Simplifying the complex world of sourdough... hopefully

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Over the last year I have been researching and trying to figure out this whole sourdough thing. I kept hearing people say, “it's so easy!” and then I would look up a recipe and my brain exploded. It made no sense to me and it resulted in a headache and frustration every time I looked into it. I make most of our own bread, buns, tortillas, etc. all the time and I had a good routine down. Switching to sourdough seemed out of reach and impossible. I already have 7 mouths to feed, now I need to feed a “starter” and keep that alive?

One day after mass, a very nice man gifted me some starter and sent me home with directions. So I had to figure it out! The directions might as well have been written in a foreign language, I couldn't make sense of them to save my life! I tried feeding the starter a couple times and just never got it to grow. I felt terrible that I just couldn't do his starter justice. He had given us some of his bread to sample and it was delicious, and I wanted so badly to duplicate it. I wanted to use all the good flours, einkorn, rye, fresh milled wheat, but it just wasn't coming together. After much frustration I waved the white flag and just stuck it in the back of the fridge. I hated having to admit to this man every week after mass that I still couldn't get it right, but he was so kind and would encourage me not to give up! 

Kevin suggested I, “just make my own starter” like its soooo simple. But after much thought (all consuming) I figured I normally do best when I start things from scratch. So I went for it and got back to the research!! My super awesome friend joined in to start hers at the same time so we could work on them together, and remind each other to feed them, basically a starter accountability partner. So many questions I still had and I needed to find the answers to.  Hopefully through my own experience I can help simplify a few things for you, not getting scientific, just simple. I do recommend getting a starter from a trusted source to get started as well, I will always offer some of my starter to those close by!

What is starter anyway?

Is it really just flour and water?

What flour to use?

What in the world is discard??

Where to start once your starter is ready?

Can it be sandwich bread, or just the fancy loaves I see?

Do I need all the fancy tools?

Sourdough math.

Did I become a crazy sourdough lady?

Let me start by saying, you can look up 100 recipes and they will all be different. I've done it, and that's where my confusion came in. There didn't seem to be a clear answer to many questions, and there are so many different ways you can make it. But, with all of these different ways I still saw all the fails from others and couldn't figure out how everything was supposed to be exact, but at the same time every recipe is a little different. I am still completely a beginner and mostly have no clue what I'm doing, so this is just the beginning of my sourdough journey, and yet I have learned so much!

The ‘not so science’ behind sourdough:

A starter will replace your dry active yeast that you would normally put in a regular loaf of bread, its just water and flour. That's it! Remember this will in no way be scientific so don't hold me to anything.. You feed your starter to keep it going or it will die and become moldy and gross. If you aren't using it at the time you can put it in the fridge and it will essentially go “dormant”. The starter should be the consistency of pancake batter. Most people measure out their starter and feedings by using a scale and measuring in grams. Water weighs more than flour so you can't just dump in the same amounts from a measuring cup. There are feedings of 1:1:1 ratio, 1:2:2 ratio and many more. Pick what works for you I guess. The first one is the weight of your starter, the second one is the weight of your flour added and the third one is the weight of your water added. Never did I see it explained that simple. After a couple days I just started adding things until it was the consistency I wanted. Some people like to measure every time. I do like to measure every now and then just so I can use my scale and feel cool, also my kids think it's neat.

I like to keep a lot of starter since I use it a lot but there are also ways to do it with very little starter kept. Right now I use organic, all purpose flour with some rye mixed in for feeding my starter. I found that it is just not cost effective for us at the moment to use any of the other flours that I would like to at this time. The rye helps add a little more protein which makes my starter grow better. I started out without it and it really helped when I incorporated it in. Using my starter for the first time really freaked me out since I read so much about when starters aren't ready yet they can make you sick. I waited until mine doubled in size in four hours and did that a couple days in a row. It was about a month and a half before I used it for the first time. People use all sorts of flour, from whole wheat to bread flour, find what works for you.

My first loaf! Made with half rye/half all purpose flour. It was delicious!

Now, I kept reading about discard. But could never figure out what in the world it was! Finally talked it over with a friend and its literally starter that you just haven't fed yet. Your starter will just keep growing since it is fed every day so you need to take some out and use it or dump it. I make something with it just about  every day. I don't throw any out except when it wasn't a mature starter yet.. So that's all discard is. There are endless recipes you can find to use your discard for. Our very favorite at this moment is discard flat bread. We make it all the time and use it for everything, even made little pizzas with it and they were hit!

When it comes to finally using a recipe you have to consider a few things. You can't just rely on following a recipe to a T. Your location is a factor. Where you are located can have an affect on your amounts, your oven temp, your timings, everything. So you need to figure out where your sweet spot is. The temperature can also affect things. I keep my house quite chilly in the winter, I also have granite counter tops that are very cold. I always put a towel under my bowls and sometimes I will turn my oven on for a bit to heat up the kitchen to get my dough or starter to rise. I had my daughter sew a little pad for my starter to sit on to help keep it warmer. The kind of flour you use can also change your recipe significantly along with your starter depending on how runny it is. I base my dough on how it looks and feels and not by the amounts, but I use them as a starting point. Just find a recipe that looks good to you and try it out, don't overthink it like me.

For our family, sandwich bread is much more practical. So seeing all the fancy artisan loaves people make are super inspiring and make me want to go crazy making them, but I needed something we would eat more. I do make some artisan loaves and love working on perfecting them, but really I need to work on mastering sandwich bread. My kids aren't big fans of the crunchy crust, so the sandwich bread also works better in that aspect. Everyone in the family loves working together and figuring out what recipe we will try next. They have all been involved in making sure the starter is fed everyday, helping with mixing and my oldest has gotten into doing stretch and folds.

I was fully planning on just making do with the equipment I have on hand, but Kevin and I decided to invest in a few nice pieces for our Christmas gifts, and they really do make a difference. I have tested side by side my homemade materials and the ones we purchased and the specific sourdough items do tend to work better. Can it be done without them? For sure! I also learned that you “aren't supposed”  to use stainless steel with sourdough, and I don't feel like testing that out on my bread so I am on the search for a large glass bowl. (I have seen people using stainless steel so it might just be fine.) My current glass bowls are not quite big enough for the amount of sourdough I do at one time. I'm pretty picky about my kitchen equipment these days so I will be over researching bowls now.

Sourdough math. This is what really got my brain in a cluster. When reading a recipe I just couldn't wrap my head around all the rest times, bulk fermentations, stretch and folds, etc. It seemed like it would take a week to make a loaf of bread, and you pretty much can't leave the house while you are in the process. I finally stopped and wrote all the times down with my son. He was really into writing it down for me until I rattled off the 6th or 7th step in the process. I could see his eyes glaze over and he just wandered off, which was completely how I felt. But seeing it written out that way really helped me get a feel for how the schedule would work. I had to figure out when to start the dough to get it in the fridge at the right time, to get it going the next day so we could have bread by dinner. I just have to set timers so I remember to do all the steps. It's not so intimidating now that I have done it a few times, and you really can start to make the schedule work with your day. But I encourage you to just write it down so you can see the times all written out in a simple way.

Milk and honey loaf. Fun to make with my oldest daughter and everyone loved it!

So, have I become a crazy sourdough lady? It is alarming the rate at which I turned into a full time sourdough freak!!! I never anticipated this. I thought it was so silly that people were naming their starters, but here I am feeding Mary Mag ‘dough’ lene everyday! My kids laugh now when I say, "What will we make with our sourdough today?” and start looking up recipes. I'm hoping this helps simplify and encourage you if you were on the fence about sourdough. This will most likely not be my only sourdough post, it's just the beginning of a new adventure.

Next up - Kombucha!