Making wheat and rye sourdough starters
I have two sourdough starters on the go at any one time: white wheat, and rye.Further to the previous blog begging you all not to get freaked out by sourdough, I have had lots of requests for simple instructions about how to make and keep a sourdough starter.I don't have a spelt starter because a) I find it tricksy: at any given moment if I turn my back it just jumps up and pours itself all over the counter and the floor. Maybe it's just me, but I cannot be doing with such an independent creature in the kitchen and b) I find it makes bread that is rather bitter unless I add sugar or honey or some other thing to add sweetness and I don't necessarily want to do that all the time. Feel free to disagree and let us know.
Equipment
- Airing Cupboard
- Heated Floor
- Sunny Place
Ingredients
Wheat Sourdough
- 50 g Wheat Flour
- 50 g Warm Water
Rye Sourdough
- 25 g Rye Flour
- 50 g Warm Water
Instructions
General rules for making a sourdough starter
- Once you have mixed flour and water together (see quantities below) for four days, your starter should be frothy and/or bubbly. If it is not, just tuck it up and leave it for another 24 hours. After that if nothing at all is happening you can add a few grains of yeast to it and leave it for 24 hours but you should not have to do this. If nothing is happening naturally you have been using too much disinfectant and need to let your house get a bit more (normally) dirty!
- To store your starter once it is frothy and bubbly, you put it in the fridge in a plastic container with an air tight lid or a kilner jar (the kind with the rubber sea). Do not use a regular jam jar because it may explode in a dangerous shower of glass shards. You will need a lot of space in your container especially for the first few days – the starter may continue to froth up. The worst that will happen in a kilner jar or a plastic tub is that it will leak through the seal and form a thick pool in your fridge!
- You do not need to feed your starter slavishly every day. I once found some of my 1857 white wheat starter in the back of the fridge that had been there for about 5 years. I refreshed it and made bread. It took a couple of days to refresh and then it was as good as new. Remember, sourdough was used by people who did not have access to commercial yeast – cowboys rolled it up in their bed rolls, pioneering women transported it in the back of covered wagons, families living on the steppes of Russia managed to keep theirs alive in spite of harsh Siberian winters. You can freeze it, you can dry it, you can ignore it – it will always comes back. If it doesn’t, make another one.
When it comes to using it, you have a choice:
- If you are going to bake every day or every other day you may want to feed your starter every day. That way it is in a permanent state of being “refreshed” and you can usually cut out the step that says “The day before you want to make bread, refresh your sourdough”. To feed your starter every day simply put it in a big container with a lid and put in as much as you took out. Sound odd? Not at all. Your starter will have the consistency of thick cream. When you make bread you take starter out of the pot to make the bread. Add flour and water to the starter – maintaining the thick cream consistency. If you change flours you will have to change quantities because flours are all different. If your starter gets a little thin, add a bit more flour. If it gets a little thick, add more water. Use tepid water if you can – sourdough likes warm water. If you have not fed it in 4-5 days you will need to go through the refreshment cycle again. Just follow the instructions of the recipe you are using.
- Refresh the starter when you need it. If you do this always refresh more than you need so you have some to put back in the fridge for the next time you want to bake. To refresh the dough, follow the recipe instructions as there are lots of ways to refresh dough and different bread calls for different refreshment techniques.
White wheat or whole wheat sourdough starter
- Day 1: Mix 50 g white wheat flour and 50 g warm water together. Cover and put somewhere warm (airing cupboard, on a heated floor, sunny place) for 24 hours.
- Day 2: Add 50 g white wheat flour and 50 g warm water to the Day 1. Mix. Cover and put somewhere warm.
- Day 3: Add 50 g white wheat flour and 50 g warm water to the Day 2. Mix. Cover and put somewhere warm.
- Day 4: Add 50 g white wheat flour and 50 g warm water to the Day 3. Mix. Cover and put somewhere warm. Voila. You have a viable white wheat starter.
Rye sourdough starter
- Day 1: Mix 25 g whole rye flour and 50 g warm water together. Cover and put somewhere warm (airing cupboard, on a heated floor, sunny place) for 24 hours.
- Day 2: Add 25 g whole rye flour and 50 g warm water to the Day 1. Mix. Cover and put somewhere warm.
- Day 3: Add 25 g whole rye flour and 50 g warm waterto the Day 2. Mix. Cover and put somewhere warm.
- Day 4: Add 25 g whole rye flour and 50 g warm water to the Day 3. Mix. Cover and put somewhere warm.
- Voila. You have a viable rye starter. And now you can bake.As a final, final final note, a lot of bread that is called “sourdough” has yeast added to it. That’s fine, it’s still sourdough bread, it is not “pure” sourdough bread. If you are concerned, ask the baker.
- If you would like to take an introduction to sourdough class to really get your head around the topic, do click here to find a trainer.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!
Well, it’s finally done and tasted.
I left it to prove overnight, but when I got up at 8am, it was really overprooved. I did as you suggest here and reshaped it and left it to prove for an hour. It hadn’t risen much after an hour, so I went out and left it for another 3 hours and it was ready for baking.
Just had my first slice. It was lovely, if a little dense.
I’ll try to prove another one overnight, but if that’s too long a time, then I’m not sure how I can overcome that, as I’m definitely not getting up in the middle of the night to Bake! 🙂
Hi, I’ve been using your rye sourdough recipes and they’re great, but for dietary reasons I wanted to try an 100 percent spelt and used the Bread Matters recipe for spelt starter and loaf. However the recipe Whitley gives doesn’t include adding extra to the production leaven to be able to put some back. I’m wondering if there is a rule of thumb I can use about proportions or quantities of flour and water so I don’t kill my starter? Can I just add ten percent onto his refreshment measurements and put this ten percent back? Sorry probably a thick question! Cat
Hey Cat, That is the perfect idea – just make a bit more starter than you need and put some back. Be careful of your spelt starter: it’s really active. I suggest you put it in a BIG tupperware with clippy sides or kilner jar. Spelt starters are really active and you don’t want it all over the floor of your fridge. Have fun with it and this is a great question.
With just 2 of us in the home and wishing other types of bread, what is the best way to keep a sourdough starter for about a month or two? I tried the fridge, and it grew mold and became black. Going through the multi-day process of starting a new starter for a loaf once a month seems like a lot of work.
Dear Larry, thanks for your message. I frequently leave starters unattended for months at a time and then just take them out and wake them up. Mold is bad. Has never happened to me. So, a couple of questions for you:
1. Was your jar huge (ie lots of air above the level of the starter)
2. Was your jar sterilised before you used it?
3. What is the consistency of the starter (ie proportions of water to wheat)
4. Was the starter viable – ie did you make it over five days? Starter will start to bubble after as little as 2 days but that does not mean they are alive to the extent that they will survive long periods of hibernation.
I cannot post photos here but I will post photos on the blog today of my starters so you can see how they are stored and what they look like.
Let me know! jane
After you mix the flour water in stage 1 together at the start and leave it to stand. How important is the temperature of the kitchen as mine varies from freezing on a cold morning to like a sauna when cooking dinner? Does it have to be a consistent room temp?
Not really, to be honest, I have done starters all over the place and they pretty much work wherever. There is a lot of myth about temperatures, but they are more robust than you think!
Hi all. I made a starter using the grape method with strong white flour.. Ive had bubbles it grew within three days. On the fourth day i decided to feed.. I combined strong white flour with rye flour i put 100gr of water and 100gr of the strong white and rye combination flour. Next day the top of the liquid had smaller bubbles i then fed the mixture for the following 2 days resulting in not much of a rise but small surface bubbles still presant. Today i fed the dougn having thought ive made a mistake with only rye and water. The mix is thicker with small surface bubbles but am yet to see a considerable rise. Please help get me out of what has become an obsession. I havent seen and anyone feeding a mix of flours to their starter have i gone drastically. Wrong or is it more a case of patients more then a mistake.. X
Dear Daniel
Starters are all different and there are many made with a mix of flours. I need to know how much flour and how much water you have mixed together, when did you add new water and flour and how much new water and flour have you added. So basically – if I understand exactly how you have made it I will be able to help you. Starters don’t rise though…they bubble and get airy. They don’t rise like dough does….
I’m finally just finding you as I’ve been trying to make a starter for a week. I was following instructions that had me making my starter with water, flour and molasses or honey (I had molasses on hand and used that). It seems to get nice and frothy, but I’m wondering if this salvagable or if I need to start all over new? This time, I’ll be using your instructions and recipes.
Hi there, thanks for this! I would stick to your starter – don’t throw it away! Try using it in a recipe and gradually shift over to the method that we use (cheaper! no molasses!). Assume it’s a wheat starter? let me know!
I’m finally just finding you as I’ve been trying to make a starter for a week. I was following instructions that had me making my starter with water, flour and molasses or honey (I had molasses on hand and used that). It seems to get nice and frothy, but I’m wondering if this salvagable or if I need to start all over new? This time, I’ll be using your instructions and recipes. Please help! Thanks!
Hi there, there’s a few types of sourdough starters on sales in amazon like san Francisco , alaska starter etc . If i purchase these different kind of starters, will it be the same thing after i fed it in my region? I wonder if i makes the starter at different time of the month , am i getting the same strain of bacteria every time or I could get a stronger one with different type of bacteria. thank you.
Dear Jeff, thank you for your comments. Sadly, starters are much more boring than we hope for. The bacteria is a side show, to be honest, the main event is the yeast. The bacteria gets in there when you leave the starter out to build, but when you bake with it, it dies in the oven – most things die at 70 degrees C. If you leave the starter out for too long without feeding and it dies you will have ALL SORTS of nasty bacteria in there that you don’t want. So, a live starter has a tiny sub set of yeasts and bacterias. Nothing too exciting I am afraid. You can of course buy one off Amazon but you can also just make your own. By the time the purchased starter gets to you, you will have made your own! Once you start using it, the “original” starter portion is smaller and smaller and smaller…..sorry to disappoint!
Hi, I’m trying your method for rye starter and was wondering about how it’s meant to smell… Do I need to throw it away if it starts smelling a bit funky on day 3? Some websites talk about “fruity” vs “acidic” smells – I couldn’t really describe the way that mine currently smells!
Hi!
I’ve just buy your Homemade Sourdough Book, and it said to make a sourdough with 140g wheat flour and 240ml of water, why isn’t the same recipe that you have in your first book?
Dear Marie-France
Thank you for this. Firstly, thank you for buying the books. However, Homemade Sourdough was not written only by me. I was a contributor to that book and all the recipes were written by a different author and edited by a different editorial team. The book is full of errors – so much so that the publishers asked me to completely rewrite the book, which I did. The second book is called “Perfecting Sourdough”. If you can, please take back Home Made SOurdough and get a refund (amazon will do that for you if you bought it there. Then, you can buy Perfecting Sourdough which has accurate recipes.
The way I make sourdough starters is as in All You Knead Is Bread. And if you would like more information, have a read here: http://www.virtuousbread.com/bread-and-conversation/making-sourdough-starters/
Kind regards and I am sorry about that book: the recipes are all awful.
Hi, I found this article really useful but every other starter recipe I have seen says to have a loose fitting lid to let gases escape – why do you suggest a tight fitting lid? Sorry if this has been answered.
Thanks
Chris
When you make the starter you can use a loose fitting top (plate, bit of plastic) but when you store it you want to use a “clip” tupperware or glass jar. You don’t want air to get in or it will dry out in the fridge.