A few weeks ago I ordered some new bakeware from King Arthur Flour. I’d always wanted to try some of their bread mixes so I gave into temptation and ordered a few. I’d never made sourdough bread so I was excited about their Alaskan Sourdough Yeast Bread mix.
In addition to the contents of the box I needed water and oil. I followed the instructions and put all the ingredients in the pan of my Zojirushi bread machine.
The bread looked great when it came out and it tasted pretty great too. It had a lovely sourdough flavor and was pleasantly chewy.
This was a real winner and it made me think about making sourdough bread on a regular basis. That would mean buying sourdough starter or making starter from scratch. The Zojirushi actually has a setting to make sourdough starter so that would be fine. However starter has to be fed and maintained. I wonder how much time and effort that takes? Hmmm . . . I’ll have to do some more investigation.
Once you have your starter, just replace a cup of starter used with 1/2 cup bread flour and 1/2 cup water (I use bottled spring water; it doesn’t have anything to retard growth.) Stir it up with a fork, flopping a little air into it to pick up tasty molds from the atmosphere. Stick it on top of the fridge, where it is warm, with a film cover loosely fastened with a rubber band so gas can get out. When the foam dies, and you have liquid on top of sludge, put it in the fridge. It should have a happy smell. If you haven’t used it for a while, give it a snack of flour and water, let it digest on top of the fridge, and store again. If it is a yogurt starter like I do, give it some milk from time to time to keep the lactobacilli happy. Just takes five minutes after you turn on the bread machine.
It hasn’t happened to me, but if it turns pink or smells rotten like old meat, it has gone bad. Toss it and start again.
You have lots and lots of slack … I left my starter in the fridge for a coupe of years, added flour and tap water and got it to foam in a couple of days. Reyogurtized it, and it’s pretty good now.
Is it really that easy? If so, I think I’ll give it a try.
Yogurt Starter from Rustic European Breads from Your Bread Machine by Eckhardt and Butts (good book for a relaxed attitude).
YOGURT STARTER
Since yeasts also reside in milk products, you can make a fine starter by incubating plain yogurt with milk, then mixing it with organic flour. This will yield a taste similar to that of San Francisco sourdough bread because the lactose in the milk product “sours” in much the same way that airborne molds do in San Francisco.
1 cup 2 percent milk
3 tablespoons plain nonfat yogurt
1 cup organic bread flour
[they recommend organic; but i used Gold Medal "Better for Bread"]
Put the milk in a 2-cup glass measure and heat it in the microwave to 100 degrees.F, about 45 seconds at 100 percent power or on the stove top in a small pan until warm. Stir in the yogurt, cover tightly with plastic wrap, and place it in the warmest place in your kitchen, ideally about 80 degrees F. Let the mixture stand until it forms a curd and doesn’t readily pour, about 24 hours, then stir in the flour. Whip it with a fork to both combine and aerate the mixture, then re-cover and let it stand until the mixture is full of bubbles and has a good sour smell, from 2 to 5 days. If a clear liquid separates out, stir it back in; if the iiquid is pink, throw the starter out and begin again. The pink color means you have captured undesirable airborne bacilli, airborne pathogens that have spoiled your starter.
If you don’t use the starter within 3 or 4 days, feed it with 1/2 cup flour and 1/4 cup milk so that the yeast and molds will have a new supply of food to keep them alive. Cover and leave out in the warm kitchen overnight or until the starter is bubbly and light. Once the starter is made and bubbly, store it in the refrigerator.