no, you prepare it ahead of time
Starting a starter
Before we get started, I'd like to comment that this page has caused more trouble, more unhappy email, and more failures than any other page in this web site.
The problem? Beginners who want to start their own starter. When you're beginning you really don't know what a healthy starter should look like. So, people tend to not really follow the directions, to use the starter too soon - sometimes before it's even a starter - and the results are either bricks or door-stops. And this causes discouragement and sourdough dropouts.
I can not over-emphasize that the best way to get started in sourdough is with a known good starter. It eliminates so many of the variables as you embark on the sourdough journey. And this is even more true if you aren't an experienced baker... you're just battling too many demons at once.
If you are a sourdough beginner, I strongly encourage you to get a known good starter. Perhaps from a friend who can also help answer your sourdough questions. If you don't have a friend who is a sourdough baker, you might get a starter from a commercial source such as Sourdoughs International, or King Arthur Flour, or Northwest Sourdough; or from a non-profit source, such as the Friends of Carl, who make Carl Griffith's 1847 Oregon Trail starter available for the cost of a stamped, self-addressed envelope.
If you don't have any baking experience, I suggest you get some before you start down the sourdough path. I've put together a painless introduction to baking that should have you baking in less than a day. Please give it a try.
If you're a sourdough beginner,
please, PLEASE, PLEASE don't start here!
Still, sooner or later, most sourdough fans want to start their own starter.
The mythology of sourdough is that you are capturing yeast from the air. However, there are many reasons to believe that just doesn't happen. When people take care to sterilize the flour and water they use to catch a culture, it fails more often than not. When they don't sterilize, it almost always does work. In short, the flour has wild yeast in it, and chances are you are providing the lactobacillus from your skin. All you need to do is encourage their growth.
Some people suggest using fruit, such as grapes; vegetables, such as cabbage; or even commercial bakers yeast to help start a culture. That's not necessary. In fact, it slows things down. You see, the yeast on grapes or cabbage are the ones that thrive there, rather than the yeast that thrive in wheat or rye flour. As mentioned in the "What IS sourdough?" FAQ, bakers yeast won't survive in a starter. What you want is yeast that will thrive and survive in a grain based sourdough starter. So, just use the yeast and lactobacillus that is already on the grain.
Whole grains in general, and organic stone-ground grains in particular, have more wild yeasts on them than highly processed white flours. So, pick up a sack of organic, stone-ground, whole wheat or rye flour.
Most people feel that rye works better. Once your starter is healthy, you can use it with any kind of flour, so you can use rye flour even if you don't plan on making rye bread. If your grocery store doesn't have such a thing, check out your local health food store. If your health food store doesn't carry such a thing, ask them to order some flour for you from Arrowhead Mills or Bob's Red Mill.
A recurring question with regards to sourdough starter is what sort of water may be used with it. Many people insist that sourdough starter can be killed by chlorinated water. Others say that it can not be started with chlorinated water. In my experience, chlorinated water has not been a problem. I have started, fed and used starters with chlorinated water with no problems. However, I have heard that the more persistent forms of chlorine used by some cities, such as chloramine can cause problems.
In general, if your tap water smells and tastes good it will probably work well with sourdough. If you have problems with your starters, you may want to try using dechlorinated water. Since few home filters will remove chlorine from water, and from what I am told neither boiling nor standing will remove chloramine, I suggest that you try bottled water if you are experiencing what you think might be water related problems with your sourdough.
Once you have your grain, mix 1/4 cup of water with 3/8 cup of whole grain flour in a quart sized container. Mix them well, cover with plastic wrap or a saran wrap quick covers, and put in an 85F area. This will be a thick mass, even a very thick mass. That's OK. A gas oven with a pilot light, or an oven without a pilot light with it's light bulb on should be close. You might want to put a thermometer in the oven to check its temperature. Now wait about 12 hours.
There is a very good chance that at the end of the 12 hours, you'll see bubbles in the starter.
If not, wait another 12 hours. You want to see some bubbles, some signs of life. If you still don't see any signs of life, wait another 12 hours. If you still haven't seen any bubbles or signs of life, ditch the starter and start over. It usually works, but sometimes it won't.
Once you see signs of life, add another 1/4 cup of water and 3/8 cup of whole grain flour. Cover the container, and put it back in the warm area.
At this point, you can switch to white flour if you prefer. You will need to feed your starter regularly to encourage the growth of the micro-organisms. Every 8 to 12 hours you need to feed the starter. You should double the size of the starter with each feeding. This will get out of control pretty quickly, so to keep from being overwhelmed by starter, you should discard 1/2 the starter before each feeding of the starter.
In case that didn't make sense, during this starter building phase, every 8 to 12 hours, you should discard 1/2 the starter and then add 1/4 cup water and 3/8 cup flour.
You'll repeat this feeding cycle for several days - every 8 to 12 hours, pour off 1/2 of the starter and use it to make pancakes or bisquits. Within 3 or 4 days, you should have a very lively starter. You should see lots of bubbles in the starter, and a layer of froth on top of the starter.
When you feed the starter, it will rise. It can take 3 to 6 hours to reach it's peak, depending on how active the starter is. Once it reaches it's peak, it will start to recede as the starter slows down. If you feed your starter and go to work, you could miss the starter's peak, and see a quiet starter when you get home. You might think nothing is happening as a result. If you look at the container that holds the starter, you'll see that the starter will leave streaks on the side of the container.
When the starter is doubling in size after a feeding, it is ready to be used to make bread.
Please remember that if the starter can't double it's own size, it can't raise your bread.
If you won't be using the starter for several days, pour the starter into a quart canning jar, taking care not to fill the container more than half full. Put the jar's lid on loosely to allow any gas the starter produces to escape. The put the jar into the refrigerator until you're ready to use it. The starter can be kept in the refrigerator for at least a month between feedings. If you are going to use the starter in the next day or two, just leave it out and feed it every 12 hours or so.
A sourdough starter will continue to mature for some time, gaining in taste and power. Enjoy!
An Important Note
For some time I've been getting emails about starters that begin, "My starter took off faster than you said it would - it was really bubbly the second day! But a day or two later, it was dead! Did I kill it, or what?"
It turns out that I'm not the only one who gets these emails. Peter Reinhart, author of many beautiful bread books, got them also.
My usual suggestion is to just keep feeding the starters, and that seems to work. He has a bit more information, and a possibly better solution.
Some of his friends at the King Arthur Baking Circle (www.kingarthurflour.com), discovered that a strain of bacteria called leuconostoc exists in a lot of flour. It also seems this is more common today than a few years back.
This bacteria masquerades as yeast in the early stage of a sourdough starter, in that it generates a lot of carbon dioxide making it appear that the wild yeast cells are growing rapidly. However, the wild yeast really needs a more acidic environment than exists during the first few days of the starter's existence and, unfortunately, the leuconostoc interferes with yeast growth during this grand masquerade. At a certain point, as the bacteria causes the dough to become more acidic, the acid actually de-activates the leuconostoc (it actually contributes to its own demise), but the wild yeast have not had a chance to propogate and grow in numbers, so there is a domancy period in which nothing seems to be happening.
This is when I get the panicked letters, because they think they may have killed their starter when it did not seem to respond to a Day 3 or Day 4 feeding, and threw it out. Others waited and saw mold form on the top of the starter and, of course, they too threw it out.
Here are two solutions to the problem:
If you are just starting your starter from from scratch, use canned pineapple juice instead of water during the first two days of feeding. The acid in the juice is just at the right ph level to acidify the dough to the yeast's liking but not to the leuconostoc. The starter should then work like a good starter should. You should then switch to back to water from Day Three onward, and the pineapple juice will dilute out as you feed and refresh your starter daily.
Peter Reinhart also suggests stirring the starter to aerate it two or three times a day as the air will help the yeast grow. If you followed my instructions above and are feeding your starter twice a day, you have that under control already. In the past, I have suggested that the people just have faith and keep feeding their starter, and that has worked. Lastly, I have not seen this happen when people start their cultures with rye flour rather than wheat.