Jumping On the Sourdough Bread Bandwagon

I haven't written in my food blog in forever! Life's been in the way of any blog-worthy cooking or baking for quite some time, but now, life has ground to a halt. I'm stuck at home with nothing to do, and a fully stocked kitchen. What else am I going to do but eat well during this pandemic?! I've never been more grateful to have attended culinary school than I am right now.

One of the trends these days is baking with sourdough starter. Why is that? Because everybody else in this country is baking too, and yeast is nowhere to be found on grocery store shelves. True sourdough draws natural yeasts from the surrounding air to work, meaning you don't need those strips of dried yeast from the store. Flour is hard to find too, so if you see some at the store, stock up!

I love sourdough bread, but have never thought to try making it myself. It sounded difficult and time consuming and intimidating. But now that there is an abundance of time and something difficult and intimidating now sounds like a challenge to triumph over, I figured there's no better time to try it. So, I did some research online and scoured my own cookbooks and found one that had sourdough starter in it:

I shouldn't be surprised. I've always said that if I was trying to survive in the wild, all I'd need are my copies of the Little House on the Prairie books and I'd be set. Of course sourdough starter would be a necessity in times when purchased yeast was scarce, if available at all. So, I used this as the basis for my starter. I emptied out a jar, cleaned it really well, and got started.

The flour and water, mixed in the jar, with a fork.

Starter is just flour and water. It's really that simple. I mixed it right in the jar, which is why you can see it on the sides in the second picture. It's not really that full, it's just got residue on the sides. I had cheesecloth on hand so I chose to use that to top it. That way it would have a steady source of oxygen, and the yeasts in the air could get into it, yet any big things wouldn't fall in.

One of the hardest things for me was finding a warm enough spot for it to try and ferment. My apartment has been pretty cool for most of April and we don't have the heater on. I had a desk lamp I wasn't using and set it up on the kitchen ledge, but the new light bulbs they make don't heat up the way the old ones did, so it didn't really do anything, sadly. I soon discovered, though, that my bedroom gets the afternoon sun and if I open the shades and set the starter jar in the sun, it'll get hours of heat. I've been doing that nearly every afternoon! The first two nights, however, I hadn't discovered that yet, and was wrapping the jar in my winter hats and scarves and a towel to try and keep warm overnight. I was sad because it seemed like nothing was happening. But lo and behold, by Wednesday, just two days after creating the starter, I saw signs of life!

Bubbles on the top!

Liquid on the top, which I have since learned is referred to as "hooch". It also seems to be the source of the majority of the sour smell. It's apparently alcohol and can either be poured off or stirred back in. When you see this, it's a sign that your starter needs to be fed.

Top view of the bubbles.

Signs of bubbles and fermentation all throughout the starter. It's also starting to rise a little too at this point. This was such an exciting day to see that it was actually working! This is also the stage where it was ready for its first pouring and feeding. You pour off some of the starter and feed what's left, so it continues to grow stronger and can begin to ripen. This is also the stage where you start refrigerating the starter. I have ended up doing a mixture: Out on the counter or in the window during the day to keep fermenting, and then refrigerating overnight.

The little blue bowl is a flour/water slurry used to feed the starter. I tended to use 2 Tbsp. each of flour and water per day.

The bowl contains the first pouring off that I ended up giving to my parents. My mom has been tending to it and told me today hers is really thick and active and she's going to make biscuits in the next day or two!

My starter has almost always been like pancake batter in texture. That will be just fine for biscuits, pancakes, and waffles, but not for an entire loaf of bread that won't have any other yeast added to it. One day I decided to experiment and just dumped straight flour into it instead of the slurry. It really started to thicken up that way. I am keeping that in mind, moving forward.

I've continued to ripen and feed my starter and decided yesterday it was ripe enough to try making biscuits. The biscuit recipe in the Little House cookbook made too many for me to use. I don't need 30 biscuits!! It had some steps that I couldn't deal with properly if I quartered the recipe, so I deviated and found a recipe online to try instead. I found this one: King Arthur is pretty important in my life right now, so I thought this website would be a good place to try! It turns out I was right! I halved the recipe because I don't need 7 biscuits, and still managed to make an extra one than what it should have made.

I had kept the second pouring-off of the starter in the ripening process and decided to use it in this. I measured it in a 1/2 cup measure and used my other starter for the rest. The rest of the starter I used to build up for making bread next week. I will need more than I currently have, which means I need to feed it bigger amounts than I've been feeding it so far. I used a whole soup bowl full of flour and water to try and get it going.

But back to the biscuits. As you can see, I used the recipe to make the crumbly base of the biscuits, yet the starter provided the liquid. This makes the softest, smoothest dough you will ever work with. They feel like pillows, I swear! You don't need a rolling pin for this, just your hands patting it out works fine. I cut the biscuits and put them on a parchment-lined baking sheet.

I was curious how the sour level would be. The dough smelled pretty sour, but it seems that the baking process dulls it a bit. That's one of the interesting things about making your own starter. You never know how sour it will actually be.

You can see that they split in the middle on their own. I only needed 20 minutes to bake mine, but it might take up to 23 minutes to bake.

This is split in half. They are light and soft and the sourness was pretty mild. My sister, who hates sourdough, tried one and was so impressed she asked me to make more sometime! I'd say that's quite the endorsement! I still have a couple leftover to eat tonight with my dinner. Looking forward to it!

The rest of the week and weekend I'll be working on building up the starter in both size and strength. I might let it sit outside on my porch for a bit in hopes of it absorbing some more yeasts from the air. I will continue to document this process through pictures as I try the bread next week. And when I do a pour-off, instead of just tossing it, now I know I can make things with it! Biscuits, pancakes, waffles! My sister and I will continue to be well-fed during this pandemic!