Sourdough Starter Recipe

You can do better than this he said showing the sourdough bread in his hand which we bought from the supermarket. Don't bring trouble on me I said, I already lots on me. He started to beg, you are the most, you are the best, you can do it... I couldn't resist and started my first trial the other day.

As the first thing I bought a pack of organic whole wheat flour as every recipe I read before was calling for the most organicest flour you can find. It's almost like if possible it's better if you can grow your own grains. So I thought it's a must to use organic flour. I washed everything before using, I measured the flour and water with a scale gram by gram. I gave her a beautiful name. I used colourful tapes to see the change, etc.

To cut it short, it died in the fourth day as I used excessive water (which I scaled according to the recipe I used). I learned one thing from this, I should use water according to the flour not recipe.

the next day I started a new starter with a regular all purpose flour. I measured with cup not scale. I didn't care it much actually.

This is the consistency in the first day, it's like a bundt cake batter, just a little more shiny.

In the second day it started to see bubbles and a thin crust was formed.

In the third day it switched from batter to dough, it became more elastic.

In the fourth day the bubbles are bigger.

In the fifth day the crust became thicker.

In the sixth day I made my first trial. I dropped a small batch of starter into a glass of water and looked if it floats over or goes down. In this test if the starter floats it means that it's ready to use, if it goes down it means that you should keep feeding it.

In the seventh day my sourdough starter was ready.

As I said I used a regular flour, you can choose whichever flour you want to use. I used drinkable tap water. If you don't have access to safe to drink tap water you can use bottled water.

The time your starter needs to be ready will change according to lots of things such as weather conditions, water, flour, etc. Don't rush. Actually don't rush in any process concerning sourdough starter or sourdough bread. Just give how long time it needs in every step.

Lastly every source about sourdough starter says that you should feed the starter exactly in every 24 hours, I didn't set an alarm and didn't care the 24 hours rule and I didn't have any problems about it.

Bon appetit...