Recipe – Easy Sourdough Starter

Before Booker was born, I started a sourdough starter so that I could experiment with more bread types. I tried different recipes, but my starter ended up dying within a week each time. I got frustrated after my third try and tried a different tactic: cell culture. Having worked in a research lab for over a decade, I’ve had plenty of experience growing different types of cells, and figured that if I could keep those alive, maybe I could use that same sort of approach to maintaining a yeast culture. And it worked! My culture is still alive today, and I’m planning on keeping it around and passing it along to Booker when he gets older, if he wants to learn how to bake bread.

The Timing

It took about a week to get the culture fed and going. After that, I put the culture in a container with a lid laid loosely on top and stored it in the fridge. Now, I only take the culture out once a week to either bake with or feed it. I always incubate enough culture to make a loaf of bread, while leaving some left over to continue growing. Also, I like to switch up the flours I use to feed the culture every so often to get different flavors developing.

Easy Sourdough Starter

Materials:

• 1/2 cup water
• 1/16 tsp instant yeast
• 75g all-purpose flour

Methods:

Sourdough Culture Maintenance

Materials:

• Sourdough starter (from above)
• 75g all-purpose flour
• 25g rye flour
• 1/2 cup water

Methods:

1. Discard ~75% of the culture. It’s fine to go down the drain. Alternatively, use it in one of of these recipes!
2. Add flour and water to the remaining culture and mix thoroughly.
3. Cover loosely with a lid and leave it at room temperature for 1-2 days.
4. Repeat steps #1-3 two more times when first establishing the culture.
5. After the culture is established, place culture in the fridge. Take the culture out of the fridge 1-2 days before using it in a bread recipe, depending on the level of sourness you want.
6. Repeat steps #1-3 once a week to maintain the culture, placing the culture covered in a fridge for up to a week at a time between feedings.

A Bit of History of Sourdough Bread

The first evidence of leavened bread using sourdough comes from ancient Egypt. Before commercial yeast became available, wild yeast mixed with bread dough and resulted in a lighter texture and better taste. From there, sourdough usage spread to Europe. Sourdough starter recipes dating back to 17th century France indicate three rises in their bread. Talk about a labor in love!

In the 19th century, commercial yeasts became available, which coincided with the decline in sourdough usage. In fact, in the United Kingdom, demand for sourdough didn’t really return until the 1980s. The UK then instituted regulations on what could be classified and sold as “sourdough”.

Christopher Columbus supposedly brought sourdough to America when he carried bread starter with him across the Atlantic Ocean. However, the history of sourdough in the United States really begins in San Francisco during the California Gold Rush. Miners brought bread starters with them. These starters were so important, that the miners snuggled up next to their sourdough cultures at night to prevent them from dying. Sourdough was so important that it actually became a nickname for California Klondike miners since they carried their cultures in their backpacks. Alaskan miners had similar sourdough devotion.

In 1849, the second year of the gold rush, sourdough was officially established in San Francisco with the opening of Boudin Bakery, which now has 13 locations throughout California! And the rest, as they say, is history.

National Sourdough Bread Day is April 1st!

References

“Sourdough: More than a Bread”. Sharon Vail: National Public Radio. Accessed April 5th, 2020.
“The History of Sourdough Bread”. Vanessa Kimbell. Accessed April 5th, 2020.
“Gold Miners Kept Their Sourdough Starters Alive By Cuddling Them”. Kat Eschner: Smithsonian Magazine. Accessed April 5th, 2020.