oooh I've got a sour dough starter on the go!

[Muscroj]

thought I'd have a bash at making sourdough, I remember having it in San Fransisco years ago & it was yummy. I started it on Friday & it was bubbling away by the 2nd day. Very exciting 'growing' something like that in a jar, it reminds me of keeping tadpoles in a jar in my bedroom when I was a kid

Anyone else made it? Any tips or things to do/avoid when I come to making my bread?

[Big Al]

thought I'd have a bash at making sourdough, I remember having it in San Fransisco years ago & it was yummy. I started it on Friday & it was bubbling away by the 2nd day. Very exciting 'growing' something like that in a jar, it reminds me of keeping tadpoles in a jar in my bedroom when I was a kid

Anyone else made it? Any tips or things to do/avoid when I come to making my bread?

Find last weeks river cottage programme on the i player thingy if it's there. Hugh Fernly whatever his name is has started a young lass off as a bread maker and they made a sourdough thing.

HTH

[ina]

I used sourdough for years, but have given up at the moment; it's best if you can use it regularly (not make a fresh one from scratch each time you need it), and for just one person, the time gaps between each breadmaking are just too long. Yes, you can freeze it (but I don't keep a freezer running just for that!), and it keeps longer in the fridge - but I don't even use a fridge, and the temperatures are a bit high at the moment to keep the sourdough fresh enough even for a week.

But it makes lovely bread - much prefer it to "normal" yeast bread. My usual is half rye, half wheat flour - all wholemeal, of course. I find that bread made with quite sloppy dough in a tin is much better than dry dough, shaped on a baking tray. (Bought some horrible hard sourdough bread on the market and was told that that was how sourdough bread is! Oh no, it doesn't have to be...)

[Muscroj]

humph I seem to have killed it

Started off really well, was bubbling away & smelling sour within 24 hours, but within about 4 days, despite 'feeding' it with half a cup of flour & half a cup of water every day it had stopped and just had a layer of liquid on the surface. I've continued to feed it, but it's just not doing anything now, its just sat there & smells of batter

Anyone got any ideas of how to get it started again or should I just tip it & try again? Its been going for a week now

[ina]

If you've fed it that well, there should be enough dough for a loaf by now!

It's behaviour depends largely on temperature, too - have there been changes? Btw, did you use starter cultures or just normal flour and water? Whenever I start a fresh lot, I tend to use some commercially available starter, just to get it off nicely without any wild stuff in it. And then just let it get on with itself.

[Sky]

I tried this sour dough starter and it was like a monster it kind of swelled up and took over.
It's a good education though to folks that you don't need commercial yeast to make your bread rise.

[shell]

http://www.breadtopia.com/make-your-own ... h-starter/

found this when i decided to get some going again,i am yet to try the method but he seems to get results,probally a couple of days befor i try it out,

[Muscroj]

thanks for that link, interesting that he uses pineapple juice to kill any un wanted bacteria, also interesting that he said 40% of the time a starter will fail without it!

However, I resorted to cheating shook some 'empty' packets of fast action yeast at it, it probably had about a tenth of a teaspoon of yeast in it, but it seems to have done the trick & 24 hours later it's started bubbeling again. I have to say it's not as satisfying as creating your own, but I couldn't bear the thought of tipping all that flour down the sink & starting again. Anyway, I think I'll see if I can keep this one alive & if it's OK I'll make my first loaf in a few days. The perhaps I'll have a go at starting again using the pineappple juice method.

The other thing he did differently to me was to stir it a few times every day & also to add less & less water so his resulting starter was a lot thicker than mine is.

[ina]

Don't try to keep it going for too long without using it. It may be that it's just too warm - so bake your bread, keep a little for next time in the fridge; it doesn't need to be bubbling all that time (that's kind of a waste of energy!).

[Muscroj]

ah OK, I wonder if I should have refrigerated it in the first place, because it started bubbeling so quickly (within 24 hours) I just kept feeding it, the instructions was using said that it woudn't be ready for about a week, so I wasn't expecting to be able to use it so quickly. Think I'll give it a go & try a loaf tomorrow. Should I transfer some of it into a separate dish to put in the fridge & then clean my contain out or should I just stick the whole thing in the fridge?

[ina]

I normally used the entire starter to mix with about half of the flour for the loaf; left that overnight, took some of it as a fresh starter into a clean container (I use the 500ml yoghurt pots for that, about one third full), and then mix the rest of the flour with the salt into the overnight bit... (Sorry - can't think of the proper terms for all this - brain not working on Sunday morning ). How fast these things work really depend very much on the conditions you've got - mainly the temperature, of course.

[jampot]

ooh ooh me too me too!
i got a big jar and threw in some flour and water and a pinch of sugar then left it to bubble and now ,4days later, it looks like foamy vom (eew) but smells like beer (mmm) or kitchen is very warm all year round but i think its ok to sit there on the side and being near the bread bin may have helped (?)

[ina]

Sugar and heat - no wonder it goes off like a rocket!

I always seem to have very cold kitchens, and don't use sugar, so it takes a bit longer.

[jampot]

my brother killed the sourdough!!! he "thought it was some old porridge " and poured his tea dregs into it
he's 19 and is not gonna make it to 20 dumbass