Who Else Wants to Make Sourdough Bread Starter?

sourdough, starter, will, container

Making your own Sourdough Bread is easy when you have a Sourdough Starter living in your kitchen or fridge. Here's how to make your own Sourdough starter today!

Fir st, you need a home for your sourdough starter. The starter itself is essentially cultivated wild yeast, with a food source and some bacteria. Once established, it will live quite happily in your fridge in a plastic or glass container, loosely covered. I use an old Tupperware container with an ill-fitting lid to house my pet sourdough starter. Make sure the container is very clean, scald it with boiling water before you use it. Whatever you do, don't use a metal container (or metal utensils when handling sourdough starter).

Take 1 cup of plain, rye or wholemeal flour and 1 cup of warm water. Mix to a batter. Leave somewhere warm, sunny and free of draught for a day, then loosely cover.

Each day, until the starter is well established, remove some of the batter and replace with more flour and warm water. Warm water is about 60-70F, not too hot or you will kill the yeasts.

The starter is 'established' when it is quite frothy and smells pleasantly sour. It should smell 'healthy' and yeasty. Once established, it can live in your fridge and will only need feeding weekly and can be kept like this almost indefinitely (unless something nasty infects it, which is unusual, or unless it gets too hot).

A genuine sourdough starter can be simple, like this. There are more complicated methods for making sourdough starter, but this works well for most people and makes a very tasty loaf of bread. The yeasts that you cultivate will be whatever is hanging around your house at the time, and will mutate over time, so you may find you get a few surprises come out of the oven. This is part of what I like about sourdough, the inconsistency. There are so many variables in making a loaf of bread, it's fun to play around and eat the results.

Cleanliness is pretty important. Discard any starter which smells unpleasant or unhealthy, sterilise the container and start again. Starter living in your fridge will develop 'hooch', a liquid which sits on top of the starter - this is normal. You can mix it back in when you freshen up the starter.

Enjoy!