Make Your Own Sourdough Starter

Don't you just love bread? Sourdough bread is great for sandwiches and toast. You don't have to buy sourdough bread from the store or a bakery. Making bread is fun, easy and economical!

Making your own sourdough starter is easy. You don't have to buy a starter online or one of the mixes in the grocery store. This hub will explain how.

When I was in my 20s, I drove the Alaska-Canadian highway from Delta Junction all the way to Whitehorse. It was a great trip and one of the things I collected along the way was a little bit of sourdough starter that had traveled from Pennsylvania in the 1880s. A family on the Oregon Trail had brought their sourdough starter and kept it alive through the whole trip. It continues to thrive in a little town in British Columbia.

I didn't know anything about sourdough and it wasn't long before I killed the starter. A few years later I decided to try again and although it's not a 100 years old, I'm proud of my starter.

The key to great sourdough bread is a great sourdough starter. This is what takes the place of yeast in the bread recipe. The starter makes the bread rise and it gives the bread that distinctive sour taste.

You will find tons of starter recipes if you search online. Some are pretty wild. There's one that directs you to dump a 5 pound bag of flour in a clean bucket, add 5 gallons of water and wait a week. You'll find shortcuts where you jump start the sourdough with yeast. At the other extreme you'll find, well, people like me. Here's my sourdough starter recipe. This is from about two years of trial and error.

First, you'll need a ceramic container. Something with a loose lid. A counter top flour canister will work great. You don't want metal; it reacts with the sourdough. You begin with one cup of flour and one cup of warm water. Mix them together (don't use a metal spoon) in the canister and cover. That's pretty much it.

Here are the refinements: I like to use rye flour or an unbleached flour and rye flour mix for feeding the sourdough. Rye flour has a higher natural yeast content than regular flour. Your starter will love you for the rye.
You have to feed the starter every day. I give it a quarter cup of the rye flour mix and a quarter cup of hot water every morning. It should look frothy and smell sour.
If you are going away for a few days, don't sweat it. Put the canister in the fridge. Your sourdough will (literally) chill while you're gone. When you get home and pull the starter out of the fridge do not be alarmed that it looks black. Really. It's OK. Just sit it on the counter and let it warm up. In a few hours, feed it and watch it come back to normal.
In the winter, my kitchen is a bit chilly. I wrap a towel around the canister to help keep the starter warm.

When you want to make bread with your starter, you'll create a sponge. This is one of those weird words but what it means in this context is a mixture of flour, water and sourdough starter -- usually with a little sugar to give the starter an extra boost.

For a simple recipe, you'll combine two cups of flour with one cup of warm water and one cup of starter. Sprinkle about half a teaspoon of sugar into the mix and stir. It will be very stiff and might seem hard to mix. It's OK to add an extra little bit of water to the sponge. You won't hurt anything.

Cover the mixture with a kitchen towel and let it sit for at least 6 hours and for as long as 12 hours. It will be a bit bubbly and seem more like a batter now.

At this point you are ready to make your own sourdough bread!

There are tons of recipes to choose from. You can take a traditional bread recipe and turn it into a sourdough recipe with a little experimentation.

The important thing to remember is that your sourdough bread dough doesn't have any yeast. That means it needs your help to rise nice and tall. I suggest proofing the dough in your oven. Turn the oven on 200 degrees, put a pan of warm water on the bottom rung and your shaped loaves on the top rung. Set your timer for an hour.

When you come back, the dough will have risen and you're ready to bake! Take the loaves out (carefully) and set them on the counter for a few minutes. Take out the water pan. Set the oven to 400 degrees and let it preheat for about 10 minutes. Then you put your loaves in and let them bake for 25 minutes.

You will have spectacular tasting bread!