How Do You Make Sourdough?
Sourdough Starter
San Francisco Sourdough Bread
Starter using grapes to kick it off
Sourdough is probably the oldest leavened bread there is. Sourdough bread is basically using the natural yeast and fermentation from whats called a starter to make your bread.
Sourdough "starter" is usually just flour and water with no yeast for the authentic kind. The naturally occurring yeast in the air and flour and lactobacillus, which is a bacteria, form a symbiotic relationship. To make sourdough bread, you blend the starter with some flour and make dough. The yeast grows, and leavens your bread.
This is how you make your starter, which is a mixture you prepare beforehand that you keep in your refrigerator for your sourdough .Your starter is mixed into your bread dough, and that's what causes the bread to rise.
Get a glass jar. Metal containers aren't good because you don't want any reaction with the process and metal.Mix a cup of warm water and a cup of flour, and pour it into the jar. That's it! You can use unbleached bread flour or all purpose. Every 10-24 Hours you will need to refresh or "feed" your starter. You should always keep your starter in the refrigerator. Some people will suggest you leave it out to guarantee that you get fermentation but there is a risk of food poisoning in doing so.
The way to feed the starter is to remove 1/2 of it and then add a 1/2 cup of flour and a 1/2 of water, every 24 hours. Within three to four days it should start getting lots of bubbles . When your starter develops a bubbly froth, it is done. It should smell sweet and sour but not rotted or moldy .
You should your starter covered in the refrigerator but allow for small amounts of air to get to it. Once the starter is chilled, it needs to be fed only once a week.As the starter tends to ferment you will have to remove the "alcoholic-like" liquid called hooch that accumulates.
Take your starter or "mother dough " out of the refrigerator and pour it into a clean bowl.
Add one cup of warm water and one cup of flour .This is called proofing your sourdough.It usually takes an hour or two or longer
When your sponge is bubbly and has a froth, and it smells sour, it's ready.
You should use about 25% of the starter with your bread dough.You mix them together and allow the bread dough to rise just as if the starter is the yeast.The particular flavor of sourdough is from the reactions between the bacteria and yeast feeding in the sugars or starches in the dough. That's it!
I really love sourdough ! A sourdough bread in Great Britain recently sold for 15 British Pounds. Its called The Roquefort and Almond sourdough. Just judging by the ingredients it sounds wonderful!
