While I'm no novice in baking, I've not used sourdough before. What I need to get an idea about is how to "convert" regular yeast, normally active dry yeast, to an equivalent amount of starter.
Is there any specific or known equivalence, or is it just a matter of trial and error?
TIA folks
Alex
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For 1kg of bread, I normally use 150/200g starter, depending on a host of other variables!
However, why not use recipes that have been developed for sourdough bread? There are hundreds on this site.
That seems to be around what I used. As for the recipes on this or other sites, the fact is I've been baking for around 40-something years, and I've developed several of my own personal "recipes", recipes only in the sense of a list of ingredients and some very vague quantities. After all, baking is not and never will be a science (no matter how hard the commercial bakeries try to make it one).
But, having my favourite recipes means that I now want to try adapting them for sourdough starter instead of yeast. And that means no yeast at all! Hence my query about equivalencies.
I might add that my first loaves were done without using any recipe as such, just a cup or so of starter and add a little water, about a half cup, then add flour until the dough felt right. Then knead until the gluten was properly developed (there's a large amount of feel in bread dough - with enough experience one just knows when it's right.) And it worked very well, a very nice result indeed. About a kilogram by weight of dough, split into two loaves.