Sourdough 101
I find myself giving advice on what to do with a sourdough starter a lot, so I thought I’d write it down somewhere I can refer to!
I’ve been baking bread almost every weekend for a few years now. Most weekends it’s something sourdough, but not always. We basically don’t buy bread here unless it’s something special. It’s not hard! It takes a little practice, but it’s well worth it, and you won’t make much that’s bad.
Feeding
I’m pretty lazy with my sourdough and it’s been fine. The night before I want to bake I’ll take it out of the fridge and feed equal weights of flour and water (by volume, it’s about twice as much flour as water: 1 cup flour to 0.5 cups water, etc). Leave it out on the counter overnight and use in the AM. If it’s been a couple of weeks since I fed, I might do that twice, once the morning before and once before bed.
By weight, I’ll normally keep 50-100g of starter and add 100g of flour and water. My bread recipe uses about 250g of the starter so that works out well. It’s flexible, make as much as you need to use plus some to keep it going!
If you end up with too much, I keep a container of discard in the fridge and use it for some of the recipes below. That container lasts forever as far as I can tell. If it comes out of the fridge and has some liquid on it (sometimes dark grey or kind of black) just pour it off.
The only things I’d be worried about is if it ever looked fuzzy or had bright colored stuff on top (red, orange, pink, etc). That’s probably mold and means it’s back to square one for you, toss the whole thing and start over. It hasn’t happened to me in the few years I’ve been doing this, so don’t worry about it too much!
For a container, I’ve used a glass jar (without the lid on tight!) or a plastic deli container. You want something nonreactive that’ll hold up to the somewhat acidic starter. You don’t want it to be airtight, but a lid to keep things out of it and keep the fridge from drying it out too much is good.
Baking
Tartine bread (almost every weekend)
My #1 bread is the Tartine Country Bread from the NYT. If that’s giving you a “hey, subscribe to our site!” feel free to use the archive.md copy. That recipe makes two decent size loaves and I’ve scaled it down to make one slightly bigger loaf. The numbers I use are:
- 240g leaven (this is the same as the starter after you fed it and left it overnight)
- 360g water
- 540g flour (480g white / 60g whole wheat? Go with what’s in your heart, experiment once you’ve done it a time or two. All white flour is totally fine)
- 12g salt
- 30g water (to disperse the salt into)
I won’t reproduce their recipe here, they do a good job. If you make the starter overnight like I suggest above, you’ll be starting at step 4 with it (combine the 240g starter with 360g water). Sometimes I give it an extra fold or two before shaping it if it’s not coming together like I want. You’ll figure it out after trying a few times!
You can also throw this in the fridge after a few of the folds, then pull it out the next day, leave it on the counter for half an hour or so, shape and bake. It’ll be a little tangier this way and it makes the timing a lot easier. Otherwise it’s most of a day’s effort, though the majority of that is it sitting out, not hands-on time.
King Arthur English Muffin Bread
The King Arthur English Muffin Bread is quick to make and tasty. I follow their recipe without any modifications and it’s good every time. If I don’t get to making bread early on Sundays and I want something in the house, it’s this.
King Arthur also makes delicious flour you can find in most stores (including 25# sacks at Costco!) and their recipes are reliable and not too tricky. They even run a free baker’s hotline year-round. The one time I called them they were super nice and knowledgeable.
Sourdough Pain de Mie
The Perfect Loaf’s Pain de Mie is fantastic. I find it a bit fiddly to get, and it never feels like it’s quite right, but no one’s complaining in the house. You’ll want a stand mixer for this one. Again you can use the overnight starter as the levain without any trouble. Or, heck, follow his directions for making it with a tiny bit of your starter the night before.
Fun fact, The Perfect Loaf is run by a fellow New Mexican and I had been hearing from friends for years that I needed to look up his stuff. It might have been around when he started writing for King Arthur, or when he got his first Saveur award, that I started following. Whoops. It gets pretty nerdy in there but I have a lot of respect for someone who can care that much about bread.
Sourdough English Muffins
The King Arthur Sourdough English Muffins are a total crowd pleaser. They take a lot of time (it’s a two day process, and the hands on time the second day is more than an hour in a stretch) but they’re so dang good. Go ahead and make the full recipe and give extras away to friends or neighbors.
Discard
You’ll end up with a container of discard (starter that’s risen and then not used) in the fridge after a while. You wouldn’t want to just throw it away, would you? Here are a few options on what to do with it, though there’s a million.
Biscuits
King Arthur Buttery Sourdough Sandwich Biscuits are great. It’s easy, they come together fast, and other than the slight finesse of getting the butter crumbly enough you can do it while your first cup of coffee is still setting in. I was making these every weekend for the household for a while until they said they were biscuited out. Once you get the recipe down you can do it from memory, and it takes additions well. Cheese? Some herbs that are left in the fridge? Delicious.
Crackers
King Arthur Sourdough Crackers are another quick one that you can turn into lots of options. If the container is getting kind of full and you’ve got an hour or so, you can make these and snack on them all week. With some practice you’ll get your rolling pin skills down so they’re nice and even, but they don’t need to be to be worth it.