How to make a sourdough starter

there's no one way to make a sourdough starter I mean there are things that you need to take into account when you're making a sourdough starter if there's no right or wrong way to do it what I'm gonna run through are the main tips and things that you need to be thinking about when you're starting asado starter so I mentioned using stone ground wholemeal flour because that's where you're going to get the most microbial load and it's important to have that as freshly ground as possible so fresher newer flour is better the next thing you need is water now water is this magical moment and what I've got in this pot is a hundred grams of flour and I'm gonna add in a hundred grams or so of water now I say also I'm really sorry I'm not gonna be desperately precise with you because what I'm looking for is consistency and depending on how your flour has been milled and the extraction of your flour is going to depend on how much water you need to add it so what I need you to do is recognize texture not necessarily the exact number of grams of water or milliliters of water you need to add in what's important right now is that this water is sitting at about thirty degrees because what I'm aiming to do 29.9 what I'm aiming to do here is use the water temperature to get a desired dota 2 because fermentation is at its optimal points when it's nice and warm so this is warm it's wet okay we've got liquid it's all squidgy ah that guys are gonna be so happy in here there's no need to add fruit in as no need to add anything else in really the things very very important and I can't stress how important this is is that your container is sterile it's clean and that you're not cross contaminating from other sources of microbes if you've got strong cheese in the house if you've got other ferment is probably better to keep this slightly away from that area and but don't worry about getting your hands in there okay because hands are one of the key places of us getting microbes in there so it's it's good to get your hands in that it's what you want but obviously you don't want some old cheese microbes in there because it will affect the flavor of what develops in there and what you're capturing so day one I often leave the pot for 20 24 hours on day one it's the one day when I will kind of really leave it and you need a lid do not put a lid on that is going to stop all oxygen in there so set that aside somewhere warm if you've got a warm spot in the kitchen that is where you need to put it so I'm literally just gonna pop that on the side over here and then the next day you will come back to it and it's going to very much start fermenting if you can just have a little look at the bubbles in here what you're going to see is just just very very beginnings of microbial life you can see that these are just beginning to form now notice there's a little strange and you're going to wonder why on earth we do this but we do this because it needs refreshing okay so we take the lid off get a spoon and I'm going to take half of it out now half of it is effectively 100 grams because we have got about 100 grams of flour 100 grams of water so as I take that out you can see and it's often best to take the top half out because that has got the acetobacter on there I'm just going to pop that into a bowl over here so I'm taking the top half out if that makes any sense I'm keeping the bottle you can already see that acetobacter on that okay and I'm just going to take that out and move it over here okay another spoon here sorry a different spoon because I want to get a close-up on that in a minute and that has taken half out and now what I have to do is I have to put half back in so half because it's a hundred percent hydration this one is 50 grams of flour which I'm going to you think that's when you use this one 50 grams of flour you can see here okay and 50 grams of water oops there we go dead-on okay and I'm going to mix that back up now getting oxygen in is really important okay I've got a stick in this glass job it's only glass because I want you to see through it so I'd often do this and something was a little bit more robust like a stoneware pot I love stoneware pots I find them much more and beautiful to use okay but it is important as I say to get oxygen in there so do give it a good nice stir if your flour is thick and taking up all the water just add a little got more in because the wetter it is the more fermentation because you've given water to the enzymes that's it that's the consistency I'm after can you see that consistency it's it's good you can speed up the fermentation by adding in more water but this is one of the things that is really down to the individual there we go sometimes when it's too wet you don't get fermentation as fast so it's really a matter of for you finding the level that your flower needs hydrating - okay so I'm gonna pop that lid on there okay that's the end of day 1 day 2 I've kept that pot somewhere really warm okay it's sat nice and cozy at least 25 26 degrees there are various ways you can keep DDT and you can refer to the DDT video to have a look and see how you can do that but it's important to keep it warm day two well the magic has really started to happen there because I know I've got my crepes in the flour and I know that we've kept it nice and warm and you can just see the very very beginnings of it really starting to to ferment and it's not quite doubled I mean it's there but it's not to the top of the pot so you can have a look and see in there we've started to get good fermentation there we go what you do at this point really changes everything what you have to do is double refresh every day so I kind of book end over end of the day and I refresh in the morning when I get up and have my breakfast and I refresh again before I go to bed and again it's just exactly the same process so you take out of that half of that there we go add in 50 grams of flour and again whoops had a shower already this morning 50 grams of what's up okay and you give it a really good mix now if you don't do this twice a day it will go really acidic because it's really started to ferment and you can see now as I stir it something very important is much more viscous it's much more viscous because the flour has been broken down by those microbes and that is really one of those things that you will notice when you're stirring is that the composition and the thickness the flour makes it much easier to stir so give that one more stir and cover that over as I say you have to do this twice a day and it is like having atomic she for a few days can take anything from sort of three days up to sometimes up to 14 days if you live somewhere very cold to really get a fermentation going okay you sometimes have to clean your jar between refreshments just transfer it to another jar and put it back in so that's day two now day three we're really rocking and rolling here I mean this is really starting to look fantastic okay this is our third day and this you can smell that fermentation I mean off with a lid and you'll notice that this is transformed from just being flowery and watery I can now smell that acid it's really coming into play now okay so exactly the same double refreshment either end of the day you know how to do that now so I'm just gonna leave that to one side but what I am going to do is show you day four day four day five this is essential you really need it to be doubling in the pot you can see that from day one to now that starter has filled the jar and you can see the pattern on the top of it is indicative of huge fermentation there are bubbles it's robust it's really really healthy and if you can get a whole meal to double in three to four hours you're rocking and rolling it's time to bake as one other small thing before you have to move on to a maintenance schedule some people don't want to keep a whole meal starter and that's okay so if you want to transform your starter into another flower for example you want to make a white shadow starter or a rye whole meal start or any other starter then all you need to do is take a fresh jar terribly easy you take about hundred grams again of the kind of flour that you want to use now you can use two that yourself to going something like a whole meal or a ride rye flour is fantastic to get your sourdough starter going but it doesn't necessarily fit in with your maintenance schedule the flavor that you want to create so to transform your flour I'm using an organic white thing in 100 grams you know what it's coming okay okay 100 grams of water also okay you take a spoon of your sourdough culture that is just beautiful it's about 25 20 25 grams or so and you add that in to your white that's all you need okay we'll set that to one side you give that a really good stir and hey presto you have a white starter and it's as simple as that when you transfer it and you move the flour what you will find is that the smell will change a little the viscosity will change and the rate of fermentation will change but in essence you can now start refreshing this one with white flour and you have a white status so you can test its readiness by leaving your white one out this one takes about eight hours and one of the things you can do is test by using a float test with the whites if it's ready I will tell you this your homee r1 will never float you can keep popping it in water but generally a well fermented whole grain rye or whole meal flour will think so don't rely on that as a testing mechanism that generally only works for white and congratulations you have your own new baby incredible sourdough starter welcome to a whole new world of baking amazing beautiful incredible sourdough it's it's an extraordinary journey and it starts with a starter

Channel: The Sourdough Club

Views: 15,726

Keywords: sourdough, starter, baking, sourdoughstarter, bread, howto, howtobakesourdough, how to make a sourdough starter

Id: tUQRV9XTXWY

Length: 13min 33sec (813 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 14 2020