Creating Your Own Sourdough Starter

To Make Your Own Sourdough or Leven Starter Is Easy and Satisfying

Apr 19, 2009

A sourdough starter is simply a mixture of flour, water and natural living yeasts and is the key to producing wonderful bread. It is a simple and easy to make.

The process involves mixing flour and water and letting the natural yeasts in the atmosphere join with them to begin to ferment and so to create your own personal family sourdough starter.

To begin you simply have to mix equal quantities of flour and water. It makes sense to use your favourite white flour. Using white flour in your starter does mean that you can then produce pure white bread from the starter although of course it is perfectly possible, when making your bread, to introduce any other kind of flour you desire such as malted grains or wholemeal.

You can give the natural yeasts which are present in the air in your home a help by using water in which you have soaked some grapes or other vine fruits. Many people use water which has been used for boiling potatoes. If you do use potato water ensure that no salt has been used for boiling the potatoes. Salt and natural yeasts are deadly enemies and should never be mixed.

To begin on day one mix together

Allow this to stand out in a warm kitchen, always covered loosely with a cloth to stop insects settling in your new young sourdough starter. They will naturally be attracted by the fermentation smells.

Day Two

By the sixth day your sourdough will have started to bubble. It will be showing signs of fermentation and have a nice beery yeasty smell. It is now ready to use.

Maintaining Your Sourdough

Your sourdough starter is a living breathing thing. It will mature and increase in strength with age. But like all living things it does need feeding, normally at least once a week. Many people feel that it is a part of the family and it certainly makes a very suitable task for young children to maintain the family sourdough. But if you are baking a lot of bread then feeding will need to be more regular. So at least each week you will add

You need to have a certain volume of sourdough to enable the natural fermentation process to take place. But you may well find that your volume of sourdough increases week on week. This is the time to safeguard your future supplies by drying or freezing some of your sourdough starter.

The copyright of the article Creating Your Own Sourdough Starter in Breads & Muffins is owned by David Smith. Permission to republish Creating Your Own Sourdough Starter in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.