New to Sourdough Baking: Where to start?

Hi banburytart,

I too have recently started on the Sourdough journey (May 2011). Using the "starter" recipe on this website, I have progressed to making somewhat acceptable loaves and have enjoyed trying the recipes sent in to the forum by other bakers. The original starter is still going very well - I have even successfully dried some and have it in a plastic bag "just in case"!!!

Also I have purchased some books on baking and sourdough, from various sources and these have been great.

Members of this group are terrific and will answer questions, offer suggestions etc.

Good luck on your journey, and may your bread always rise!

http://sourdough.com/blog/sourdom/beginners-blog-starter-scratch

Worked for me. But it takes some time to evolve; you're building a community of bugs, and it may take a couple of weeks before its usable, and a couple of months before it hits its stride. When I moved from instant to levain (this French term is used relatively loosely in translation, I find) I had to cut back the hydration quite a bit from 80% to 65%. But that might just be my starter.

You can be as pure or "custom" as you like. For "pure", be a bit careful with your choice of flour as some have additives.

[quote=banburytart]

Briefly: am new to this forum and sourdough baking. Have baked only yeast breads in the past. Would love to start baking sourdough breads, but unsure whether I should buy a starter or begin from scratch. Would like advice, please.

Also, believe that true sourdough must comprise only flour, water, salt and "levain" (?). Is that the general consensus? If I'm going to do this, I want to do it properly. Believe in authenticity.

 [/quote]

Welcome to the forum.  When it comes to starters I like making it myself but I think that is just the kind of person I am.  My easiest starter that I have made to date is with flour that I milled myself.  I don't think that is something that most beginners will have available to them but I mention it just in case you do.  I believe the starter I made that way was ready in three days.  I made bread with it in five days because I wanted to make sure it was ready.

Sourdough is really just flour, water, and salt as the main ingredients.  Levain is just flour and water that has had a culture of microorganisms developed in it.  You can add other things and make it fancy but you don't have to.

The general consensus in this community is that a bread is truly "sourdough" when the only leavening agent is levain (starter), the combination of wild yeasts and bacteria that give sourdough its characteristic flavour properties.

Other ingredients can be added for different effects - you will find many recipes on this site which not only use milk instead of water as the liquid but may add other ingredients such as fats, fruit, nuts or seeds - but the one thing authentic sourdough has in common is that there's no added baker's yeast, only starter.

You can try making your own starter by following SourDom's directions (the beginner's blog someone linked to above); or if you don't want to wait that long, you can buy a starter - it makes no difference; you will find that after a few months in your local environment the starter will take on characteristics unique to your area.

 I also typed a note and lost it.  I hope i will get the hang of using this site.  Anyhow my question is once you have a starter going.  I have one in the fridge that I grew according to a cookbook.  I haven't baked for the past week.  How often should I feed it.  I no longer have the book but I remember it saying to keep a cup of starter but I don't remember how often and when to feed or how much.  I think it was to match the starter with equal amount of flour and water.  When do I take it out of fridge when I am ready to bake.  Thanks in advance.

Hi techiegrannie,

please see the tutorial on this site about creating and maintaining a starter:

http://sourdough.com/blog/sourdom/beginners-blog-starter-scratch

It's worked for a lot of us

 You can lose your post if you fail to see you are being asked to type the transcription of the  CAPTCHA image (it was about to happen to me in my last post)

There's a lot of different views on this. In an attempt to avoid controversy, here's what works for me.

I keep my starter in the refrigerator. if I'm not going to bake for a while, then I refresh it after a week; I take about a teaspoon, and feed it about 50 grams (say 2 oz) of flour plus 40 grams of water, all mixed in. If I'm going away for a longer time and won't be able to referesh it , then I increase the overall amount of added flour/water (keeping this water/flour ratio the same) but still only one teaspoon of starter.

I usually take the starter out the morning before, then early that evening i make up a pre-ferment with about half the starter & 500gm (1.1 lb) flour, take some of this as the next starter and bung it in the fridge. Next day, I make up the bread dough with 700gm flour and about 75% water (525 ml) which I mix together first and let sit.for 30min - autolyse - and  add the preferment for the final mix.

Staretrs are pretty robust, and survive some rough handling. My 1 week refresh has extended to 12 days without ill effect (it dried out on top, fine underneath).

There are also instructions on this site for drying starters for storage and mailing.