Food Connections Sourdough Chain

Date: 1 May 2015; 2 May 2015; 3 May 2015; 4 May 2015; 5 May 2015; 6 May 2015; 7 May 2015; 8 May 2015; 9 May 2015

Learn how to make your own sourdough starter with Alex Poulter of East Bristol Bakery. Pick up your scraper and paper instructions from any participating bakeries and create your own unique culture. Start now and your starter will be ripe and ready for our culture swap taking place during the festival, keep an eye on our website for details.

The East Bristol Bakery is a small, award-winning craft bakery in the heart of Easton.

Alex Poulter:

“Choose carefully when you plan to start your sourdough starter, once you start your culture you will need to feed your starter at the same time every day for 4/5 days. Start in the evening or in the morning, when ever is convenient for you. The culture needs to be kept in a warm place, such as next to a radiator (not on top of it!) or in a airing cupboard.”

“You can start your culture in any clean pot or jar, but it should be covered but not air tight. This is really important because yeast produces gas which will need to escape, and we want fresh air to get to the starter.”

 

Day 1 - Mix 40g lukewarm water, 40g Wholemeal flour (preferably organic)

If you do this in the evening by the morning you might have a few signs of life forming already, one or two small bubbles may appear on the surface of the starter.

Day 2 - Add another 40g lukewarm water and 40g wholemeal flour.

If the starter has been kept in a warm place the yeasts in the flour should start to feed on the flour and will begin to reproduce. Bubbles will start to appear over the next 24 hours, and you may see a remarkable change as the yeasts begin to bubble and the starter begins to expand in your container.

Day 3 - Repeat Day 2

Day 4 - We want to lighten the starter a little today, feed the starter 60g lukewarm water, 30g white flour, 30g wholemeal.

After feeding on day 3 the starter will be a little lighter in colour and thiner in consistency. The yeast should begin to bubble within a few hours, and the culture will smell quite ‘fruity’. About 6-8 hours after feeding the culture should smell a little like cider, maybe quite sweet. As the yeast break down the sugars in the flour it will begin to smell vinegary and acidic.

Day 5 - By day 5 your culture should be bubbling and alive.

At this point you want to strengthen your culture by feeding it once more. Before feeding you need to remove about half of the sourdough starter. You can give this to a friend, but it also composts very well. Feed your culture once more 60g lukewarm water, 30g white flour and 30g wholemeal.

 

Trouble shooting for starting your sourdough culture

Even if you follow the basic instructions your sourdough culture may not work first  time. Because the culture is wild it can be a little hard to predict, but the good news is that your culture will either need to be kept a bit warmer and need a little bit more time. If by the end of day 3 your culture has not started to bubble, simply keep repeating the feeding instructions for day 3 and keep the culture in the warmest possible place (around 20C-25C is perfect.) When your culture begins to bubble, continue onto day 4.

Sometimes your culture will be very lively and may appear not to be working, but actually the yeast may be working very quickly. If you feed the culture in the evening before going to bed, it is possible that by the moring it may appear lifeless, but actually what has happened is that the culture was bubbling and active over night and has stopped bubbling by the morning.

 

What to do next?

At the end of the 5 days you should have a very lively sourdough culture.

Your culture will be a living mixture of wild yeast and beneficial bacteria, a mix which will be almost certainly unique to you.

Now it will be time to bake some sourdough bread.

There are a vast number of recipes and books available but the general concept is that your bread is risen using the sourdough starter instead of modern baker’s yeast.

 

What to do with your culture when you are discarding excess starter?

Excess sourdough culture can be shared with friends, passing on your culture for them to feed and allowing them to start baking sourdough bread.

Sourdough pancakes are a really good way to use your excess starter. These are really easy to make, and will produce a tasty pancake.

Sourdough also composts very well. By putting your excess culture into your compost you will be introducing yeast and beneficial bacteria into your compost and it may help in breaking down the organic matter.