Best Wild Sourdough Starter Recipes

WILD SOURDOUGH STARTER

Wild Sourdough Starter image

You absolutely can purchase a starter over the interwebs, or, if you're lucky, acquire one from a family member or friend. But you don't actually need to: All you need is flour and water and, of course, yeast and bacteria, which are literally EVERYWHERE. There are a lot of different ways to do this, but this method has worked consistently in our test kitchen and builds a robust and flavorful starter.

Provided by Alton Brown

Time P8DT25m

Yield 250 grams

Number Of Ingredients 4

Ingredients

125 grams all-purpose, unbleached flour
125 grams filtered water, room temperature
100 grams all-purpose, unbleached flour
100 grams filtered water, room temperature

Steps:

To begin: Mix together 125 grams flour and 125 grams water with a clean hand in a medium glass bowl. Cover the bowl with a tea towel and let sit undisturbed at room temperature until the mixture is full of bubbles and has nearly doubled in size, usually 2 to 3 days. During this time, yeasts and bacteria from the air and from the flour and probably from you will set up housekeeping in the bowl (see Cook's Note).
For daily feeding: Peel back any crust that may have formed and transfer 20% of the culture (50 grams) to a clean, wide-mouthed jar. Stir in 100 grams flour and 100 grams water, loosely screw on the lid and stash at room temperature for 24 hours. (The culture will have a stinky-sour smell at this point.) Discard the rest of the original mixture.
Repeat step 2 every 24 hours for 5 days. By then the culture should smell yeasty-sweet-sour, which means you're ready to put the starter to work.

WILD YEAST SOURDOUGH STARTER

Wild Yeast Sourdough Starter image

You can make your own wild yeast starter from scratch. The yeast is already on the grains you use in the starter. You just need to create the right conditions to wake them up! The pineapple juice may sound like a strange ingredient, but it is what makes this recipe work so well. The juice creates an acidic environment that prevents bad bacteria from taking over and causing spoilage during the fermentation period.

Provided by Donna M.

Categories Sourdough Breads

Time P5DT10m

Yield 1 Starter

Number Of Ingredients 5

Ingredients

1/2 cup unsweetened pineapple juice
1/2 cup whole grain wheat flour or 1/2 cup whole grain rye flour
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
2 cups water (bottled or purified)
1/4 teaspoon cider vinegar (optional)

Steps:

I bought whole wheat berries at the health food store and ground my own flour in a coffee grinder from them because I wanted the yeast on the flour to be really fresh, but this probably isn't really necessary. The pre-ground flour at the health food store is probably quite fresh, also, and you can buy very small quantities in bulk.
DAY ONE: Mix 2 Tablespoons whole grain flour and 2 Tablespoons pineapple juice. Stir well, cover and let sit for 24 hours at room temperature.
DAY TWO: Add 2 Tablespoons whole grain flour and 2 Tablespoons pineapple juice. Stir well, cover and let sit another 24 hours at room temperature. You may, or may not start to see small bubbles at this point.
DAY THREE: Add 2 Tablespoons whole grain flour and 2 Tablespoons pineapple juice. Stir well and let sit 24 hours at room temperature.
DAY FOUR: Stir mixture and measure out 1/4 cup--discard the rest. To the 1/4 cup, stir in 1/4 cup unbleached AP flour and 1/4 cup water. Let sit 24 hours at room temperature.
REPEAT Day Four until mixture expands to double its size and smells yeasty. Mixture may start to bubble after a couple of days and then go flat and look totally dead for a couple more days. If this happens, at about Day 6 add the 1/4 teaspoons vinegar with your daily feeding. This will lower the PH and wake up the yeast, which will then start to grow.
Once the yeast starts growing, starter should be fed equal parts of flour and water in a quantity sufficient to make enough starter for your recipe. Store the starter in the refrigerator when you are not using it. It needs to be fed equal parts flour and water once a week to keep it alive. Either use or discard at least half of it when feeding--THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT to maintian a healthy starter! If you forget to feed it for a few weeks, it probably will be fine but may take several feedings to get it back up to par.

SIMPLER SOURDOUGH STARTER--WILD YEAST

SIMPLER SOURDOUGH STARTER--WILD YEAST image

Categories Bake Healthy

Yield 1 batch

Number Of Ingredients 3

Ingredients

1 cup warm water that has been boiled, to remove any chlorine or bacteria, depending on your water source;
1 cup rye flour
subsequent iterations of the same, for maintenance

Steps:

Using scrupulously clean equipment, mix the warm water with the rye flour. It will be wet and sticky. Let sit a few minutes, then transfer to a clean jar, such as a canning jar, and secure a piece of plastic lightly over it with a ring, as Magic Dave suggests. Put in a warm place, about 25 C or in the 70s F, for a few days, stirring once daily and observing if it is getting bubbly and pleasantly, tartly sour-smelling. You can use a clean spoon to take a small test sample. It should be an edible-sour, like sauerkraut or yogurt, and a dull grey-brown. If it's grown anything colourful, don't eat it but throw it out and start over. The day before you want to bake, feed the starter by mixing in another batch of one-cup-water and one-cup-rye-flour mixed together just as you did the first time. The starter will sour and incorporate the new "food" you just gave it. On baking day, you will take one cup or so of the now doubled starter, as per your bread recipe, feed the starter again with another mixture of one cup each of flour and water, just as before, and you can then store the starter in a cooler place like the fridge if you won't need it for, say, a week. Just stir it and let it warm up and get active again the day before you plan to bake, and feed it every time you remove a portion to bake with.