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In a post which I wrote days before Easter, I promised to make videos about making sourdough bread. Today we begin with making your own sourdough starter. Bellow the video is the recipe I follow with some notes that did not make it into the video. Enjoy!
Following is the recipe that I follow (hat tip to good folks at Breadtopia.com):
- Step 1. Mix 3 ½ tbs. whole wheat flour with ¼ cup unsweetened pineapple juice. Cover and set aside for 48 hours at room temperature. Stir vigorously 2-3x/day. (“Unsweetened” in this case simply means no extra sugar added).
- Step 2. Add to the above 2 tbs. whole wheat flour and 2 tbs. pineapple juice. Cover and set aside for a day or two. Stir vigorously 2-3x/day. You should see some activity of fermentation within 48 hours. If you don’t, you may want to toss this and start over (or go buy some!)
- Step 3. Add to the above 5 ¼ tbs. whole wheat flour and 3 tbs. purified water. Cover and set aside for 24 hours.
- Step 4. Add ½ cup whole wheat flour and 1/4 to 1/3 cup purified water. You should have a very healthy sourdough starter by now.
While the above recipe, as I mentioned in the video, asks to wait 48 hours between Step 1 and Step 2, the last time I made the starter there was plenty of “activity” to proceed after 24 hours. Stay tuned for the next video tomorrow.
I enjoyed your video walkthrough for making sourdough starter. I have activity now, and am beginning to the maintenance phase. It seems to me that one option is to add 1/4 cup each of flour and water each day, rather than a full cup each daily. That option would let me leave the container out, without having to toss half the mixture down the sink each week. Does that make sense? Or, am I missing something important about the maintenance process?