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A hopeful bake: How to make a sourdough starter in the midst of a startling pandemic

Dallas bread master Matt Bresnan is also offering to give away small pieces of his own starter.

With restaurants closing in major cities across the U.S. due to the spread of coronavirus, and mandated social distancing in effect, a lot of people are finding themselves in their homes and kitchens (mostly) alone. One way to pass the time is to tackle the simple but special project of a sourdough starter.

I got mine going in more auspicious times, on the first of this year, and it’s served me well. It’s more low maintenance than some might think, and fun to observe, akin to caring for a hardy plant. Equally enjoyable is the product it yields: fresh, naturally leavened bread.

“Sourdough bread is very simple in its ingredients — flour, water and salt — but very complex in its process,” says Matt Bresnan, baker and co-owner of Bresnan Bread and Pastry in Dallas. “So much of what goes on in the starter and dough is completely unseen. It is easy to get overwhelmed, so patience is key.”

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In bread, as in life?

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Matt Bresnan has launched Bresnan Breads and Pastries.
Matt Bresnan has launched Bresnan Breads and Pastries.(Lynda M. Gonzalez / Staff Photographer)

Bresnan — who’s still baking and selling loaves for curbside pick-up at Brown Bag Provisions every Saturday — is offering to give bits of his starter away for free to those who want to teach themselves how to make sourdough at home. But half the fun in baking bread from a starter is that start-up process. And all that’s needed is stone-ground flour and non-chlorinated water.

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Yeast, a living organism that gives bread its rise, thrives pretty much everywhere, including on the surface of grains before they’re harvested. So does (good) bacteria, which helps give naturally leavened bread its complex flavor. Once ground, milled into flour and mixed with water, the yeast and bacteria awaken, feed on the carbohydrates in the flour, and release carbon dioxide and ethanol.

“This develops into a foam, or what we call a starter or levain,” says Francisco Migoya, the author of Modernist Bread, easily the most thoroughly researched book on bread ever written. “Sourdough is a uniform mixture of hydrated flour that is fermented with wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria and seasoned with salt. It becomes a set foam once baked in a hot oven or on a surface, at which point it’s edible.”

The science and practice of sourdough have always contained an air of mystery. These processes are largely invisible to the naked eye. Still, “as a new levain culture is being established over the course of several days, it evolves in ways you can see, feel, and smell,” writes baker Ken Forkish of Ken’s Artisan Bakery in Portland, Oregon, in his book Flour, Salt, Water, Yeast.

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Sourdough Starter.
Sourdough Starter. (Stacy Zarin Goldberg / For The Washington Post)

Starter recipes abound. Using Forkish’s recipe as a general guide, I mixed equal parts flour (stone-ground whole wheat and rye) with room temperature water until it was the consistency of pancake batter. I covered it and let it sit overnight on my refrigerator. For the next three days, at around the same time each day, I poured half of it out, and refreshed it with equal parts stone-ground flour and water.

By Day Two, I started looking for a few key visual and olfactory clues: Bubbles on its surface, and a yeasty, acidic, almost wine-like scent. For the final two or three days, I refreshed it with equal parts all-purpose flour and water. At this point, the starter lost its training wheels, and was ready for baking bread.

But I’ve made starters countless times, and feel comfortable troubleshooting when something looks off. For your first starter, follow an exacting recipe, like the one baker David Norman, of Easy Tiger in Austin, outlined in his new book, Bread on the Table.

“Put aside the experiential, bake-by-feel side of things and put on your scientist’s cap,” Norman writes. “While the process is not difficult, you are more likely to succeed if you follow the proportions, temperatures, and especially the timing schedule closely until you have an active, mature starter.”

Norman also notes that once a healthy starter is established, it’s quite hardy, and doesn’t need to be fed at the same time every day — or even every day. Plus, the yeast and bacteria it contains develop a symbiotic relationship that prevents the growth of any undesirable microbes. To keep a starter healthy and robust enough for baking bread, it needs to be fed on a fairly regular basis, though even seasoned bakers sometimes let their starter lie fallow in the refrigerator when they’re not in the mood to bake.

Tara Jensen, the author of A Baker’s Year and owner of Smoke Signals, a bread baking school in Asheville, North Carolina, notes that healthy starters can survive for weeks in a more dormant state.

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“I take a day or two to refresh it, to bring it back, until it looks bubbly and active again,” she says. Jensen also hates waste, so instead of throwing out the flour and water mixture as she’s mixing and refreshing her starter, she tosses the discard into everything from pancakes and waffles to cookies and scones. “The lactic acid bacteria that’s in there helps tenderize other doughs, even though it doesn’t help them rise at that stage,” she says.

Currently working on her second book, Jensen says she loves the feel of dough in her hands. “We live in a non-stop digital world most of the time, but with your hands in the dough, it feels possible to disconnect with the outside, and turn inside, to our personal rhythms and rituals… it just feels right,” she says.

Indeed, coaxing flavor and chemistry out of good, healthy living microorganisms is a reminder that it’s not all bad and that hope will again rise — alongside lofty, crusty loaves of homemade bread.

Daniela Galarza is a writer, reporter and recipe developer whose work focuses on the connection between food and culture, history and politics.

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Levain Natural: Building a Sourdough Starter

Start with a good-quality unbleached all-purpose flour and a whole rye flour. Using organic flours is a plus, but is not necessary. Filtered water (not distilled water) is also a good idea. Use a clean bowl to mix the flours and water. Storing it in a transparent cylindrical container that is at least three times taller than its diameter helps to gauge the activity of your starter. I love to use a quart-size glass canning jar and a permanent marker to mark the starting and ending levels right on the side of the jar. It is a good idea to sanitize the jar in the dishwasher or put it in some boiling water for a few minutes before you use it for the first time. Again, once you get your starter established, contamination is unlikely, but in this initial phase, it does not hurt to take some precautions and give the desirable microbes every advantage.

Initial Starter

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Time: Initial activity 24 to 72 hours. Establishment feedings every 8 hours for 7 days

Ingredients:

2/3 cup (75 g) all-purpose flour

1/4 cup (25 g) whole rye flour

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1/4 cup (60 g) filtered water at 75 degrees to 80 degrees or slightly warmer than room temperature

In a very clean small bowl, blend the all-purpose and rye flours with your fingers, then add the water and knead until completely incorporated. Continue kneading in the bowl for a few minutes to form a cohesive ball. Place the ball in a 1-quart jar and push down, flattening the top. (I use a skinny silicone spatula or the handle end of a long wooden spoon.) Try to press the dough into the bottom of the jar all the way around, eliminating air pockets around the edges as much as possible. This will help you to more accurately gauge the level of the rise, so that you can monitor the progress and maturity of the starter. Mark the level of the top of the dough mass on the side of the jar with a permanent marker. You can put a lid loosely on top of the jar or cover it with a tea towel. Let sit in a warm, draft-free place until the next day.

Begin checking the starter after 24 hours to see if there is any activity. You may not see much rise in the level of the starter at the beginning, but you should see distinctive bubbles in the dough itself. If there are no bubbles or only a few bubbles, leave the starter out for up to 72 hours, checking every 12 hours or so. If you do not see any obvious activity after 72 hours, or if the starter turns gray and has an unpleasant off-smell, discard it and start again.

Feeding Day 1: First Three Feedings

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Once you see activity, it is time to start feeding your starter. It is important to be diligent about the feedings, keeping to a schedule of a feeding every 8 hours. Establishing a time that fits in your daily schedule for a week is key. For example, if you feed the starter at 6 a.m., you will need to feed it again at 2 p.m. and 10 p.m. If you are not an early riser, you could feed at 8 a.m., 4 p.m., and midnight. The midday feeding is probably the most challenging for folks who work during the day and cannot sneak away. Be sure to record the time of your first feed so that you will be able to feed it every 8 hours. I like to do the first feed just before bedtime, then I feed again when I wake up.

3 1/2 ounces (100 g) Initial Starter

1/4 cup (60 g) filtered water at 75 degrees to 80 degrees or slightly warmer than room temperature

2/3 cup (75 g) all-purpose flour

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1/4 cup (25 g) whole rye flour

Repeat this feeding two more times, every 8 hours, and discard the leftover starter each time.

Feeding Days 2 Through 7

After the first three feedings, you should only feed all-purpose flour and water to the starter, eliminating the rye flour.

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3 1/2 ounces (100 g) of starter

1/4 cup (60 g) filtered water at 75 degrees to 80 degrees or slightly warmer than room temperature

1 cup plus 1 1/2 teaspoons (100 g) all-purpose flour

Before each feeding, note the level of the starter; it will gradually increase before it starts to collapse in on itself at the top. The eventual goal is for the starter to triple its height in 8 hours, which indicates good yeast activity and means the starter will leaven your dough well.

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Even if the starter triples its height early in the process, it is best to keep up the 8-hour feedings for 7 full days in order to achieve the right acidity in the starter. You may want to shorten the feeding interval if the rise peaks in less than 8 hours and you notice a decrease in the height of the rise (less than 3 times the original height). But if the 8-hour feeding interval is easier to maintain, keep that up; you will still have a healthy starter after 7 days.

Maintaining Your Starter

Now that you have established your starter, you can keep it in the refrigerator and only need to feed it once a week. This can happen when you use your starter to make a dough. All you need to do is feed a portion of the reserved starter, let it begin to ferment at room temperature for about an hour, and then slow that fermentation to a crawl by putting it back in the refrigerator. For maintenance feedings, the proportion of flour to starter is higher. Always use this same recipe and discard the extra starter.

1 3/4 ounces (50 g) starter

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1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons (90 g) filtered water at 75 degrees to 80 degrees or slightly warmer than room temperature

1 cup plus 3 tablespoons (150 g) all-purpose flour

Measure 50 grams of the starter and put in a clean bowl. Discard the excess starter and clean out your storage jar. Add the water and all-purpose flour, as you did for the first three feedings, and then knead with your hands until well incorporated. Return to your clear storage container. Let the starter sit out at room temperature for an hour or so, so that the fermentation gets started (you will not see much change in that time, but the fermentation is getting going). Return to the refrigerator.

Preparing the Starter for Baking

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Take the levain out of the refrigerator 11 to 13 hours before making a dough and feed it according to the individual bread recipe.

SOURCE: Recipe excerpted with permission from Bread on the Table by David Norman (2019, Penguin Random House)

Some basic sourdough recipes:

Naturally Leavened Sourdough Bread

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Sourdough Discard Crackers

Sourdough Soft Pretzels

Sourdough Pizza Dough

Sourdough English Muffins