How to Make Sourdough Starter

Do you love the sourdough bread you buy at the deli and have wanted to try your hand at making your own. Here is how to make sourdough starter. Sourdough starter is made with the natural yeast in the air and the flour and real sourdough does not use packaged or cake yeast.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• wheat flour
• white all purpose flour
• bottled or distilled water
• container

1. Start with a clean container. I prefer a plastic container and cleaned out an old cottage cheese container (reuse of old containers).

2. mix 2 Tablespoons of wheat flour with 1 1/2 Tablespoons of water. Loosely cover container and let sit for 24 hours. Add and mix the same amount of wheat flour and water to the mixture on day 2 and again on day 3. You should see some bubbling by day 3.

3. On day 4 you may switch to white flour or you may continue to add wheat flour. Continue adding water-flour mixture each day and by day 7 you should have enough starter to make your first sourdough bread with enough left over to keep your sourdough starter going.

Tips & Warnings

• Using wheat flour helps the starter good a good start, wheat flour may have larger amount of natural yeast.
• Keep starter in a warm area.
• Once you get a good starter, you may want to dry some of the starter for later use.
• One part of making your own starter is the element of surprise. Some strains of yeast may not make great tasting bread and you may need to start over. But when you get a good strain growing, it'll be worth the time.

[easyreader]

on 5/23/2009 very cool and very simple!

[tundranut]

on 3/5/2009 Nice article about sourdough. Sometimes the older the starter, the better the bread. 5*

[lynsuz12]

on 1/6/2009 Me too, never heard of drying the starter. Sounds like you have another article to write. *****

[Beadbug]

on 10/12/2008 Hi I havae only use started as a wet ingredient...How do you Dry it? I have seen Commercial starter in dry form..so I guess it can bbe done!

[Meri]

on 7/5/2008 Thanks for the tips! I have never heard of drying the starter. How do you do this and then how do you use it?