Sourdough bread has been a favorite around our camp for a long time. About a year ago we finally pestered several baker friends for some of their starter and they all answered with the same retort – brew up your own.
Even though food historians attribute the rise of sourdough (no baking pun intended) to Ancient Egypt, when I hear the word sourdough it conjures up images of the California gold rush and San Francisco. It appears French bakers brought sourdough methods to California back in those days, later spreading via the Klondike gold rush into the Yukon and Alaska.
Rustic pioneers and prospectors used to go to impressive lengths to protect their sourdough starters during long Alaskan winters, going as far as to carry a bit of their starter in a pouch around on their neck or on their belts to ensure its safety. Keeping a sourdough starter viable these days is a lot easier with a refrigerator in every kitchen; a feeding every few weeks has kept ours alive and well for the past year and we have friends with starters that are literally decades old.
You can of course buy a sourdough starter, though when looking at the lists of ‘preservatives and chemical stabilizers’ added into these concoctions (like just about every other pre-prepared food these days), it’s simply crazy not to make your own.
One of our baker mentors reminded us when we first brewed our own starter that this process is as much an art as a science, though she did admit she weighed her flour and starter out on a kitchen scale when feeding her starter. The key principle is you combine equal weights of starter, flour and water each time you feed it.
If you can count to four and stir, skills that most fly fishers possess, you can do this. Start it this weekend and you’ll be have fresh sourdough bread by next Friday.
Whole Wheat or Whole Rye Flour
Unbleached AP Flour
Non-chlorinated water
The first day. Combine 4 ounces (roughly 1 cup) whole wheat or rye flour with 4 ounces (roughly 1/2 cup) water in a non-reactive container; stir to combine well (no dry flour). Cover loosely and let sit out at warm (68-70 is ideal) room temp for 24 hours. You probably won’t see much happening.
The second day. Discard half of the starter mixture and add 4 ounces (roughly 1 cup again) of unbleached AP flour and 4 ounces (roughly 1/2 cup) water; combine well. Cover and let rest again for 24 hours.
Days 3-6. By the third day, and from here on out, you should begin to see some activity in the starter – it’s should begin to bubble, smell a bit ‘fruity’ and expand between feedings.
For each of the now twice daily feedings, you’ll combine 4 ounces of the starter mixture with 4 ounces of flour and 4 ounces of water. Mix well each time and let the mixture sit out on the counter for roughly 12 hours between feedings.
You’re looking for the starter to become very active (lots of bubbles and significant expansion – it will be obvious when it’s happening) between feedings; it could happen by day 4 or might take 6 or 7, stay with it. When we first started our current starter about a year ago, it took 8 or 9 days in our cool PNW weather to get it cranking.
Use it and store it. Pat yourself on the back, crank out a batch of these Sourdough Cinnamon Rolls or sourdough pancakes, and refrigerate your starter in a glass jar or crock to use another day. It gets better with time.
Enjoy.
