𝐁𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 🥖𝐒𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐝𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡🥖𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐌𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐬 & 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐩 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐨 𝐌𝐮𝐜𝐡
When I first started baking, I was too intimidated to start sourdough.
It seemed so complex. There are all these rules. It’s finicky.
And when I see the posts from new bakers, people are still struggling with this. Somehow people (and books and videos) all seem to strive to make it as complex as possible, with lots of do’s and plenty of don’ts
Over the years I have learned that the vast majority of these rules don’t make any sense, and they show a fundamental misunderstanding of how sourdough baking works.
- Your starter doesn’t need to be fed 6 hours before baking
- You don’t need to feed your starter daily or weekly
- Your starter doesn't have to float to bake bread.
- You never need to discard any starter if you bake frequently
- You can bake with a starter straight from the fridge, even if it doesn’t look active
- You don’t need to weigh when feeding your starter
- Starters don’t grow stronger over time
- You don’t have to feed your starter 1:2:2 or 1:4:4 or whatever
- The proportion of flour and water in your starter doesn’t matter
- You can feed it almost any flour
- You can use a starter fed on white flour in a whole wheat or rye loaf, and vice versa
- It doesn’t really matter how much starter you use in your recipe
- You don’t need to proof in a climate-controlled environment (like an oven)
- You don’t need to separate between bulk proofing and other stages of proofing
- You can convert almost any recipe using commercial yeast to sourdough.
- All recipes recommending X hours of this and X hours of that are estimates at best, and they are often wrong.
Confused? Actually, it’s really simple. My objective is to make great-tasting (and looking!) bread with the minimum of fuss. Once you understand the underlying principles, you can fit sourdough baking into your schedule without bending over backwards.
The one thing you need to remember is that sourdough is very forgiving. When I doubt, bake it. Used too much flour? Bake it. Proofed too long? Bake it. Too much water? Bake it. Most of the time, the result will taste great, even if it doesn’t look Instagram worthy. Don’t overthink it.
People seem to think of their starter as some kind of pet. If doesn’t get fed, it gets sluggish. It needs to be in the right condition to be used. It gets hungry. It develops over time. None of that is really true.
A starter is just a home for yeast cells and bacteria. The yeast cells convert sugars and starches in the flour into gas- this is called fermentation. As they do so, they multiply. At some point, they start crowding each other out and ‘run out of food’, so to speak.
In your starter, all you need to do is to keep the yeast cells alive. And when you mix your dough, all you do is starting the fermentation process by introducing these yeast cells. Keep in mind the yeast cells will grow exponentially.
I think a useful metaphor is to think of your yeast cells like fire. 🔥
Your sourdough starter is a lit candle. It has fire. It is capable of setting fire to another candle, or to a bonfire, or to a whole forest. Whether the candle’s fire is big or small doesn’t really matter. Even one candle can set a house on fire, provided the conditions are right. For fire, the conditions are fuel and oxygen. For sourdough, the conditions are fuel (i.e. the carbohydrates in flour) and the right temperature.
As long as you keep a fresh candle at the ready and light it with the previous one, you can keep your fire going indefinitely. That’s what you’re doing with a starter. But 10 or 100 candles later, the fire is not ‘better’ or stronger or more mature. It’s still the same fire. Just like the yeast cells in your starter don’t really change over time.
So do you need to feed your starter 6 hours before using it in a dough? No. As long as your starter has active yeast cells (which it does, otherwise it would be dead) it will work. Just like it doesn’t matter if you light your fireplace with a candle that was lit 6 hours ago or 1 hour ago. It also doesn’t matter whether you use a flamethrower or a match. As long as there is fire to get the process started.
I can’t overstate the importance of understanding the role of temperature. Fermentation goes fast above 20C/70F. It slows down significantly below 5C/40F. Use this to your advantage. Just like a fire can burn fast when the wind brings it oxygen, and will be calm (but not dead) when there is no wind.
Keep your starter in the fridge, and it will remain alive, but quiet. Ready to use when you want. Keep it in a warm spot and it will ‘burn out’ pretty quickly.
Once you understand this, you can stop the frenzied feeding of your starter, wasting lots of flour and creating ‘discard’. All you need is active yeast cells. They stay active a long time in your fridge (someone recently re-activated 4500 year old yeast cells from an Egyptian tomb. Google it.)
𝐀 𝐩𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐞𝐱𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞:
I bake 2-4 times a week. I keep my starter in the fridge. It’s a small quantity, perhaps 40-60g (I don’t measure it). When I bake, I use about half of it in the dough. What I take out I replenish with flour and water till it’s roughly the same quantity again. Does the proportion of water versus flour matter? Not really. As long as there is flour, the yeast will live. I might leave the starter out for an hour or two. Then it goes back in the fridge, ready for the next bake.
Does the quantity of starter in your dough matter? Hardly. Just like one match can light a forest, a small quantity of starter can leaven your dough.
When you leaven your dough (or grow the starter- both are the same fermentation process), two things determine the speed of fermentation. First of all the number of active yeast cells introduced at the beginning. Second of all the temperature.
So when you mix a dough with less starter than the recipe says (or with a starter that is not super active) it will still ferment. However, it might take a little longer. How much longer? Yeast cells can double as quickly as in 90 minutes. So if you use half the starter required (or a less active starter) it may take an extra 90-120 minutes for your dough to proof. When you are operating on a 24 hr cycle, that difference is not a big deal.
All the recipes that say x hours of bulk fermentation, followed by x hours of proofing: the yeast cells don’t know what shape the dough is in. As long as the temperature is right, they will keep on multiplying and creating gas. And if the temperature in your kitchen is 2C/4F warmer or colder than the one that was used in the recipe, the timings will be off. So take them with a grain of salt.
The solution is to bake when the dough is ready for baking. You need to learn when the dough is ready. This takes some practice. Once you have made the same recipe a number of times, you will know how much time it takes. And if it’s a warm day, you’ll see it going faster than usual. That’s fine: if you need to course correct because the dough is fermenting too quickly, put it in the fridge. If it’s too slow, put it in a warm spot.
Feeding the starter: Back to the fire metaphor: the starter doesn’t care what flour you feed it. As long as the flour has fuel, i.e. carbohydrates, the yeast cells will do their work. So you can keep a single starter, feed it whatever flour you want, and use it in any recipe, whether it’s whole wheat or white or something else.
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐨𝐭𝐭𝐨𝐦 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞:
Baking bread really only consists of 3 steps:
- Mix the ingredients.
- Wait for the dough to be ready
- Bake it.
You can make any of these steps as complicated as you want. But the most important one (and arguably hardest to learn) is the second one. With practice, you will know when your dough is ready. But because this is so hard to grasp exactly, people have created all those ‘rules’. But often they are just wrong, or not necessary, even if they work under certain circumstances.
𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐦𝐲 𝐭𝐲𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐞:
- 9PM Mix dough
take the starter out of the fridge
mix flour, water (75%), salt (2%) starter (between 10-20%). Mix. Let sit for a while.
Replace used starter and put it back in the fridge.
Fold dough once or twice before I go to bed. Leave it out.
- 8AM check on dough. Maybe fold if I feel like it. If it’s already doubled, put it in fridge (this happens in summer)
- 6PM check on dough. Again, if it’s already done, put in fridge. If not, leave out
- 9PM turn on oven to 245C/475F.
Shape dough into banneton. Leave while oven heats up.
Score and bake.
The times are not exact. I can bake and hour earlier or an hour later. It doesn’t matter.
A note on baking: again, people are trying to make an exact science by stating a required internal temperature. The bread is ready when it LOOKS ready. You can tap it for a hollow sound, but a thermometer is neither required, nor an accurate gauge of readiness. Even the baking temperature is flexible. It might bake a little faster at 250C vs 225C. But both will work.
This was a long story. But the idea is to give you the understanding why you can let go of all the strict rules. Sourdough is extremely forgiving and flexible.
𝐎𝐧𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠:
If someone wants to start baking and wants to make their own starter, I say ‘Don’t bother’.
Ask someone to give you a starter. All bakers have unlimited quantities. Starting a starter from scratch is interesting, but it’s finicky and most people get a lot more fun out of the actual baking instead of 2 weeks of tending to a jar of flour and water. Most sourdough bakers will be happy to give you some.
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