let me know what questions you have if you enjoyed this video please give me a thumbs up if you new here on my channel please hit the subscribe button I upload a new video every week you can also turn on the bail notifications thank you so much for watching joining me at my kitchen table see you next time [Music]

Channel: Our Gabled Home

Views: 319,894

Rating: 4.9099417 out of 5

Keywords: sourdough, sourdough starter, no feedings, no discards, easy sourdough starter, easy sourdough starter maintenance, sourdough maintenance, sourdough maintenance fridge, easiest sourdough starter, sourdough starter without discarding, sourdough starter without discards, sourdough bread, sourdough baking, how to maintain sourdough starter, how to maintain sourdough starter in fridge, how to keep sourdough starter, keep sourdough starter, lazy sourdough starter

Id: POD2gRL799Q

Length: 8min 37sec (517 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 07 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Jat-Mon]

Yes, with excellent results, only my method is more precise than hers.

Simply stated, I keep 100g of starter in the fridge. When I plan to bake, I feed it with the amount of flour & water that I need for the bake (usually 200g at 100% hydration). Kept at room temp, about 6 hours later the mixture is fermented and ready for use. Then I remove the amount for baking and put the remainder in the fridge until next time. I have gone as long as two weeks without feeding with no ill effects, though I usually bake once a week.

Edit: I have not discarded starter for over a year now.

[u/NoUserNameNoLife]

For one you just save your discard in a separate jar and make discard loaves, flatbreads, pancakes or banana bread or something. You never have to discard even if you do feedings.

For two, she is making a starter from scratch every single time. This is a bad idea because the sourdough has natural bacteria and yeast in it that prevent other bacteria and fungus from taking colony. Not to mention it’s acidity. Recreating a new starter for every bake is just asking for a chance to let bad pathogenic bacteria, fungus and mold to take hold of that new starter. It’s risky to make a new starter every bake, the flavor will not be as good and it will not rise well like a mature starter.

For three, the idea of putting lots of flour and water later is no different from feeding. It still goes through wet flour then you add more water and it goes through more of the flour that was dry. It’s fundamentally feeding all the flour at once then your water separately. There’s no need to feed water and flour separate and risk flour wet flour sitting for who knows how long. It would be no different to Premeasure your flour and water on the side then stir it in later when you feed it. This doesn’t avoid feedings and it’s not ideal for anything at all. It’s an attempt to make a lazy loaf but still going through the feeding and stirring process. I just don’t see the point in doing something like this for a lackluster result and potential pathogens that would create even more discard if it goes bad. Simply save up your real discard each feeding.