Tuesdays are sourdough days in our bakery. I take preorders over the weekend weekend and customers pick up their bread on Tuesdays when it’s ready.
Today I am prepping dough for 7 loaves.
Let me start by saying I’m not a fussy sourdough baker. Some do things with a million steps… I don’t. This method works for me. It’s not complicated and it’s easy to keep up with.
My recipe calls for 150 grams of starter for each loaf. That means I need 1,050 grams of starter for this batch.
I feed my starter with a 1:1:1 ratio, so I’ll need equal parts of starter, water, and flour. I’ve found that I can usually just take the amount I need and divide by 3 to find out how many grams I need of each part. Then I round up for good measure, to make sure I have enough for my baking plus the extra to put back in the fridge. I rounded up to 1200 grams of starter.
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Today the math worked out to 350 grams of starter. What I had in my jar came in right around 400 grams, so I fed all of it.
If I’m doing a smaller batch, I’ll take some out of my jar and leave the remainder in the fridge. I don’t feed all my starter every single time. I can’t stand waste and we don’t use discard in other ways in our house often enough to justify keeping a large amount.
After years of being hesitant to use a scale, I’ve discovered I love using one. It makes baking so much simpler and consistent, and dirties fewer dishes too. Win! Mine came from Amazon and you can get one here if you’d like.
After I added the starter to my bowl, I zeroed out the scale. I poured in the water and got 411.2 grams. Close enough to 400; a little over on water and flour won’t hurt. Some bakers use a larger proportion of water and flour to starter so I know this will work.
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Some people say you have to use filtered water to feed your starter. I use tap water, and we have city water. I used reverse osmosis filtered water for a while, but tried tap water and noticed no difference in my starter, so I switched.
I zeroed out the scale again and started to add my flour. Some bakers use all plain flour. I use a mix of bread flour and whole wheat flour. My starter stays happier if I use some whole wheat flour when I feed it. I’m not militant with this and don’t add it every single time, but I do most of the time.
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Since I needed 400 grams of flour, I did about 320 grams of bread flour and the other 80 I meant to add were the wheat flour. I got a little more than I intended so it ended up 426.2 grams of flour, so I added a little more water to balance it out.
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Mix up the starter until it’s well combined.
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This amount is more than I’m comfortable with in this bowl. It’s high enough that I’m concerned it will overflow. So I pour it into two half gallon mason jars. The level is low enough in the two separate jars that I know I can leave this overnight with no fear of it overflowing.
I don’t use a rubber band on my jars. I will often draw a small line on the jar with a Sharpie – it wipes right off with a little rubbing alcohol.
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I leave my starter for about 12 hours before mixing into dough. My usual routine is to mix up the starter on Sunday evenings, then mix the dough Monday morning. It will bulk ferment all day, then I’ll shape it into loaves Monday evening. They’ll go into the fridge overnight, then will be baked on Tuesday morning.
The post Sourdough Bread: Feeding the Starter first appeared on Fruit of Her Hands.