Totally this! I was using huge jars when I first started and making massive levain - now just 10g in a jar, 50g water and flour as you say and it is good to go.

> If you keep your starter in a big jar, it'll just go to waste. Keep it small and you'll never need to throw any away.

I tend to make «sourdough discard crackers» if I have leftovers. It works well timing wise, I'm in the kitchen doing the initial stretching of my loaf anyways.

Absolutely. When I bake bread I just keep a rest of sourdough starter (~ a tablespoon) and in the fridge for the next time.

It also doesnt need this long amount of resting like some people believe. I can start with the tablespoon old sourdough and add 60g flour + 60g water. After like ~5h it will be 3x in size in a jar. Then I make the dough with all in all 600g flour and 72-75% water (more with more whole wheat flour).

The dough rests ~4h is then formed into a bread and then rests ~3h before beeing baked (assuming around 25°C while resting). The times really depend on the activity of the starter and temperature, but it isnt that hard to learn to "see" the right time. It clearly increases in size the first time and also the second time. Too long is also not good.

If it is too sticky you need to learn to knead the dough. Since the dough has a high water content this is done more in a lift up and folding motion, since classical kneading would stick too much.

The final bread then looks like normal german bread that you could buy in bakeries, before everything went down the shitter. (Assuming you add 20% wholemeal flour). If it is 100% white flour it should be almost as fluffy as toast or you are doing it wrong.

Yeah I just use a wide mouth pint jar. Stays in the fridge until I feel like making something with the starter.

The other thing I'm surprised people (by which I mean makers of youtube videos) seem to worry overmuch about is feeding the starter. Everyone gets out the scale and has some view on ratios - 20g flour to 35.23g water or whatever.

Put a heaping tablespoon of flour in the starter, add enough water to make a paste, stir and you're done. Not enough water? Add a bit more. Too much water? Meh, add a bit less tomorrow.

Yep.

It is one of my life hacks: when I know I can/have to bake in the morning I find it much easier and much more enjoyable to get up at 0500.

(Before I used two alarms, one that could only be defused with a barcode next to the sink on the bathroom + an (un?)healthy dose of self discipline. Now I enjoy it.)

Does the amazing smell of bread baking make it easier for the kids to get out of bed?

Unfortunately ‘sourdough’ has come to mean two things: on the one hand it is a general term for all wild starters; on the other it is a particular term for actual sour bread, most particularly that made from a San Francisco starter which spoiled in the 19th century.

Like you, I find the latter really quite unpleasant (to the point that I really am surprised anyone willing eats San Franciscan sourdough). But wild starters can range from tasting just like ordinary commercial yeasts, to tasting similar but with a richer flavour, all the way to the funk that we both dislike.

I have never had a San Franciscan sourdough in Europe, so I doubt that this sourdough is the nasty (to my taste — many folks love it) kind, but maybe there is some subculture of inedible (again, to my taste) European breads. More likely, I suspect that this is just a good wild starter.

If you don't like sourdough, you don't need to make sourdough!

Use baker's yeast instead. That doesn't limit you to basic recipes -- there's a vast range of interesting stuff you can bake. You'll usually need to make a preferment with flour, water and yeast (a "poolish" or "biga") so the overall routine is very similar to sourdough.

I use a mix of bakers yeast and a wet (1:3) starter/sourdough. Just 2g yeast/kg flour makes a huge difference, even with 150 g starter.

My wet sourdough is 1 part flour to 3 parts water. As noted in a sibling comment, this favors the sour parts (lactic acid?), but compared to a dry starter, there are significant advantages the the starter/yeast combo:

1) Feeding the wet starter takes 10s: pour flour and water onto leftovers and stir quickly with a spoon. No sticky stuff to deal with.

2) The starter seems exceptionally stable, maybe because of the water layer: I only wash my starter jar every two or three months, and the 10g or so that I put back in the fridge after starting a dough, will last for weeks and consistently restart overnight when fed

3) Being able to independently adjust yeast-levels in a predictable way, means that I can easily play with sourness levels and adjust leaving times when I have to match the timings with other activities.

There is the downside, of course, that I need to keep bakers yeast in the house as well...

sourness is depending on quite a lot of factors - amount of water in starter, how long you proof, temperature etc.

I also prefer less sour breads and since I started using a stiff starter it's much better than more liquid ones. I still haven't found the perfect recipe yet but it is possible.

A good intro into the difference of starters is at the bread code: https://www.the-sourdough-framework.com/Sourdoughstartertype...

Sourdough doesn't need to be sour!

I think the main factor for this is how "mature" your starter is.

After feeding your starter it will expand, then collapse, then grow more sour. I generally time it so that my bread isn't as sour.

If I am baking soon -- larger leftover starter and smaller feed. if I am baking tomorrow -- tablespoon or so of starter with bigger feed to get my leaven.

Proof then bake soon after - I find the sour flavour develops more the longer I leave it to rest in the fridge.

You don't have to make bread. My current favorite thing is sourdough English muffins, but King Arthur has a whole list of recipes that use the sourdough discard. The sourdough pancakes are excellent, especially after you drown them in maple syrup.

You can. Twenty years ago "sourdough" didn't mean the finished bread was particularly sour. But people's expectations have changed, maybe because of the name. And it's easy to let the bread get very sour if that's the goal.

As others have indicated, this is indeed possible. A common technique that helps with this is to make a levain the night before. I use 1 tbsp of starter into 200g flour and 200g water. The levain develops overnight and becomes a "young" starter the next day. This produces a less tangy bread, compared to using a larger amount of full-strength mature starter.

Get a bread machine if you don't like the sour taste.

Or bake a basic no-knead loaf. I would mix the dough in the morning and bake it in the evening.

Brown flour is brilliant, and already has plenty of wild yeast in it.

Sounds like you might be over proving it. If you’re at a high altitude, or live in a warm place, or it just keeps happening, try knocking half an hour off your proving time, and keep going until it starts getting worse.

this happened to me whenever I kept the starter in the fridge. it stopped happening after I started keeping it in a cupboard that didn't get direct sunlight.

Agreed - though before I baked I thought sourdough was complex process that likely needed stuff I didn't have to hand, and assuming getting a starter would require and Etsy order.

I bake 'normal' bread on occasion but since we all prefer sourdough and it costs so much in the shops for good sourdough, it is my go to.

As an alternative, I can recommend Hendrik's "The Bread Code": https://www.the-bread-code.io/

He has a very simple beginner's recipe on his YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msqU-ylXWUs

It's the resource I shared the most with friends who asked me how to bake sourdough breads, even though I didn't learn the basics from it I really like his style of teaching, concise and thorough at the same time.

I also highly recommend The Sourdough Journey for a lot of the science and showing how different variable can affect the results.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMNnFRtsaxxzZsbxK3yAj...

His chart showing Temp and Time for Bulk Fermentation gets referenced A LOT. Key is higher temp means faster bulk fermentation.

https://thesourdoughjourney.com/tools/

Hey,

Try this series from him that is a great intro: https://youtu.be/vmb0wWKITBQ?si=S3MVF8qyKLOuCHmq

I was then inspired by https://youtu.be/ZxCf39G_7pY?si=Mf5dfcZIngyXCuEY

The worked up my own process below through seeing what worked for my flour and starter:

100g sourdough starter 300g water (cold and filtered) 12g fine sea salt 10g olive oil 550g white and brown bread flour mixed (I use 200g brown, 350g white)

Morning of the day before (24 hours), or on the night before (12hours) you will bake: Feed the sourdough starter 50g brown bread flour and 50g water. Make sure that this is at least 12 hours before you plan to make the dough, allowing time to double in size and form a very bubbly starter before using.

Morning: Measure 100g of bubbling sourdough starter into a bowl, add 300g cold water and whisk with a fork for 1min. Add 12g salt and whisk briefly again until the salt is dissolved. Add 10g olive oil and 550g flour and stir until all flour is mixed in, at least 2 mins of mixing. Use your (wet) hand to complete the mix. Leave for at least 5 minutes then gently lift and fold one corner of the dough into the middle, rotate the bowl 1/4 and repeat. Fold the dough 4 times then cover and leave for 15 mins and repeat the folding, before one final folding 15 mins later, before leaving to proof for the rest of the day.

Proofing: Cover the dough, let it proof (rise) for 10-12 hours at 16-19c in the kitchen. It only needs to double in size - you don't want it to over proof.

That evening: Shape. Check your dough, and when it has almost doubled in size, it is ready to stretch, fold, and shape.

Wet your hands, and bring the dough in from the corners of the bowl, then reach in from each side and lift up the dough in the middle, letting it stretch down front and back. Let it stretch for 15 seconds, then fold these two dropping sides over itself, turn the bowl and repeat until folded this way 4 times.

Shape roughly into the loaf you want, onto a lightly floured parchment-lined bowl - if your shaping has formed a seam, put the seam side up and pinch it closed. Cover and this in the fridge overnight.

The next morning preheat the oven to 225c - if you have a cast iron pot add this to the oven to pre heat with the lid off.

Remove the proofed loaf from the fridge, and add any cuts or slashes to the loaf before baking.

Place the loaf (still on the parchment paper) into the cast iron pot, cover and bake for 20-25. Remove lid, and bake 10-15 more minutes, until very deeply golden. For my oven total baking time is 35 mins, 25 covered and 10 uncovered.

Remove from the over and the pan, then remove the parchment paper. Let it cool on a rack for at least an hour before cutting.

If you don't have a cast iron pot you can bake in two roasting trays placed face to face, or you can bake just on a baking tray, uncovered - if so add a small pour (20ml) of boiling water to the base of your oven, every 10 mins for the first 20 mins (at start, at 10mins,and at 20mins).

Iterated from these instructions (with videos of the folds) https://www.feastingathome.com/sourdough-bread/#tasty-recipe...

How do you keep the bread fresh/edible for the entire week? I've been baking sourdough for only a few years now - but I find that after 2-3 days the bread is basically ready to become breadcrumbs no matter how I store it. Lately I've actually started slicing it two days after baking and freezing the slices so that they can be re-toasted to stretch things out.

Ah, that would make more sense. But even so, wheat seems to be three times more popular than rye: https://ruokatieto.fi/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Tietohaaruk...

Oh, I didn't know this about starters. And my mom used to make her own sourdough bread ... although it was of oat, so perhaps the starter was oatmeal as well. I'll have to ask her!

My friend made her own starter, then after she convinced me to get into it, she dried the starter into little flakes and shipped it to me. I pulled it out, rehydrated it over the week and then lo I had sourdough! So cool you can dry that and then re-use it.

It isn't hard to create a new starter from flour and water.