Simple food- loving bread sourdough starter

Really....is there anything better than fresh bread? 

You can probably tell from the limited posts that I have, that next to my beloved glass jars I also love to make everything from scratch....and bread is my absolute favorite! With us being a family of 8 and our desire to live and eat simply, we make lots of it. We go through a LOT of flour, yeast and salt week. Sometimes the only thing I buy at the store are baking items, fruits, veggies, and lean meats. Really, what else do you need?

I try to always have 2 kinds of homemade fresh bread on hand. Again, with a family of 8, that usually means Fran or I will bake a loaf a day. A couple staples are white, sourdough and challah. 

The recipes we use for the many, many different kinds of breads we make are from many, many different sources including pinterest, Williams Sonoma, The Amish Cooks Baking Book, and many others.

While Challah is my absolute favorite(the recipe taken from Williams Sonoma) and Jeremy's is our white bread(taken from the Amish Cooks Baking Book), Sourdough is Fran's. And today I'm here to tell you that the cheapest and the most simple bread we make is Sourdough. 

By cheap I mean cheap. You need flour, salt, water, sugar, and a bowl. It raises beautifully and people who love sourdough will love it. My favorite way to eat sourdough is toasted with almond butter(you can find my recipe on a Never Buy It Again post), and locally harvested honey. Fran loves it with just honey. 

There are tons of recipes for your bread, this is the basic starter that will get you going! The starter is what you use to grow your leaven, what will make your bread rise and look purdy. Our favorite recipes for the bread in which you use your leaven is the Williams Sonoma recipe and we also enjoy a more complex recipe that is found on allrecipes.com called San Francisco Sourdough Bread Recipe.

So lets start our starter!!!! I promise, this will not be hard. Grab one of those beautiful jars!

Ingredients:

2 cups flour(we use almond meal/flour but white would work, too)

2 cups water

patience

See? Cheap-o!!!! This is the basic recipe. You can use 1 cup water, 1 cup flour. You can try different flours for your families allergies, etc. This is our flour. We mix white, organic almond meal and sometimes organic coconut together. While I dont go completely gluten free because of the cost of it all, I do try and stick with a 3 to 1 mixture. 

Pretty :-)

Some people replace the water with milk. I like just using water because I know that water is better for us. Plus it is pennies as opposed to dollars. Plus I like the way it tastes now and see no reason to switch :-)

Method:

Clean your jar very well and wash your hands. You don't want any bad bacteria in your starter or it will grow mold. Ew.

Put 2 cups of lukewarm water in the jar.

Carefully put the flour in the jar. Try not the make a mess :-).

Mix up the flour and water til smooth. Again, try not to make a mess. I have been in a rush before and gotten flour all up the sides. This makes me think, later on when I go to use my starter, that I have mold until I realize its just flour. So save yourself a panic attack :-). No huge mixing or it will get everywhere.

Put a breathable towel, plastic wrap, paper towel, etc on the top. You can't put a lid on or the gasses can't escape. 

Let the jar sit on a counter. It should bubble and grow after a day or two of sitting out. Sometimes liquid will form on the top. Some people will tell you that you should get rid of the liquid. I have not found this to be a good thing. It makes the starter sticky and impossible to use in my opinion. I stir the liquid back in and wait another day. So with this starter- and every starter will be different because temperature, moisture in the air, in my case the percentage of almond flour vs white flour, etc, is different from day to day- I had to stir my starter on day two(making sure to smell and see if it is still healthy and it smelled perfect, not quite sour enough, still doughy smelling) and wait another day. On day three it was growing and smelling sour and delish!!! Here is a picture of what your starter should look like on the 2-4th day:

Sorry this is so dark, it is actually not brown, the picture below is the accurate color, keeping in mind I use almost all almond flour. 

Here is the starter before and after rising so you can see how it has grown and bubbled. 

 

You can see how it has risen and bubbled.

After 4-5 days you should see definite rising and bubbles. If there is liquid on any day before the rising stir it in and keep going, even if you have to stir 2-3 days in the row. If after 6 days there is no rising, even though you have stirred, I would toss it and start fresh. Keep in mind that this is 2 cups of flour and 2 cups of water. It is pennies and worth trying again, because once you have your starter it lasts forever. I have never had a starter not rise so you should be ok. Fran and I will get it wrong if its easy to get wrong and we haven't yet. 

 IMPORTANT: If the water that gathers on the top is pinkish or green or the mixture smells ugly then throw it out and try it again. This has never happened to us so I can't imagine it happens very often. Like I said, Fran and I have learned that if there is a chance of screwing up a recipe we will screw it up :-).....live and learn....but we have not screwed up our sour dough yet! 

After 3-5 days stick your nose into the jar and give it a sniff. It should smell pleasantly sour and yeasty. You can leave it on the counter for a couple more days if you want to, the longer it sits out without being fed the more sour it will become. 

You will know if your starter has gone bad, it will smell awful. If it's a sour smell it is still good. Unless there is mold. Say no to mold. 

And there is your starter! Stick it in the fridge loosely covered(you can use a lid but don't screw it down all the way) and feed it every 4 days or so. 

To feed your starter: Remove, and use it in whatever recipe you are making, all but 8 oz of your starter. Then add 1 cup water and 1 cup flour to your jar. If you are keeping your jar in the fridge like I do, feed it once a week. If you are keeping it on the counter you will need to feed it 2 times a week. Don't forget to mix the liquid in before you use any of your starter or you will end up with less and less and it will be sticky.

Good luck!!!! Let me know how it goes!!!!