Heavenly Homemakers

After seven days of feeding your sourdough starter with water and flour…it is fermented and ready to make into bread! 

Now, keep in mind that this method of making bread is an old fashioned method. It isn’t quick. (Neither is it difficult.)  From start to finish, the bread takes anywhere from 8 to 24 hours. Most of those hours are spend just waiting for the dough to rise.

I happen to like the pace of this bread making. Slow and easy wins the race. AND, the nutritional benefits?! Because the bread is fermented, all of the difficult-to-digest phytates from the grain are broken down making this bread GREAT for your digestion! This is the best, most healthy bread you can make.

Okay, so are you ready?

Here is what my starter looked like on the eighth morning.

Put about one to two cups of starter into a quart jar, seal it with a lid and put it into your refrigerator for future use. 

Here’s what you’ll need to make your bread:

2-3 cups sourdough starter
2 teaspoons sea salt
1 1/2 cups cold water
4-8 cups whole wheat, rye, or spelt flour (if your flour is freshly ground, make sure it has had a chance to cool)

Pour the remaining starter into a large clean glass bowl. (I had about 3 cups of starter in my bowl to start with.)

Add 2 teaspoons of sea salt to the starter. 

Pour in 1 1/2 cups of cold water and stir until the salt it disolved.

Slowly stir in flour, two cups at a time. For this batch, I only used about five cups. This is because my starter was not very liquidy to begin with. Remember, the more soupy your starter, the more sour your bread. I was trying to create a starter that was a little on the thicker side.

Work in the flour on a clean surface until your dough is knead-able. Knead your dough for 8-10 minutes (or until you think you might pass out). Hey, how do you think we breadmakers get these amazingly buff arm muscles anyway? :)

(You can also knead your dough in a machine if you’d rather!)

Place your well kneaded dough back into your bowl.

Cover your bowl with a clean cloth and set it on your counter. Now, the natural yeast in your sourdough will go to work to make the dough rise…and all the healthy bacteria in the dough will work to break down the phytates and release the nutrients!

I put my dough in the bowl ready to start rising at 9:00 a.m. By 3 p.m. it had risen to about double. So this time, it took six hours for my dough to rise. In the summer you may find that it takes less time.

Knead your dough for a good solid five minutes. (Yay, another upper body workout.)

Divide your dough into three sections, using a knife to slice. (Yes, I realize this picture only shows you two sections. The picture is to show you the slice. Focus on the slice.)

Shape your dough into balls.

Good job Asa , taking time away from your math assignment to come take pictures of your mother’s hands with the dough. Oh wait, I think I was blinking in that one.

I prefer to use my round loaf pans from Pampered Chef. When I use my regular loaf pans, you’ll notice that instead of making one long loaf to fit the pan, I shape two balls and set them side by side into the pan. The sourdough rises much better this way. When you are deciding on the size of dough for your pan, think small. If you have too much dough in your pan, the bread not rise well and it will be very heavy.

Because the sourdough has been sitting and working all day, the natural yeast in it has been activated so that the bread rising in the pans will not take as long as the initial rising of the dough. In about three hours, my bread was ready to go into the oven.

Bake your bread in a 350 degree oven for one hour or until the bread sounds hollow when you thump it.

I always have a hard time getting a “pretty” loaf of bread. The older the starter gets, the easier it will be to work with and the tastier it will be. We thought these loaves tasted great even if they were a little funny looking. The sourness was just right! In fact, it hardly tasted sour at all! (Also, I’m having trouble with the flash on my camera. I tried to fix the coloring on this very yellow original picture and this is the best I got since it is evening. I’ll keep making sourdough and keep taking pictures…hopefully I’ll be able to show you a better one soon!)

Now, the next time you want to make a batch of sourdough bread…get your starter out of the fridge in the evening. Pour it into a clean glass jar or bowl. Feed it by adding 1 cup of flour and some cold water. (You need to keep your starter fed about once a week whether you bake bread that often or not.)  Place cheesecloth on top and let it sit in a warm place all night.

In the morning, if there are bubbles in the sourdough, indicating that the yeast has been activated, begin the above process of making a batch of bread…being sure to leave a few cups of starter in the jar for future use! 

Want to figure out sourdough pancakes with me too? I’m working on it!
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I’m combining today and tomorrow because tomorrow is Sunday and it’s always hard enough getting all six of us ready and out the door for church on time without stopping to post pictures of sourdough starter. It just might push me over the edge to insanity. :)

This morning my starter didn’t have any liquid hanging around anywhere. I think it is because yesterday I started working to thicken my starter so that it wouldn’t be SO sour. If you remember, I only added 1/4 cup of water. I’m glad I did that. It’s getting to be more of the consistency I want it to be now.

Today was graduation day for us. (Oh, I couldn’t be more proud.)  My starter went from big glass jar to big glass bowl. I didn’t want sourdough overflowing all over the place.

Again today, I added a cup of flour and only 1/4 cup of liquid. Here is a picture of how thick my starter is now.

I layed a big piece of cheesecloth over my bowl without securing it with anything. 

On Day 7…just do the very same thing by adding 1 cup of flour and enough cold water to make your starter as thick (less sour) or as thin (more sour) as you want. I may try to pop back in briefly if I feel like there’s anything important I need to tell you about the Day 7 process.

And GUESS WHAT?! On Monday we can make BREAD!!! Would it surprise you to hear that the only ingredients you need to have ready to go are more flour and water…and some salt? (I use Redmonds Real Sea Salt.) 

Whoa-oa-oa! Get back! So much for the “sweetly sour” smell of my starter from yesterday morning. 

Shew!

A few of you commented that your starter was NOT smelling sweetly sour…but more like…well none of you said exactly. Although Cindy’s husband said that it smells like some of the calls he goes on (he is a fireman/paramedic).

May I suggest a description something like a cross between a dirty gym socks and baby spit up? Okay…so sorry. DON’T let this discourage you from making sourdough!!!!!  It gets better I promise! And…the sourdough bread doesn’t taste like the above mentioned descriptions. I PROMISE!

So…Day 5…if sniffing your sourdough starter makes you want to cough, gag, and run screaming from the room with tears running down your face…it’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to be doing. Good job creating a stinky masterpiece. :)

This morning a lot of liquid had risen to the top of my starter…and it had a frothy film on the top of the liquid. The froth was darker than yesterday and there was less of it. This is normal.

Elias saw this picture on my computer screen and said,
“Oh WEIRD…what IS that?” 
Oh how I love posting weird pictures on my blog…

So…a note about stinky…SOUR…sourdough:

The more liquidy and soupy your sourdough starter is…the more sour it is going to be/taste. Some people like their sourdough to have a very strong taste. My family and I don’t prefer it quite so sour.

Since this is Day 5 and there are only two days left before I make bread from my starter (woohoo!)…I decided today to start making my starter a little thicker to help with the over-sourness factor.

This morning I added one cup of flour as normal…but only 1/4 cup of water. I also poured off most of the liquid that had risen to the top again before adding the flour/water. As I stirred in the flour/water…it all mixed in just fine and was by no means too thick to stir. So, depending on how thick or runny your starter is at this point, you may want to adjust the amount of water you add. 

Several of you have asked if I would be sure to walk you through the sourdough bread making steps. ABSOLUTELY. I would NOT dare tell you how to make a sourdough starter and then leave you hanging about making the bread. It’s a tiny bit of a different process than making “yeast breads”…but it’s SO not hard to make. I’m getting so excited to finally be able to make my sourdough starter into bread! Yay!

So…anyone care to leave a description of how their sourdough is smelling by now?