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Starting to make sourdough can be a bit overwhelming. There are so many people out there with lots of advice and rules of how you have to do things. It is hard to figure out who to listen to. I think this is because there are no such things as rules when it comes to making a lovely loaf of sourdough bread. You can do things in so many different ways. I also think it is important to take environmental and material factors into consideration.
I have to follow so many strict rules in my professional life that when it comes to my personal hobbies, I seek to rebel. I also have limited time and therefore like to figure out the easiest and most flexible way of doing things. Some of you just read that sentence and gasped in disbelief. You are thinking to yourself, “What do you mean by flexible? There are strict schedules that must be adhered to with sourdough bread making!”
That is what I want to talk to you about today. I want to encourage you in the versatility and flexibility with which you can create sourdough bread for yourself and your family. Whether you are a stay-at-home mom or working 100 hours a week (I speak from experience on that one). Take everything you are about to read with a grain of salt. Feel free to play around with things and experiment!
The Sourdough Starter
I think the starter itself is often the most daunting of hurdles to overcome when you are looking to start sourdough. I think it throws people off that it is a living thing. I am here to tell you that it is much easier to take care of than you think.
I am going to start by telling you exactly how I take care of my starter.
Saturday night, I pull it out of the fridge and dump it into a bowl with a lot of flour and water. I am going to make about two to three cups for pancakes. Sometimes, I will pull out just a little starter (a couple of tablespoons) and use milk for this instead of water. If that is the case, I will put the rest of the unfed starter back in the fridge and ignore it for now. If I went the water route, Sunday morning, I would put a couple of spoonfuls back in the jar to go into the fridge till a later date.
At some point in the week, we will probably need another loaf of bread, at which point I will add about a half a cup of flour and water to let sit. How long depends on several factors, such as the temperature in my kitchen and how much time I have to wait. If it is before bed, it will sit out all night. If it is morning, it might only wait till noon.
My starter might be fed with freshly milled or all-purpose white flour. Usually filtered water, but sometimes milk.
I haven’t discarded anything since creating my starter two years ago. I only ever have a couple of tablespoons in the fridge at any given time. I don’t feed it before I put it back in the fridge unless I am going to be on vacation. It never sits out on my counter for more than 12 hours.
This is what works for me in my life situation as of this moment. I know some people like to keep more starter so they can whip up a quick pizza crust if they don’t know what else to make for dinner. This is a personal experiment that you have to try out for yourself.
Measuring Myths
Can I tell you a secret? I am fully convinced that the saying, “baking is a science and you have to be super precise about measurements,” is a lie made up by the measuring device companies to sell more products. I barely measure anything, and it always turns out perfectly wonderful.
There is a myth that to feed your sourdough starter, you need to measure and use precise ratios. I am here to tell you that is just not true. I pour in some water, dump in some flour, and give it a mix. If it feels too thick, add some more water. Too runny? Add some more flour. As you bake, you get a feel for a good consistency and what you enjoy for different goods. I like my starter thicker for pancakes and runnier for bread, but it doesn’t matter much at the end of the day. All I know for sure is that if you are pulling out the kitchen scale every time you want to feed your starter, you are putting in unnecessary effort.
Scales are also not necessary for making dough. While I do like to use one to minimize dirty dish production, measuring cups work perfectly well. You can use the internet to easily convert measurements back and forth.
When using a scale, you do not have to be perfectly accurate. If a recipe calls for 500 g of flour, a buffer of 10 g either way will work just fine. If you are only needing 10 g of salt, I would lower the buffer to one.
Ready To Use Rules
Another secret is that my sourdough starter has never once floated in water. I am sure some people do, but mine never has, and it works wonderfully. I also don’t typically get it to double in size.
The moral of that story is that you can use a starter at just about any point. It will work out. You can pull it straight out of the fridge and add it to your bread dough, and it will work. The first rise will probably take longer, but it will work. I will caveat that I wouldn’t try this with a brand-new starter.
Discarding Debunked
I briefly mentioned above that I have never discarded after the creation of my starter. This is something that boggles my mind. I see people with jars of discard and they don’t know what to do with it. I really don’t know how that happens.
If you are feeling overwhelmed by discard, then keep a small amount of starter in your fridge and only feed it when you want to use it. I don’t even measure how much starter I am adding to a recipe. I dump it in till there are about two tablespoons of starter left in my jar and call it good. I promise, it works.
Tricky Timing
The timing of Sourdough can be a challenge for some people to wrap their heads around in the beginning. I want to take a moment and reassure you that you can’t mess it up. At any point, you can slow down, pause, or speed up the process. This is done with temperature. You can slow down the process by placing your dough in a cold or cooler location, or speed it up by placing it somewhere warm.
The outside weather can be helpful or harmful in this, but we all know the place in our home that is the warmest or coldest. A bathroom with a closed door to lock in the HVAC, or closed in a closet without a vent, to keep out the HVAC. If sealed well, you can place your bread outside, and of course, the ultimate pause is the fridge. I use the term pause loosely. Your dough will continue to ferment, just much more slowly, so don’t leave it in there for a week and expect it not to be fermented.
I hope all of this helps remove any reservations you have about making sourdough bread and wards off any fears that you have about your ability to do so. I wish you luck as you begin your own sourdough journey. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask in either a comment or by emailing me at [email protected], and I will do my best to answer.
If you are wondering why I chose to start making sourdough bread you can check that post out here.
If you are wanting to know what tools I deem essential for starting to make your own bread, you can check that post out here.
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