Sourdough

I have a crock with a lid that someone bought me back in the early 2000s, along with a sourdough cookbook. I never used it. I moved it a few times, and then it lived on a shelf in the basement, waiting to have a horrible accident and shatter. One day, I looked at it and said, What If I Actually Used That.

I looked at a lot of descriptions of how to start a sourdough starter. I was not too impressed by them. Eventually, I just ran some wheat berries through the mill, put them and some water into the crock, and fed it for a day and a half, chickened out and dumped it. I read more descriptions. I did basically the same thing again, did NOT chicken out, and I got starter. It did not mold. It did not turn black. It bubbled and smelled delightful.

The first thing I tried with the starter that worked well was pancakes. I did not understand initially what the baking soda was for. It is to combine with the acid produced by the lactic acid bacteria in the starter, make bubbles, and become light and fluffy batter. I added eggs. They are not strictly speaking necessary. But they are tasty.

The second thing I tried with the starter, that did not work well, was bread. After a while, I gave up, and tried making english muffins.

I used the sourdough starter in what are otherwise more or less quick breads. The zucchini bread is really good.

https://www.seedtopantry.com/2015/09/19/sourdough-zucchini-bread/ is the basic recipe. I ditched the cloves, salt and baking powder, subbed potassium bicarb for the baking soda, and upped the cinnamon. It does not specify flour; I used soft red winter wheat from Brian Severson farms. If you have a favorite zucchini bread recipe, you could adapt yours easily to use starter, using this one as a template.

You will need a ring. I had english muffin rings, from another project I never followed through on. The first good english muffin happened when I decided not to make a second batch, but to just make single english muffins. I heated a small frying pan, added some bacon fat in it, put the ring in, and filled the ring about 2/3rds full with sourdough starter. It turns out, it can be pretty runny or quite thick or anywhere in between. I put a lid on it. I turned the heat down from 4 to 3 after a minute, and after 4 more minutes, I flipped it over and cooked it another 5 minutes. I let it cool on a rack. Then I fork split it. I toasted it and it was good.

I have not been adding salt. I do not throw starter away. I stir the hooch in. I feed it once a day, sometimes two times. I do not measure anything. I use exclusively 100% whole ground grain, either soft or hard, red or white, or spelt. It does not seem to matter much which.

What is going on here? Sourdough is not a yeast culture. It has yeast and bacteria in it. The bacteria produce lactic acid (mostly). If you are using sourdough, you can use the bubbliness that comes from it consuming carbs and making alcohol, or you can add something that will combine with the acid to neutralize it and produce a bunch more bubbles as a side effect. Or both. My goal has been to try to reproduce how people once cooked everything that involved wheat and wheat-like grains (spelt, emmer, etc.): there is always a bit of batter or dough sitting there ready to use next. You can use it by itself or add more to it. This is not what most people are doing when they are making or using sourdough. That is also fine! If you are wondering, but wait, where did the yeast and bacteria to start this come from, the answer is, by using whole wheat berries, I am getting, for free, the appropriate microbiome. There is also some that arrives in the air, and, honestly, probably on my fingers.

Created 17 March 2020