My sourdough starter has twins | Hacker News Reader

My sourdough starter has twins

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I will assume most people reading this are already sourdough bakers - but if not, baking sourdough can be extraordinarily simple, easy and cheap - give it a go!

All you need to flour and water to make your starter, and a little salt for baking. I've got my (BakeWithJack style) process down to about 10 minutes (across 30mins) in the morning, 12 hours proofing, a few folds then into the fridge for 12 hours, then bake. A loaf lasts us 2 days and I can do the dough or bake while getting the kids ready for school.

My wife offered to get some sort of bread machine, but it is the process that I love as much as the bread (same as brewing beer).

This guy made baking really simple for me https://www.bakewithjack.co.uk/videos

Thanks for the link. It has hundreds of videos though. Any specific videos you’d recommend to get started and to fine tune it?

Hey,

Try this series from him that is a great intro: https://youtu.be/vmb0wWKITBQ?si=S3MVF8qyKLOuCHmq

I was then inspired by https://youtu.be/ZxCf39G_7pY?si=Mf5dfcZIngyXCuEY

The worked up my own process below through seeing what worked for my flour and starter:

100g sourdough starter 300g water (cold and filtered) 12g fine sea salt 10g olive oil 550g white and brown bread flour mixed (I use 200g brown, 350g white)

Morning of the day before (24 hours), or on the night before (12hours) you will bake: Feed the sourdough starter 50g brown bread flour and 50g water. Make sure that this is at least 12 hours before you plan to make the dough, allowing time to double in size and form a very bubbly starter before using.

Morning: Measure 100g of bubbling sourdough starter into a bowl, add 300g cold water and whisk with a fork for 1min. Add 12g salt and whisk briefly again until the salt is dissolved. Add 10g olive oil and 550g flour and stir until all flour is mixed in, at least 2 mins of mixing. Use your (wet) hand to complete the mix. Leave for at least 5 minutes then gently lift and fold one corner of the dough into the middle, rotate the bowl 1/4 and repeat. Fold the dough 4 times then cover and leave for 15 mins and repeat the folding, before one final folding 15 mins later, before leaving to proof for the rest of the day.

Proofing: Cover the dough, let it proof (rise) for 10-12 hours at 16-19c in the kitchen. It only needs to double in size - you don't want it to over proof.

That evening: Shape. Check your dough, and when it has almost doubled in size, it is ready to stretch, fold, and shape.

Wet your hands, and bring the dough in from the corners of the bowl, then reach in from each side and lift up the dough in the middle, letting it stretch down front and back. Let it stretch for 15 seconds, then fold these two dropping sides over itself, turn the bowl and repeat until folded this way 4 times.

Shape roughly into the loaf you want, onto a lightly floured parchment-lined bowl - if your shaping has formed a seam, put the seam side up and pinch it closed. Cover and this in the fridge overnight.

The next morning preheat the oven to 225c - if you have a cast iron pot add this to the oven to pre heat with the lid off.

Remove the proofed loaf from the fridge, and add any cuts or slashes to the loaf before baking.

Place the loaf (still on the parchment paper) into the cast iron pot, cover and bake for 20-25. Remove lid, and bake 10-15 more minutes, until very deeply golden. For my oven total baking time is 35 mins, 25 covered and 10 uncovered.

Remove from the over and the pan, then remove the parchment paper. Let it cool on a rack for at least an hour before cutting.

If you don't have a cast iron pot you can bake in two roasting trays placed face to face, or you can bake just on a baking tray, uncovered - if so add a small pour (20ml) of boiling water to the base of your oven, every 10 mins for the first 20 mins (at start, at 10mins,and at 20mins).

Iterated from these instructions (with videos of the folds) https://www.feastingathome.com/sourdough-bread/#tasty-recipe...

As an alternative, I can recommend Hendrik's "The Bread Code": https://www.the-bread-code.io/

He has a very simple beginner's recipe on his YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msqU-ylXWUs

It's the resource I shared the most with friends who asked me how to bake sourdough breads, even though I didn't learn the basics from it I really like his style of teaching, concise and thorough at the same time.

I also highly recommend The Sourdough Journey for a lot of the science and showing how different variable can affect the results.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMNnFRtsaxxzZsbxK3yAj...

His chart showing Temp and Time for Bulk Fermentation gets referenced A LOT. Key is higher temp means faster bulk fermentation.

https://thesourdoughjourney.com/tools/

I just wish there was a way to make it taste less ... sour.

Get a bread machine if you don't like the sour taste.

Or bake a basic no-knead loaf. I would mix the dough in the morning and bake it in the evening.

Proof then bake soon after - I find the sour flavour develops more the longer I leave it to rest in the fridge.

If you don't like sourdough, you don't need to make sourdough!

Use baker's yeast instead. That doesn't limit you to basic recipes -- there's a vast range of interesting stuff you can bake. You'll usually need to make a preferment with flour, water and yeast (a "poolish" or "biga") so the overall routine is very similar to sourdough.

You don't have to make bread. My current favorite thing is sourdough English muffins, but King Arthur has a whole list of recipes that use the sourdough discard. The sourdough pancakes are excellent, especially after you drown them in maple syrup.

sourness is depending on quite a lot of factors - amount of water in starter, how long you proof, temperature etc.

I also prefer less sour breads and since I started using a stiff starter it's much better than more liquid ones. I still haven't found the perfect recipe yet but it is possible.

A good intro into the difference of starters is at the bread code: https://www.the-sourdough-framework.com/Sourdoughstartertype...

Unfortunately ‘sourdough’ has come to mean two things: on the one hand it is a general term for all wild starters; on the other it is a particular term for actual sour bread, most particularly that made from a San Francisco starter which spoiled in the 19th century.

Like you, I find the latter really quite unpleasant (to the point that I really am surprised anyone willing eats San Franciscan sourdough). But wild starters can range from tasting just like ordinary commercial yeasts, to tasting similar but with a richer flavour, all the way to the funk that we both dislike.

I have never had a San Franciscan sourdough in Europe, so I doubt that this sourdough is the nasty (to my taste — many folks love it) kind, but maybe there is some subculture of inedible (again, to my taste) European breads. More likely, I suspect that this is just a good wild starter.

I use a mix of bakers yeast and a wet (1:3) starter/sourdough. Just 2g yeast/kg flour makes a huge difference, even with 150 g starter.

My wet sourdough is 1 part flour to 3 parts water. As noted in a sibling comment, this favors the sour parts (lactic acid?), but compared to a dry starter, there are significant advantages the the starter/yeast combo:

1) Feeding the wet starter takes 10s: pour flour and water onto leftovers and stir quickly with a spoon. No sticky stuff to deal with.

2) The starter seems exceptionally stable, maybe because of the water layer: I only wash my starter jar every two or three months, and the 10g or so that I put back in the fridge after starting a dough, will last for weeks and consistently restart overnight when fed

3) Being able to independently adjust yeast-levels in a predictable way, means that I can easily play with sourness levels and adjust leaving times when I have to match the timings with other activities.

There is the downside, of course, that I need to keep bakers yeast in the house as well...

You can. Twenty years ago "sourdough" didn't mean the finished bread was particularly sour. But people's expectations have changed, maybe because of the name. And it's easy to let the bread get very sour if that's the goal.

Sourdough doesn't need to be sour!

I think the main factor for this is how "mature" your starter is.

After feeding your starter it will expand, then collapse, then grow more sour. I generally time it so that my bread isn't as sour.

If I am baking soon -- larger leftover starter and smaller feed. if I am baking tomorrow -- tablespoon or so of starter with bigger feed to get my leaven.

As I understand it it's mostly the balance between lactic acid and acetic acid bacteria. There are different ways you can encourage the balance to shift one way or the other and they have different growth patterns under different conditions so timing your bake around it can work but may have other compromises. The yeasts are important too and are on yet another schedule.

As others have indicated, this is indeed possible. A common technique that helps with this is to make a levain the night before. I use 1 tbsp of starter into 200g flour and 200g water. The levain develops overnight and becomes a "young" starter the next day. This produces a less tangy bread, compared to using a larger amount of full-strength mature starter.

It’s not really substantially different priced than yeast based bread baking

Agreed - though before I baked I thought sourdough was complex process that likely needed stuff I didn't have to hand, and assuming getting a starter would require and Etsy order.

I bake 'normal' bread on occasion but since we all prefer sourdough and it costs so much in the shops for good sourdough, it is my go to.

I'd like to add one piece of advice that I don't see very often.

You tend to see pictures of sourdough starters in big jars. But you don't need a big jar! A tiny amount of starter is enough to get going.

Each time you feed it, the size multiplies, so you can start with a teaspoon of starter and make enough for a big loaf in just a day or two. When I'm in a bread-making routine, I keep like 10g of starter. One feed brings it up to ~50g, another feed to ~150, and that's enough for a loaf (saving 10g for next time).

If you keep your starter in a big jar, it'll just go to waste. Keep it small and you'll never need to throw any away.

On more than one occasion, I've made sourdough pancakes or something, and forgotten to save some of the starter. The tiniest scraping of uncooked batter from a leftover spoon is enough to keep it going -- just mix it with flour and water and the magic happens.

Totally this! I was using huge jars when I first started and making massive levain - now just 10g in a jar, 50g water and flour as you say and it is good to go.

Yeah I just use a wide mouth pint jar. Stays in the fridge until I feel like making something with the starter.

> If you keep your starter in a big jar, it'll just go to waste. Keep it small and you'll never need to throw any away.

I tend to make «sourdough discard crackers» if I have leftovers. It works well timing wise, I'm in the kitchen doing the initial stretching of my loaf anyways.

Those crackers are the absolute best!

My wife makes sourdough discard cookies and they’re amazing.

This is the way. Here's a recipe to get the curious going:

- 1 cup (227g) sourdough starter, unfed/discard - 1 cup (113g) White Whole Wheat Flour or WW Pastry Flour - 1/2 teaspoon salt - 4 tablespoons (57g) butter, room temperature (or 50/50 butter/olive oil) - 2 tablespoons dried herbs, of your choice, optional - coarse salt for sprinkling on top

Mix well and knead briefly. Let sit out for 30min-6hrs. Roll out thinly, cut (deep score) into rectangles, prick w/fork, brush with water and sprinkle flaky salt on top. Bake @ 350 for 20-25 min

The other thing I'm surprised people (by which I mean makers of youtube videos) seem to worry overmuch about is feeding the starter. Everyone gets out the scale and has some view on ratios - 20g flour to 35.23g water or whatever.

Put a heaping tablespoon of flour in the starter, add enough water to make a paste, stir and you're done. Not enough water? Add a bit more. Too much water? Meh, add a bit less tomorrow.

In addition to youtubers, there's also a bunch of people who have nothing better to do with their lives than frequenting sourdough forums - reddit, facebook groups etc... - insisting to all newcomers that if you don't cultivate your starter with lab equipment in a Clean Room over the course of 6 weeks, you'll absolutely die from botuliusm.

Ive been making sourdough multiple times per week for 7 years and I do as you do - just make a thick paste, in increasingly large quantities over the course of 2-3 days before making the full batch of dough. I do weigh the dough measurements since I have a scale, but I could totally just do it by eye/feel.

I make very large batches and once the dough has started rising while doing periodic stretch and folds, I just put it in the fridge and then take it out and bake a bit over the course of 5ish days. So, I really just make a batch once a week.

you nailed that description. it's the same story no matter what you're fermenting.

I used to be one of those people but after a while I started to realise that most of the time yeast (or lacto) is to the micro world as humans are to the macro. they will absolutely out compete everything if you give them half a chance.

people forget that peasants in the middle ages used fermentation to protect themselves against things like botulism, and they did it without climate control, pressure cookers, silicone seals, starsan, or microbiology.

Absolutely. When I bake bread I just keep a rest of sourdough starter (~ a tablespoon) and in the fridge for the next time.

It also doesnt need this long amount of resting like some people believe. I can start with the tablespoon old sourdough and add 60g flour + 60g water. After like ~5h it will be 3x in size in a jar. Then I make the dough with all in all 600g flour and 72-75% water (more with more whole wheat flour).

The dough rests ~4h is then formed into a bread and then rests ~3h before beeing baked (assuming around 25°C while resting). The times really depend on the activity of the starter and temperature, but it isnt that hard to learn to "see" the right time. It clearly increases in size the first time and also the second time. Too long is also not good.

If it is too sticky you need to learn to knead the dough. Since the dough has a high water content this is done more in a lift up and folding motion, since classical kneading would stick too much.

The final bread then looks like normal german bread that you could buy in bakeries, before everything went down the shitter. (Assuming you add 20% wholemeal flour). If it is 100% white flour it should be almost as fluffy as toast or you are doing it wrong.

Unbleached flour. My attempts at making starter failed until I got unbleached flour.

Brown flour is brilliant, and already has plenty of wild yeast in it.

I'm not sure what brown flour is - at least where I live in the US that is not something I've ever even heard of before.

I know that our whole wheat flour is sometimes bleached. This doesn't change the color (much?), but it kills a number of nasties and thus makes raw flour safer. (you should still never eat raw flour, but if you do bleached is safer... I know many people do eat raw flour, but there are some things can can hurt/kill you if it isn't cooked). I'm not sure if whole wheat is what you mean by brown flour or not.

To a first approximation, nobody eats raw flour.

Flour is cooked in a pan with fat to make a roux; a roux plus broth can become gravy.

Flour is cooked in a pan with liquid to make pancakes or crepes.

Flour is cooked in an iron to make waffles.

Flour is cooked in an oven for baked goods.

Who do you know who eats raw flour, other than by accident?

I used to eat the batter that had stuck to the walls of the mixing bowl with a teaspoon as a kid. It had both raw flour and raw egg.

Flour is used to make food not stick to cooking and preparation surfaces, therefore lots of raw flour is eaten intentionally on the outside of baked goods (bread, pizzas etc).

Baked goods don't need flour to not stick, it's added on the outside before baking.

Sure, I do that.

The flour goes on the baked good before it gets baked. That's not raw.

People eat raw cookie dough deliberately unless they know not to (it's delicious).

When a pie or soup is too wet people may add flour at a late stage in the cooking process, when it won't necessarily get fully cooked.

Um, what?

Baking has been a major hobby for 15 years. I know the dangers of raw egg and flour but licking the bowl/beaters/spoons is still a major highlight of many of my recipes. And, of course, there's always raw cookie dough.

Maybe not the smartest choice for longevity and health, but yes, eating raw flour is totally a thing!

I assume they mean Whole Wheat Flour. The hulls contain lots of wild microbes which helps the starter get going. Similarly people recommending Rye.

The key though is finding unbleached flour.

I feed my start with bleached flour but ever week feed it with whole wheat. this works for me

Once it is going it doesn't matter- however the first two weeks of making a new batch it matters.

The only thing that's tough is the timing. It's gotta sit for an hour before slicing, which means if it's to be ready for school lunches it has to go in the oven at 5:30.

Yep.

It is one of my life hacks: when I know I can/have to bake in the morning I find it much easier and much more enjoyable to get up at 0500.

(Before I used two alarms, one that could only be defused with a barcode next to the sink on the bathroom + an (un?)healthy dose of self discipline. Now I enjoy it.)

Does the amazing smell of bread baking make it easier for the kids to get out of bed?

As a sourdough baker, I wouldnt say it's easy to make good bread consistently but it's not super hard to learn. As long as your starter is in a decent place and you take your time with the stretch and folds, you will arrive with something edible.

I split my time between the north near canada and miami and fermentation works a lot differently even indoors in the winter in Buffalo vs Miami in the summer :)

This is a good video for learning the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJEHsvW2J6M

I've tried to get a starter going multiple times, but it eventually gets to a point where it doesn't grow. It just forms a pool of liquid on top whenever I feed it, and never grows again afterwards. I've never been able to figure out why.

this happened to me whenever I kept the starter in the fridge. it stopped happening after I started keeping it in a cupboard that didn't get direct sunlight.

The bit I always struggled with sourdoughs is the baking part. It would just never bake correctly and end up either exploding (large pocket of air) or be some kind of subterraneous sponge cake. I've never had this issue with baking regular yeast bread.

Sounds like you might be over proving it. If you’re at a high altitude, or live in a warm place, or it just keeps happening, try knocking half an hour off your proving time, and keep going until it starts getting worse.

I must say that making my own starter, and making pizza from this.. incredible. It has been a very fun and fulfilling journey. It is better than going out for me and I now have it dialed in to where I can crank out 12 pizza in an hour from my oven. We have friends over and it’s a great time. The dough I feel like is also well adapted and suited to my particular environment and the flour I bake with and there is something unique in that this culture you can only get from me and my house

Yeah, the sourdough my wife and I bake now is so fine-tuned that we haven't had better sourdough from anywhere. Indeed the sourdough pizza is insanely good! We make crackers, pancakes and waffles with the discard. Oh and chocolate chip cookies... freakin' glorious.

We did the Tour du Mont Blanc hike (170km/105mi) last summer over 8 days, and we took one of our sourdough starters to let it take in the different particulates in the air all over the alps. Whether it makes a big difference or not is hard to say, but it was a fun way to hopefully bolster the "diversity" of the starter's makeup. It is indeed a very strong starter that we get great results from. I would have been really curious to submit it to this study, had I the chance, because we've taken it all over the place now!

In the first image ("How old is [Stinkie] compared to the other mumble mumble* starters?"), the cumulative age distribution mostly falls off as you might expect, but it looks like there's a very noticeable bump about 4-5 years ago. I guess people in Europe were making pandemic bread too.

* I can't read Dutch

> I wonder what might happen if I was to feed it twice a day at room temperature for a month or so.

If that S. cerevisiae is from accidental contamination from commercial yeast, it'll probably stay dominant. Commercial yeast is a bit of an overachiever.

Temperature matters though. You only really see San Francisco style sourdough cultures, with L. sanfranciscensis cooccuring with K. humilis yeast, in bakeries that regularly backslop at room temperature and never use commercial yeast. That's not easy for most home bakers.

How can you see what type of yeast is in your starter? Are there ways to test?

How surprising to find this here. I've just started making sourdough bread. It turns out that I can't make it like the local bakery, but actually, that's fine. I had to really think? Do I like open crumb? Actually no! I want sandwich bread.

I've been exploring what I can get away with. Leaving the bread to rise overnight on the counter? Yep. It's fine. Leaving the starter for 2 days instead of feeding every day when it lives on the counter. Sure - no problem. Knock it back or just quickly shape. Doesn't matter. Bake at 1.5 or 2 or 2.5 the size. It doesn't matter enough.

Things that are not fine, shaping the bread, leaving it to rise in the oven which is on a timer and then the oven turns off but I'm not back for an hour to take it out. Crust too dry!

Your mileage may vary of course. But sourdough just seems so much more forgiving than a fast acting yeast.

I've yet to see if I care about a difference between a proper knead after the first rise or just a quick shaping. It's quite fun trying the different possibilities.

In my household we have "Starterday" for Friday - when the starter gets fed, "Riseday" for Saturday - when the dough gets kneaded, shaped and left to rise, and finally "Bakeday" for Sunday, when the bread goes in the oven early in the morning. A 1.5Kg loaf usually lasts until next Bakeday for both me and my partner.

How do you keep the bread fresh/edible for the entire week? I've been baking sourdough for only a few years now - but I find that after 2-3 days the bread is basically ready to become breadcrumbs no matter how I store it. Lately I've actually started slicing it two days after baking and freezing the slices so that they can be re-toasted to stretch things out.

Have you tried microwaving it for 10-15 seconds? I havent tried this with sourdough, but it works with stale white bread.

We've tried multiple ways over time, and the one we settled on is to wrap it in a clean kitchen towel (of pretty thick cotton) and then place it in a plastic bag. With just the plastic bag it will grow mold, with just the kitchen towel it will lose too much moisture. Even like this by the end it gets pretty tough, but it is still edible as toast. :)

I’m suspicious that an open crumb has little to do with the dough per se and a lot to do with large air bubbles being trapped in the dough while it’s being folded and not getting popped.

How's that for a startup idea: 23andMe, but for yeast. So 16andMe I guess.

Seriously though, I love stuff like this, and wish biotechnology services were more accessible for regular people. Probably not much of a market, though!

This is very interesting. I purchased what is claimed to be a 400 year old German / Bavarian culture and it's one of the most prolific I've ever had. I really enjoy the heartiness and it's ability to live in the fridge for a few weeks when I'm not using it (yes I know, bad parenting). I'd be really curious to see how it would compare. Very cool read, thanks a ton.

> the uniqueness of your starter is defined by the local climate, local flour, and the way you feed it to keep it alive. The weather in Greece is much warmer...

There's actually a word for this: terroir - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terroir

I'm genuinely curious how important regularly feeding the starter in the fridge is if you're not a frequent baker?

I leave it in the fridge, unfed for weeks/months, till I decide to bake. I take it out, feed it 50g flour and 50g water, leave it for a day or so and then use it. After using, throw a bunch, add another 50/50 and put it in fridge for the next time.

Has anyone noticed changes in the quality of the starter/bread if they don't feed regularly while in the fridge.

From experience, the bread has a better rise when I feed my starter for three or more cycles/days after storing it in the fridge. As if it needs to "wake up" and increase its speed of metabolism.

I thought there was millions of different kinds of bacteria and yeast inside a sourdough, in fact there are only a few..

This caught my eye:

> reverse is true for that twin in Finland where rye is more predominant than wheat

Calling yield of 26 mtons predominant over 869 mtons[1] seems like an exaggeration and maybe barley was meant instead of rye? Or I'm misinterpreting something.

[1] https://vyr.fi/app/uploads/2024/01/inengl_1ca381b_Production...

Knowing Finns, I'd wager that they mean rye flour is used more for bread than wheat flour. They're not talking about general production of flour, but usage in bread.

Ah, that would make more sense. But even so, wheat seems to be three times more popular than rye: https://ruokatieto.fi/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Tietohaaruk...

milli-tons? Isn't that kg?

It should be Mtonne or just Mt.

Why is it so difficult for writers on economics to understand SI prefixes?

I had thought rye was used for sourdough starter outside of Finland also.

Rye based starter can be used for wheat bread without problems, but it may make sense to feed it some wheat beforehand.

Also if you can find Finnish (== white colored) rye flour, consider baking some sourdough Finnish rye bread.

Oh, I didn't know this about starters. And my mom used to make her own sourdough bread ... although it was of oat, so perhaps the starter was oatmeal as well. I'll have to ask her!

I tried to supercharge my starter by putting a small piece of pineapple in it to see if it would pick up some more wild yeasts. I'm pretty sure the pineapple had bread yeast on it because now my starter is as active as commercial yeast and lost all of its sourness. I even tried putting yogurt kefir in to give the acid producing bacteria a foothold and slow down the yeast but no, the yeast continue to dominate.

Oh well, time to start over.

I generally have good luck with whole wheat + dark rye flour. Takes a week or two to get started.

> The graph shows five different vertical bars

Actually 6

"Five different bars containing unique combinations of typical sourdough classes, with the sixth bar being the combination of your own starter."

Calling Romania Greece is US levels of geographical ignorance. Impressive.

This is a brilliant company idea! So happy it exists.

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