All right then, so you've mastered your
basic white bread dough, you've done your research, you've spent hours on Instagram
looking at amazing bread pictures and now you're ready to give sourdough a go
yourself. So you're going to need a friend and that friend is this guy, a
sourdough starter Hello, I'm your friend! So, what is a sourdough starter? Well basically it's just wild yeast that is living off of flour and water that you feed it every day. So I'm going to show you how to get it going it's quite easy to get going, it just
takes a bit of patience to be honest but it is a commitment, once it's going
you've got to think of it as a pet you're going to be feeding it and
cleaning it out every day but on the flip side it is going to reward you with
some fantastically flavoured bread. So what I've done over the past week is
create starters on different days so these are all at different stages
and I'll show you what they look like at these stages, what to look out for and
what you need to do to them to get them to the next stage. Day one, you're gonna
need flour, water and a glass container I would recommend, you really do
need something bigger than this. Go and get yourself a nice Kilner jar but take the rubber seal off because you do want oxygen to get in there but something I
think that can hold about a litre of liquid that should be fine, because this starter is going to grow, collapse, grow, collapse and you don't want it bubbling out everywhere. If you look on Instagram you'll see plenty of pictures of sourdough starters bubbling over. It's a good sign, it shows it's vigorous and it's got a lot of power
to it but it's a bit of a pain when it goes everywhere because it is quite sticky,
quite difficult to clean up. So get yourself a large jar, I would go for
glass because I like to whisk it with a fork so if you're using plastic that's just going to scrape it you might get little flecks of plastic in there so I recommend glass, something clear
because you want to be able to see your starter growing and when it's collapsing. This is how you're going to learn the cycle of your starter and when it's at its
peak as that is when you want to bake with it So to get things going we need our scales we need our container and I like
to use, to get it going, I like to use 50% rye flour, 50% white bread flour, so in
here I will put 50 grams of the rye There we go 50 grams of strong white bread flour, you can use plain white flour and again, I'd go for something economical because you're going to be feeding this every day if you're not baking every day you're going
to be throwing away the same amount every day so it can get quite expensive, so just
get something... I mean these are about £1.20 a bag, something like that so get something that's not going to cost too much So that's 100 grams of flour in total and to that we add 100 grams of water So this is going to create a
liquid starter at 100% hydration So if you're looking at any recipes they will sometimes say to use a stiff starter but this is a liquid starter So you've got your water, your flour, give it a stir with a fork Get it really well incorporated Like that and give it a good mix, you want to beat
some air into there, because... you want things basically to start living, so they need food, which is the flour water, which is the water and oxygen, like all living things. Those are the three things it needs So really beat some oxygen into there, some air Some people recommend you waft it around the room trying to collect
yeast from the air, it's not really necessary it's a nice idea. If you want to do it, it's not going to do any harm, but you don't need to So give it a good mix, so you've definitely got no clumps of flour left in there Scrape down the sides There we go, just pop that there and now you leave it put a lose lid on it, if you've got one of these sorts of jars, like I say make sure the rubber seals removed, clip the lid on Pop the lid on, I'm just going to sit that on top like that and now I leave that where you're going to be keeping it for the rest of its life And leave it for 2 to 3 days Now after 2 days it's going to look like
this, which isn't very exciting! It doesn't look like much is happening and
I think a lot of people start panicking at this stage If it's been 2 or 3 days and you're thinking, it's not bubbling up to the top don't worry about it, just give it a bit more time If you have a closer look at this, you can actually see that there are a few bubbles forming only one or two and again from the top
you can see a couple If you give it a smell, it still does just smell like raw, wet flour so there aren't that many signs
of fermentation going on in there and actually I think it smells a bit like
sweet corn to be honest but if nothing's happening don't worry about it, put the lid back on and give it another day and you'll be amazed. Because this one is
one day later, now... I don't know if you can see but, this one's about half a centimetre higher, maybe even a centimetre now So from looking like nothing's happening to this, just one day and now you'll look at this and think, ok things are starting to happen This time we've got a few bigger bubbles forming on top and you can definitely see some bubbles through the glass around the
side The smell is slightly more vinegary now, bit pickly. It's got that kind of almost composty smell, so not exactly
delightful, but I think it shows that things are happening. So if you get to
this point and you can see a few bubbles it's time to give its first feed So again we're going to put 50 grams of rye flour and 50 grams of plain
flour...or plain white flour So there's 50 Rye 50 grams of bread flour, so a hundred in total and again, another hundred of water. You see, these jars are on the small side Get the fork and again just thoroughly mix that in There we go, see it's actually quite foamy we're releasing some of the air bubbles from what was already in there Give that a good mix There we go, scrape the sides down so they're clear so you can see what's going on There we go look, nice and stretchy Lid back on and now you want to leave that
for, I'd say another, at least a couple of days again you're looking for that life, you're looking for bubbles and when you can see that happening you'll have moved on to stage three and now we can see, compared to the first one, this is the same amount of stuff in there we're at double the size now, lots of bubbles Lot's...well not a lot of bubbles on top you can see a few pockets on top, but it's really the volume that's increased and you can see the bubbles around the side, it's starting to, actually that smells quite nice almost a little bit beery may be, getting
a slight ale smell with a bit of tangy vinegar Now you do see a few recipes suggesting you start your sourdough starter off with apple in there or raisins in there or even pineapple in there but I wouldn't bother with any of
that, those things do create yeast they have yeast in them, natural yeast, they
create yeast, but they're really creating the wrong sort yeast. Those yeasts from
apples, raisins and pineapples eat the sugars from apples, raisins and
pineapples. You want to grow as many yeasts that feed on the sugars in flour. So really don't worry about putting anything in there apart from flour and water and also if you're losing patience or right from the
start do not be tempted to put any commercial yeast in there, even a tiny
sprinkle. Again that's a different strain of yeast, it's gonna grow in there but
you're just going to make a poolish That yeast is so powerful it'll just
wipe out all the other yeasts it'll overpower them, it'll eat everything. It'll puff up within a few hours but you won't have created a sourdough starter, like I say, you'll have created a poolish which you can use for baking, but
that's not what we're after You just want to keep it flour and water. So, it's puffed up nicely but what we have to do this time, we need to feed it,
but we need to remove half of it first We'll tip out...you can see, look it's nice and bubbly. Tip half of that out So back onto the scale and again we're feeding it So 50 grams of rye flour there we go 50 grams of white flour and a hundred grams of water there we go and again, give it a good mix Again, beating lots of air in there. You'll notice this time the whole thing feels a little bit more liquid and that's because of the fermentation, it's
started breaking down the flour, the gluten so the whole thing becomes a little bit more runny Scrape down the sides What I do in my big bowl, is once I've mixed it up, I scrape down the sides with a rubber spatula, really cleans it and then I can see what's going on in there So again lid on and now you are into a daily feeding program keep feeding that daily like that, taking half out and replacing it with 50 grams of rye flour, 50 grams of white flour and 100 grams of water do that daily till the end of the
week and what you're then looking for is your
starter to look like this really full and bubbly. Mine's actually been running for about four months now but after you've been feeding it its daily feed
for at least a week, preferably get up to the two week mark, you should have a strong, vigorous start like that Smells nice! Smells bit ale-y, yeasty, not too sour, slight hint of vinegar but that is what you want Now I'll show you how to feed it, but I want to use this, so I've got my flour and water here there's been autolysing for a few hours now So I want that, look at that nice and bubbly light Get that in there There we go. Now again for my routine, I don't leave much in there, sort of quite a scant amount really There's two reasons for this Firstly because I'm doing a daily cycle if I leave too much in there, again it's going to puff up and peak too early so I leave a small amount in there and because I'm only feeding it once a day by the sort of afternoon/evening when it's coming down that's when it starting to build up some quite acidic flavors So by using it all now and only leaving a
little amount left I'm removing those acidic flavors, if I keep feeding from sort of halfway and just adding flour on a daily cycle, probably after a week you're going to find it's very acidic and that breaks
down your dough much quicker and everything starts getting a lot of
sloppier, so like I said in my tips video you want to keep it young and vigorous,
so I've left literally just what would hold in there and now I add my flour to that. So in here we were doing a hundred and a hundred Once you're up to speed and it's ticking over I change that slightly and I do one third
rye flour, two thirds white flour So I will do 50 grams of rye flour a hundred grams of bread flour That take them up to 150g total and then to that I add 130g of water. I have actually worked out what percentage that is, but I reckon we're probably around 80 to 90 percent hydration 130, that's actually 135, I don't get too
obsessed over it, I just like to keep it slightly under 100, it's probably just a
habit I've got into. I'm getting good results with the bread. Whether it's that I
don't know, but you find when you're making sourdough, every time something
good happens to your loaf you kind of think, oh what did I do that time and you'll think, oh my my starters was a slightly lower hydration or my
kitchen was slightly warmer or it was slightly cooler and then you try and replicate that each time So we've got our fresh flour and water in there, mix that up There we go like I say you see, if you use the rubber spatula, you can get the side of the bowl quite clean and now I can keep an eye on that and like I say, by tomorrow morning that will be up to the top if not bubbling out And there we go, so the key points are use a glass container so you can see what's happening to your sourdough starter Don't worry about using anything like
pineapple, apple, any fruit and certainly don't use any commercial yeast, just flour and water I use the mixture of rye flour and white flour, if you go purely white flour, you're gonna find it takes a lot longer to get going. It is quite hard to
get a pure white starter working Rye flour is like a little boost really, it
just really creates a lot more yeast in there a lot more activity, so that's why
I do the 50/50 rye and white Wholemeal would do the same, but I find wholemeal ends up getting bit sloppy again it produces a lot of fermentation and like
I say, I'm trying to get this daily cycle but you'll need to learn the cycle of your
sourdough so once you're up to two weeks, then just
just keep watching it a bit see how long it takes to peak and come down again. You're looking for a nice dome on top once that dome on top starts collapsing in the middle, that means it's reached its peak and now it's falling. You want to of baked
just before that or at that peak you can once it starts falling, but when you're starting out you want to get it on the way up if it's coming down, that's when you start to get more sour flavors in your loaf the dough starts to get a little
bit more fluid, little liquid like I say So rye flour and white flour, I keep
mine at 90% ish hydration but certainly, a liquid starter is generally a hundred percent hydration whatever recipes you're following, if they say a liquid starter, no doubt they mean 100 percent so it's probably quite good to keep it a
hundred percent, so you can follow those recipes If you're going for a daily cycle just feed a very small amount in there don't leave 20-30 percent in there this is probably five-ten percent and
that's it. I keep mine out of the fridge like I say, I keep it on top of the fridge on
this daily cycle but if you're only going to be making sourdough maybe once every two weeks or once a month you can keep it in the fridge, but you just have to bring it back up to speed basically a couple of days before you're going to
bake. So I used to keep it in the fridge on a weekly cycle, but I'd put it in the
fridge on the Sunday evening and if I wanted to bake the following weekend I'd need to get out on Wednesday feed it Wednesday evening, feed it Thursday and then give it a double feed Friday ready for the weekend So in the end it was only in the
fridge for like Monday and Tuesday so it just wasn't worth it. I now keep it out the fridge all the time. But if you're not going to be
baking at least weekly it might be advisable to keep in the fridge but just
make sure you get it going again at least two days before you're going to
bake and that pretty much covers it I hope that's been helpful and has answered all your sourdough starter questions if it hasn't and you've got more questions leave them in the comments below and I will do my best to
answer them. If I can't I'll point you in the direction of someone who can. There's a fantastic community of bakers out there on Instagram, YouTube, so any problems
just ask and someone's bound to be able to give me some advice. My next video
will hopefully be on how to use this lovely vigorous starter to make your
first loaf of sourdough bread So if you don't want to miss that please hit the subscribe button the channel is growing which is great So yeah, hit the subscribe button and join me with your bubbly starter and we will make some sourdough!
