Hello Friends.  I have been posting pictures of our SOURDOUGH BREAD making adventures over on Facebook and I’m getting a lot of questions about making Sourdough Bread without yeast.  So I decided to start a blog page about it and share my recipes and what I do to create the bread and other things I use the starter for.

Sourdough Starter Basics:

You have to “grow” your starter.  It’s made from simple flour and water.  As you grow it, it creates microbes and bacteria,  or in simple terms, it makes it’s own yeast.  Around here we call it our little Science projects, as we are always trying new things, but I’m going to share the basic tried and true.

Your Sourdough Starter is “living”, so you NEED to FEED it daily to keep it alive.  It will give you a reason to pause NetFlix and get off the couch at least once a day, haha

On a side note:  Once you have the starter up and running, you will be able to store it in your fridge and will only need to feed it once a week – we will talk about that later.

I use canning jars, but any clear jar with a loose fitting lid will work.  Pictured above are 1 Litre sized jars I use.  you can also cover it with a cheesecloth lid

As your starter grows, it starts to expand and contract when you feed it, and it needs room to do that.

Jar on the right:

The jar on the right, see the rubber band at the bottom – that’s the level the starter was at when I fed it.  See how the entire inside of the jar is covered all the way to the lid?  That is how much that starter  “grew” after I fed it.  That particular starter is about 12 days old now, and very active.  I have a bowl it sits in because it often overflows it so “Happy”, LOL (also a good example of why the lid needs to be loose – otherwise you building a little bomb), LOL, and you don’t want to clean up that mess.

Jar in the center:

This is a new  – I started it two days ago, it’s nice and bubbly on top, but it hasn’t done the “Big Rise” yet, so the jar is clean

Jar on the Left:

This starter is whole wheat flour.  It’s about a week old, it rises to the top now too, but the inside of the jar is a bit cleaner, different flour, works in different ways.

Here is the basic instructions for “starting your starter”.

I’m going to provide PDF files for the steps so that you can print them off and start your own Sourdough Binder and we might even shoot little videos for you to explain the steps.

 

 

BESIDES BREAD:

Other Things you can create with Sourdough Starter:

I went looking for ideas to use the “discard” when I was building my starter.  I hate throwing out perfectly good starter (it’s the Irish in me, haha).  So this section is recipes I have come up with to use up the “discard”, or just use your regular starter to create if you are tired of bread or already have 6 loaves, haha.

 

 

The starter makes a great pizza crust.  This recipe is good for two pizzas, and requires an 8 hour (or overnight) rise in the fridge.

You will need to remove it from the fridge 2 – 3 hours before you want to start making your pizza

Of course you will need a tasty pizza sauce to go onto your newly made dough.

This one is super simple, no cooking required and you probably have the ingredients in your pantry.

We grow our own herbs so I always add a bit of fresh Basil to this recipe but you can use dry as well.  (about 1 tablespoon dry)