Sourdough. When it is ok to have something living in your fridge.

Sourdough, or naturally leavened, bread is made with0ut the addition of yeast. Instead of yeast a small amount of Sourdough Starter is used in addition to flour and sweetening to make bread, pancakes, rolls, biscuits, cakes and other baked creations. Sourdough Starter is a combination of stone ground whole wheat, rye, or other flour with water. The stone ground flour is thought to contain wild yeasts since yeasts are present in the environment around us. It takes several days to make a starter. You take away half of the mixture and continue to feed the active starter everyday for about 4-5 days. After this time the starter can then be used in your sourdough recipes. Alternatively, you could  collect a portion of starter from a friend who has some sourdough starter and feed the portion with flour and water for use. The sourdough starter lives in your fridge. You should replenish your starter at least once a week. This is really simple to do if you use the starter to bake bread. Every time you take from the starter it needs to be fed with more flour and water.

 

When my sourdough starter was just 'growing'

Some sourdough starter recipes add yeast or grape skins to the flour and water combination. This was not necessary to make my starter, I simply used organic stone ground whole wheat flour and water. That is it.

I am unable to relocate the website where I found my starter recipe, however most recipes are the same. Simply look for a sourdough starter recipe that only contains flour and water.

You want to use glass and wood for handling and storage of sourdough. Metals are thought to disrupt the starter. I store mine in a glass container in the fridge.  

Sourdough Pancakes

 

Kneading Bread before allowing it to rise overnight.

Sourdough contains lactobacillus which is thought to be a beneficial bacteria helping with efficient digestion. Sourdough bread is fairly resistant to spoiling and mold. It is also thought that the gluten in sourdough bread is broken down or digested and greatly reduced. Phytic acid in grains is thought to impair our absorption of the minerals in these grains. Soaking grains is thought to greatly reduce the phytic acid, using sourdough starter is considered to be the same process and phytic acid thought to be greatly reduced.   

Did I mention it is absolutely delicious?