Sourdough Tips and tricks:

Before I begin this article, I’d like to share that I have only recently begun my sourdough journey. I have been a baker for most of my life but Sourdough is fresh and new to me, and I do not consider myself an expert; I am just a mom who fell in love with eating sourdough bread first, and then I started making it for my family, neighbors, and friends.

I have had my starter for almost 6 months now, and I will be perfecting this craft for years to come. In this article I would like to discuss some tips and tricks that I have learned from my own trial and errors with sourdough, The entire method of baking a loaf takes about two days from start to finish. This of course, varies depending on the quantity of loaves you are making at once and your house conditions.

In this article I’m going to use my own verbiage and watered down explanation of the process so it can remove all of the more hard to grasp information. Once again, not an expert, just an enthusiast :)

The first step to making sourdough bread is of course the starter:

Sourdough starter is a mixture of flour and water that captures wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria from the environment. These microrganisms are responsible for the fermentation process that gives sourdough bread its distinct flavor and texture. To create a sourdough starter, you typically combine equal parts of flour and water and allow it to sit at room temperature. Over several days to weeks, you will “feed” the mixture more flour and water, promoting the growth of yeast and bacteria. The result is a bubbly, active mixture that can be used as a natural leavening agent in bread baking instead of using commercial yeast.

“FEEDING”

Unfed sourdough starter

Feeding is the term for when you add flour and water to your starter. There are MANY different methods to feeding depending on your goal (strengthening/ getting your starter active, or maintaining an already active starter might yield different feeding ratios.) When you add fresh flour and water to a sourdough starter, you are essentially providing it “food” to nourish the live yeast and bacteria within it, which allows it to continue fermenting and become active for baking purposes. A few hours after you feed your starter, it will increase in size and is more active - that is the point where you would want to use your starter for baking. Feeding can vary a lot and is ultimately based off of your personal preferences.

If I am attempting to strengthen a weak starter, I would feed my starter at a 1:2:2 or 1:3:3 ration one to two times a day. I will go over ratios in the next section, for now lets focus on the feeding facts.

I’m going to advise you to weigh out your starter, flour, and water; every feed. You can get away with eyeballing, and measuring cups, but I do not recommend it. For a long time, I eyeballed my feeds and it didn’t give me horrible results, but it definitely did not give me consistent loaves either. I had a major wake up call when I started bulking my starter up for big bake days. I was overfeeding it without even knowing. After two large feeds, my starter stopped rising. It was so scary, because I had orders for the next day and I wasn’t really sure how to save my starter from dying. This is when I began taking my feeds seriously and started using ratios to feed instead of my judgement. If you feed your starter too much at once, or not enough at once, it can have adverse affects and change the acidity and activity inside of the starter.

As well as measuring your feeds, it is important to be using clean utensils, jars, and water. Filtered water works best, avoid tap water as it often contains chlorine, potentially slowing or stopping the fermentation process.

To feed a sourdough starter, you can use unbleached all-purpose flour as it provides a good balance of protein and starch, but you can also use bread flour for extra gluten development, or a mix of all-purpose and whole wheat flour for added nutritional value and a slightly nuttier flavor; always opt for unbleached flour to maintain a healthy microbial population in your starter. 

RATIOS

Now that we’ve gone over what a feed entails, let’s dive into ratios. It’s really quite simple, I know sourdough can seem very overwhelming at first but once you’ve gotten down the basics, every bake will be an experiment and you can really personalize and adapt the process to your own baking demands. The ratio you use to bake will really depend on three things: your desired baking schedule, how quickly you would like the starter to peak, and the climate you live in.

A ratio is the amount of ingredients weighed in grams. A lot of people follow a 1:1:1 ratio (starter:flour:water) This ratio allows for a relatively quick rise and is great for activating new starter, but it does lead to having to feed and discard more often as opposed to a larger feed. More food = more time to ferment.

If you use a 1:1:1 ratio, when it peaks you discard and feed again. So, you could be feeding your starter multiple times a day, and that is a lot to keep up with. Without frequent feedings, a starter on 1:1:1 ratio can become “starved” which would lead it to become acidic and weak. I used a 1:1:1 feeding for a few months when I first got my starter, but after my overfeeding incident I have switched to feeding either 1:2:2, or 1:3:3

For instance, at my feed this morning I had 180g of starter, I discarded 30g and was left with 150g starter, which I then fed with 300g of warm filtered water, and 300g of bread flour. On days when I would not be baking, I would discard all of my starter but 20g, and then feed it 60g of water and 60g of flour. If I know I will be busier in the mornings or need more time to prepare to bake I would feed it a 1:3:3.

Doughmingo at 1PM after a 7AM feed

My typical bake day goes like this:

7AM: Feed starter

11AM/12PM: Form dough (use active starter when it has doubled) - if you bake with your starter you should not have to discard at your next feed, if you skip a day of baking, you must discard.

1PM/4PM: Stretch and folds

7PM: Shape dough

7AM: Feed starter (if I hadn’t baked, this is the point where I would discard)

7PM/11AM (next day): Preheat oven & bake loaves

I like to feed my starter and have a relatively quick peak so I can bake while my son naps. You can really adapt this schedule to your time frame / day.

Here’s the rest of my miscellaneous tips I have learned with my ‘experiments’:

• I like to use a mixer to combine my dough to avoid the messy fingers, and to streamline the process. For my larger batches 4-8 I hand mix my dough using food safe gloves.

• I have found that my dough and starter is very fogiving. If I am late or early to stretch and folds it normally has minimal effect on the bread. I know many bakers keep their starter in the fridge and then pull it out and feed it when they’re ready to bake; I have only put Doughmingo in the fridge once when I was busy for the holidays and he perked right up after his next feed, but I prefer to let him sit on the counter.

My handy-dandy repurposed utility cart.

• If you have minimal space, using a rolling cart is a great storage method for keeping all of your sourdough tools together. I have a 3-tier cart from Amazon that I used to use postpartum for all of my pumping supplies that I repurposed for storage. Now on the top tier I have Doughmingo, in all his peaked glory. Along with him I have my flours (unbleached all purpose, bread flour, and whole wheat flour), pink himalayan salt, and all of my handheld tools (thermometer, flour sifter, blades and handle.) On the second tier, there is my digital food scale, a few proofing bowls, and clean linen cloths. On the third tier I keep my extra loaf pans, and disposable pans. I just recently started doing this but it is a game changer and makes clean up so much easier!

Here is a helpful infographic that was posted in a sourdough group on facebook

There are hundreds of groups on facebook that are so helpful when it comes to baking, and preparing to bake sourdough. There’s groups per state as well, as each state has differing climate, and food laws mandating what bakers can sell. Be sure to join some groups and work on building your knowledge of the science behind this amazing bread! If you have any questions at all, leave a comment below and I would love to help you on your sourdough journey!