Here's practically everything I know about sourdoughs - what to do with a sick Yeast Beastie, how to care for your Yeast Beastie, how to create a Yeast Beastie from the wild and how to share Yeast Beasties.
Many people practice survivalism every single day--they just don’t think of it that way. Survivalism is more than just learning what to do if the apocalypse comes. Survivalism is knowing how to make the best of any situation. It’s knowing how to make do with the resources at hand. And this is where survivalism intersects with the notion of “sustainable living.” Living sustainably is survivalism. In this group, we’ll not only talk about how to survive TEOTWAWKI--we’ll talk about how to survive from day to day. We talk about everything from fixing a broken zipper to knowing how to stockpile food. Join us for the whole wide range of practical survivalism and sustainable living
I have been entrusted with the care of several Yeast Beasties, so many that I usually keep most of them dormant, alternating their wake up times. All my cultures go dormant for the summer because it's too hot around here to bake often enough to keep a Yeast Beastie happy and frisky. During the holidays, when I bake as gifts, I may have all my Yeast Beasties awake and producing.
After I wake a Yeast Beastie, I keep it in a wide mouth quart canning jar. A glass jar permits better observation of activity than a plastic or ceramic jar. The quart size ensures that a portion of the contents has to be used, discarded or transferred regularly as the jar becomes too full, diluting the acid that is formed by the bacteria as they multiply. Too much acidity will inhibit the yeast growth.
Waking the Yeast Beastie:
The term "culture preparation" refers to the reactivation necessary every time you take an activated partially dormant liquid culture from the refrigerator. If I were to list the three most important things for success with sourdoughs, they would be
1. Start with a fully active culture.
2. Start with a fully active culture.
3. Start with a fully active culture.
This is step 1 in the recipes.
Artisan and commercial bakers use their Yeast Beasties frequently, often several times per day, and their cultures are always fully active. We home bakers use our cultures much less frequently and they are almost always partially or deeply dormant depending on how long since they have been used. Contrary to popular myths, Yeast Beasties can survive for long periods without feeding if they are refrigerated. Mine often go for 6 months but then it takes 8-10 days of repeat feeding (culture preparation) to reactivate them. When it's time to bake, it's time to wake your Yeast Beastie to produce a fully active culture again. The Yeast Beastie in the refrigerator has a good concentration of dormant yeast and lactobacilli but it needs to be reactivated to a higher level of growth and activity. If it has been in the refrigerator less than one week, the process can usually be completed in several hours.
This is the best way to reactivate a dormant (refrigerated) culture. When the Yeast Beastie is removed from the refrigerator, there is usually a layer of liquid on the surface (hooch). Stir this back into the culture.
1. Stir up the Yeast Beastie
2. Pour all but 1 cup into a second, back-up jar
3. Fill both jars with warm (80ºF - 90ºF) water and stir vigorously
4. Discard all but one cup from each jar.
5. Feed each jar one cup fresh flour and one cup sweet water
6. Proof for12 hours before using
7. Vigorous Yeast Beasties may be ready sooner - watch for the foaming and bubbling.
8. Repeat this every 12 hours until the Yeast Beastie is bubbling and foaming within 2 hours of the last feeding.
When you discard a portion of the Yeast Beastie, you can add this to your compost to feed it. There's no need to waste it. By discarding as you feed, you will never have a culture that is too acidic, and you won't be filling up jars with unneeded culture. Do not try to bake with a culture that is not fully active, when the bubbles are almost to the top of the jar within 2 - 4 hours of the last feeding.
If you are activating a fully dormant dehydrated Yeast Beastie:
1. Mix all of the dry culture with ¾ cup of unbleached all-purpose flour and 1 cup water. The jar will be less than half full. Put the lid on loosely.
2. Put the jar in a proofing box at 85 to 90ºF. After 24 hours there may be a few bubbles on the surface.
3. At the end of the 24 hour period, feed the culture again with 1 cup of flour and 1 cup of water. The jar is now a little over half full. Mix and proof for 12 to 24 hours.
4. Next (after 36 to 48 hours) you begin feeding every 12 hours in a special way.
a. Stir up and mix the contents.
b. Then pour all but one cup into a second jar as a backup.
c. Fill both jars with warm water. Stir vigorously.
d. Discard all but one cup from both jars.
e. Feed each jar one cup of flour and one cup of water. Mix
f. Proof for 12 hours. Now there should be more bubbles and foam.
5. Continue to feed every 12 hours, following steps a through f above (discarding culture each time) until the cultures produce bubbles that extend almost to the jar top within 2 to 4 hours after the last feeding.
6. Refrigerate.
Activation may require several days and there is no visible evidence when the bacteria grow, so you must continue to follow the feeding schedule even though the yeast may not be producing bubbles at first.
Washing a Culture
Sometimes during activation a culture becomes contaminated with organisms present in all flour because flour, good quality flour, is not sterile, but vital and alive - and therefore contaminated as all life is. Most of the time, the contamination is mild and harmless and may even be beneficial to the growth and survival of your Yeast Beast. Sometimes, the contamination overwhelms a delicate Yeast Beast. This happens when the bacteria do not produce acid fast enough at the beginning of the activation process. Then it is necessary to "wash" your Yeast Beastie in order to cure it.
After mixing thoroughly, dump all except about 1 cup (240 ml.) of culture from the jar.
Fill it with warm water and stir vigorously.
Again dump everything except 1 cup (240 ml.).
Feed the culture about 1 cup (140 gm.) flour and ¾ cup (180 ml ) water, stir vigorously and proof at 85 to 90̊ F. (29 to 32̊ C.) for 6-12 hours.
There is often an apparent reduction of culture activity after the first "washing". This indicates the contamination is being reduced but further washing is usually necessary. Repeat the entire process several times until the original culture becomes active.
Tips:
A viable culture will have a layer of clear brown liquid on the surface after a period of refrigeration. This is normal. It should be stirred back in before going to the Culture Preparation step.
If the culture is not observed often enough, the peak may be missed and the culture may appear flat. Clear brown liquid on the surface indicates it has been active. To re-activate it, feed it again and proof.
When you discard a portion of your culture, you have several options: you can start a new jar and feed it to give as a gift, you can put the discards in your compost, you can incorporate it into home-made pet food (only good for cooked or baked pet foods because the heat will kill the Yeast Beasties and prevent bloating in your pet), use it as leavening for home-made beverages like sodas, beers, and country wines, or you can actually throw it away. At the point when you are discarding extra Yeast Beastie while you are activating it, the discard is not viable as a leavening yet. If you feed the discards in new jars, you can then use the discard as a gift or to leaven home-made beverages.
Be careful with the water you use in feeding your Yeast Beasties. Some don't mind tap water, but there are times when tap water gets contaminated, and that will contaminate your Yeast Beastie. Some Yeast Beasties, particularly very young and very old ones, are fussy about the type of water they want.
I have an Italian culture from Naples - Tri-Pliny - that's very young - about 8 years old now. Well, like a bad pet owner, I gave him the wrong water and he proceeded to throw a fit.
Oklahoma tap water is usually pretty good. It's sweet, clear, and imminently drinkable even if it does kill aquarium fish. This time of year, though, the lake turns over. It does that twice a year, and we'll get sediment in the water, and fish scales and other such oddities. This lasts about a week, and we usually buy bottled water (the cheap stuff) for drinking and cooking during that time.
Eh, short story - I used tap water during the turn-over week to feed Tri-Pliny instead of bottled water. He threw out sickly odors - ever smelled a wet mop that stayed wet for weeks on end and was never rinsed or cleaned? That nasty sweetish rank odor of not-quite-mold and really smelly feet? That was Tri-Pliny.
So, I had to wash him down, scrub the nasty contamination out of the starter, and go for it again.
Fortunately, Tri-Pliny took as quickly to the washing as he did to the bad water, and he set up a lovely smell, yeasty, a bit earthy, and slightly sweet. He responds really well to attention and care. He is a high maintenance yeast beastie, like Onuri-Ufa.
Still, he makes great ciabatta and focaccio and pizza and is worth the effort.
Onuri-Ufa, actually, seems to like being close to Tri-Pliny and has taken on a new vigor. I know there's no cross contamination between the two, because they are kept in lidded jars. Onuri-Ufa just likes Italians, I guess. There is a long history between Rome and Egypt after all.
Yeast beasties are the only pet that thrives the more you eat of it. I bet a vat of sourdough was the original never-empty cauldron of fairytales.
Tips on capturing your own wild Yeast Beastie and how to tame her.
The best way to get a starter is from a baker, especially if you live in a city or near someplace with lots of auto traffic. The exhaust fumes and pollution create nasty tasting starters, assuming you can even get one going.
Don’t give in to temptation and make a starter using commercial yeast – these starters may start out strong, but they tend to lose their rise and go too sour very quickly - quickly being a decade or more. I don’t know anyone who had a sourdough starter made with commercial yeast that was stable and usable more than 10 years after it was born. Commercial sourdough starters have a purpose, and they are quick and reliable, even quite tasty when young, but they are not long-term heirloom pets.
If you live in a pollution-free area, by all means try for a wild starter. Put equal parts flour and water (half cup of whole wheat flour and either bottled water or a good tap water) in a quart sized glass jar with a double or triple layer cheesecloth lid rubberbanded on it, set in a warm shady place outdoors. Do not use heavily chlorinated or fluoridated water as this will contaminate or even kill your starter. 70º - 80º is the optimal temperature for capturing wild yeast. It may take a week before a wild yeast “catches” in the feeder. Add a half cup each of flour and water every 24 hours until it “catches” (froths or bubbles with a beery smell). If the feeder smells off or turns funky colors (red, blue, or green), toss it and start again. It may catch the first time, or you may not catch a Yeast Beastie for weeks.
You know you’ve caught a wild yeast when the feed starts bubbling and giving off a beer smell. The smell may be pleasant, sweetish, sort of like chicken soup, or slightly sour. If you brew your own beer, it will smell sort of like mash. When it starts bubbling and smells beery or sour, start the activation feeding.
The first time, throw away all but 1 cup of starter and add 1 cup each flour and water. After the first feeding, you’ll have to decide if you want to keep the excess starter you will get or toss them on the compost, because over the next 3 days, you’ll eventually end up with 64 cups of starter (or more!) if you keep them all.
You don't want to use the starter when she's this fresh because the breads won't taste right yet - too mild a flavor, no complexity. Sourdough develops her personality and flavor as she ages.
Divide the starter into 1 cup batches. Either keep 1 batch and toss the rest or put the rest into their own jars (best I’ve gotten was 3 cups starter from the initial feeder of 1 cup flour, 1 cup water) and make multiple batches to share with friends. Feed each batch 1 cup flour and ¾ cup water every 12 hours for 2 days, then wait 24 hours for the next feeding. Make sure you keep the starter at a reasonably even 70º - 80º during this time.
If necessary, set up an incubator: get a styrofoam ice chest large enough to hold all the jars. Carefully cut a small hole in the bottom and invert the cooler over the jars of starter. Set a small lamp with a 25 watt bulb at the hole, and keep a thermometer in it to be sure the temperature remains in the right range. If the lamp has a dimmer switch, so much the better because you may need to dial it to a lower wattage.
Once you've completed the 24 hour feeding, on the 3rd or 4th day, your Yeast Beastie is ready to use for baking. Let her bubble and foam (usually 2-3 hours after feeding but could be as long as 8-12 hours if you have a slow Beastie), then remove the portion with which you’ll bake and feed what remains in the jar. Let the jar sit out at room temperature for 3-4 hours, then cover it with a loose lid and set it in the refrigerator. Because she’s a new starter, the flavor may be a bit raw, but as she matures, the flavor will mellow and develop layers of taste.
The starter is a living creature and needs to be cared for like a pet – feed her regularly. Naming your starter helps you remember she's alive and needs to be treated as such. I have 7, the youngest is 2 years old, and the oldest has a lineage tracing back 4,000 years (it spent most of that time dehydrated).
The best care is to use your starter weekly, thus feeding her every week, but you can go as long as a month between feedings with minimal work to reactivate her. You can go as long as 6 months between feedings, but she will need some intensive care to reactivate her at that point.
Dehydrating your Yeast Beastie:
You can also dry your starter (excellent if you aren’t going to be using her for a long time or if you are shipping her to a friend to share). To do this,
1. Feed your starter and leave her at room temperature for 24 hours.
2. Stir in the hooch that forms.
3. Spread a paper thin layer of starter onto plastic wrap and let her dry completely (up to 2 days).
4. Break her into flakes and store her in airtight containers (I vacuum seal mine in small bags).
I recommend doing this anyway just in case your starter is accidentally killed (she got too hot, or so badly contaminated you couldn’t cure her). Keep the dried starter in the refrigerator. She will keep for years in a cool dark dry place – millennia even, as Onuri-Ufa demonstrates - a culture recovered from an archaeological dig at the Giza pyramid.
Rescue Remedies for Sick Yeast Beasties
Say you have a sourdough starter, and it doesn't look or smell quite right. Maybe she isn't as vigorous as she once was. You're tempted to throw her out and start all over, even if The Lady has been around since the 1800's.
There are some rescue remedies you can try before you give up.
First, let's review some of the problems a sourdough starter can have.
The hooch - the brownish liquid the forms a top layer on the sourdough when she's been resting a while - isn't floating on top, but is hovering in the middle or even the bottom of the jar. This usually means the flour or the water introduced some element that's making your sourdough sulk. Remember when I complained about Tri-Pliny not liking the water I used in his feeding? That's pretty much what the sourdough is doing - sulking. A little extra care and special water or fresh flour can make all the difference.
Smell - All sourdough cultures have their own fragrance, and it helps to remember what yours smells like when she's happy. The smell can range from a mild beery fragrance to an intense malty smell. It can be slightly sweet, especially if your flour choice is whole wheat or semolina. Rye flour sourdoughs tend to smell yeasty and earthy under the beer smell. Think dark German beer, and you get a hint of what that will smell like.
If the fragrance is off from normal, a little extra tender care can fix it. If the smell is badly off, the sourdough is also usually discolored - a pinkish tinge to the hooch is the most common discoloration.
Color - And then we have the colored sourdoughs. Normally, a sourdough is a beige color with a clear brownish hooch floating on top. The beige can vary from really pale almost white to tans and even light browns if you're using whole wheat or rye flours as feeding flour. The beige part or the hooch can be discolored. The hooch can hold a pinkish tinge, go grey, or even have a green edging. The thick beige culture herself can turn colors - a parchmenty yellow, pinkish, green, or blue.
I've never been able to cure a blue sourdough.
If you're in the process of capturing a wild Yeast Beastie, and encounter any of these problems before you ever get to learn the characteristics of the culture, you won't have a backup of healthy dried culture vacuum sealed in your refrigerator with which to restart her, so this is what you can do:
1. Pour out all but one cup of your culture and throw the excess away. Don't even feed this part to the dogs. They won't like you if you do.
2. Wash and sterilize the jar.
3. Pour the cup of culture into the sterilized jar and top with bottled water (the cheap drinking water that 45¢ a gallon is fine). Stir it up really well and let it sit in a warm, draft-free place for 3 hours (that incubator you made to activate your culture is perfect).
4. Pour out all but 1 cup of culture, resterilize the jar, and return the cup of culture to it.
5. This time, feed her with 1 cup fresh flour and then fill the jar to within 2 inches of the top with bottled water.
Put her back in the incubator for 6-10 hours.
Pour out all but 1 cup of culture, resterilize the jar, return the culture to the jar with 1 cup of flour and 3/4 - 1 cup bottled water.
Put her back in the incubator for 3-4 hours.
6. If she smells decent, bubbles up within 4 hours, and a layer of hooch forms on top, you're good to go. You can either set her in the refrigerator until you're ready to use her, or use her right away.
This is usually enough to cure most minor sulks and ills. But if she's really sick or contaminated, it can take many more such treatments to effect a cure. Sourdoughs are remarkably resilient and hardy. A weekend of extra care and they're usually back in baking form.
Sometimes, though, the contamination is more than finickiness. Stray bacteria in the environment or the allowable contaminants in flour overwhelm your culture, and the weekend regime isn't enough to restore your precious culture back to health and vigor. In that case, proceed on to Step 7:
7. If she's still setting the hooch layer in the wrong place or still smells off or is discolored, repeat steps 1-5. For badly sick or finicky cultures, you may need to try different brands of flour or water and repeat steps 1-5 until she comes out right, and that can take up to a week of washing and incubating every 8-10 hours.
Why yes, it does seem a bit excessive to hover over a culture for a week, setting your schedule by her feedings. Some cultures are worth it, though, for the sentimental value of the culture, for her unique flavor and characteristics, or because she's so old you would feel terribly guilty at killing her after all these centuries.
This is why I highly recommend drying a portion of your starter and vacuum sealing it against future need. Sometimes a culture gets so contaminated she can't be cured, and all you can do is wind the clock back to the earlier piece and branch off anew.
If you can store your dried cultures at a friend's house or even in a bank safe deposit box (cool, dark, dry), then you needn't worry about disasters depriving you of your cherished starter, either. Temperatures over 100º will kill your starter. An electrical failure while you're on vacation can end a promising culture in no time (and leave a smelly horrid mess to clean up).
A little TLC and a decent dried backup can make your relationship with your Yeast Beastie a healthy, happy, long-lasting one.
My Yeast Beasties:
Heika, my first sourdough Yeast Beastie, is the one I got from my home village baker in Germany that traces its lineage back to the 1680s. I use her for my daily graubrot and she does well in pancakes and sweet yeast cakes and cinnamon rolls. She has a light, mildly tangy flavor that has a bit of maple flavor to her.
Tri-Pliny is a young Roman yeast beast from Naples - he's only 6 years old - I got him in 2002. He makes a lovely ciabatta, a light flavorful but not really sour Italian loaf, and a tasty light pizza dough. I think he will mature well, but will always be a lightweight. He does best with the soft summer wheats and semolina flour. When he's mature, he's going to have a strong sour flavor, almost like the foam on a pale ale and he seems to be developing some olive-y overtones, maybe a touch briny.
Sunny is a Yukon culture I got from a biker I met at a Friends of the Library booksale - he said she was 150 years old. I've tried her in whole wheat and multigrain breads, and she does them well. She's a bit too vigorous for a white loaf and doesn't form a heavy crust, which makes her excellent for the chewier breads. Her flavor is assertive, more sweet than sour and leaves a tart aftertaste.
Onuri-Ufa is an Egyptian culture that purports to trace his lineage back about 4,000 years, the one that came from the archaeological dig at the Giza pyramid - he's kind of cranky and picky about his water and his care. He does best with kamut, barley, and older triticale wheats, but he's not too shabby with red winter wheat flour. His flavor is sour, beery, and a touch bitter.
Penelope is from my college days and came from Woodstock - I don't know how old she was when I got her or where she originated, so say she's about 50 years old, a real hippy of a culture. She's happy with almost any kind of grain, a complex sour flavor that stays on the winey, almost vinegarish, side. She has a lingering aftertaste that morphs from vinegarish to citrusy to a velvety sour creamish flavor.
Palekhsova from northern Russia dating back to the early 1800's, she loves having potato in her dough, and likes all kinds of vegetable doughs. She makes a lush tomato basil dough. Her flavor is tangy, tart, with a lingering creme fraiche type flavor, lighter and smoother than Penelope - sweetly sour and with a zing.
Quintina, a sourdough of Sicilian origin about 60 years old. She adores cornmeal, summer and winter wheats, barley, potato, and rice flours. She makes a lovely focaccia, an intense ricotta polenta, and a delightfully complex pannetone. Her flavor is a layered one and she seems to finally be reaching her mature flavors - a bit sharp with some prickles in but blending well with other flavors. She stands up well to both fruits and vegetables and can handle strongly flavored seasonings in the bread. She's the Yeast Beastie I use for holidays breads and ones filled with fruits, olives, and for making a meaty stromboli.
Beppe is the sourdough starter I killed through ignorance. Someday, I will go back to Italy and beg another starter from the baker where I got the original Beppe. Beppe was a doll of a starter, making the lightest, airiest pizza dough, crisp, with just a hint of olives and sun-drenched earthiness. I didn't make ciabatta back then, but I bet he'd have made an awesome ciabatta. I learned a lot about sourdough from him, and if I was as knowledgeable about sourdough then as I am today, he might not have died. If I'd known how to dehydrate him, I could have learned more and revived him, but I didn't.
I don't particularly like my San Francisco Yeast Beastie because he is too sour, too strong, and too dense. The crust is often tough if it's not handled right, and he's crankier than Onuri-Ufa when it comes to flour and water. He is very slow to rise and I rarely have time to deal with him and his dawdling ways, so my San Francisco Yeast Beast spends much of its time dehydrated and in the freezer. I haven't even named him yet.
Recipe:
No Knead Sourdough Bread
Produces one 1½ pound loaf
1 cup fully active sourdough culture
3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
1 cup water
1½ teaspoons salt
1. In a large bowl briefly combine sourdough culture, flour, water and salt. The consistency should be very firm and shaggy. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and proof 12-18 hours at about 70̊ F. At 70-75 degrees the bread leavens well and has the distinct sourness and flavor of sourdough. At more than 75 degrees the dough becomes too acidic which inhibits the wild yeast and leavens poorly. At much less than 70 degrees the dough leavens well but has a mild flavor.
2. After the 12-18 hour fermentation this is very sticky dough. Use a plastic spatula to ease it away from the edges of the bowl onto a lightly floured board. Sprinkle the surface with additional flour and let the dough rest 15 minutes or so.
3. With minimal handling and additional flour (not more than ¼ cup) form a ball which is placed directly in the baking container to rise and proofed until ready to bake, double in bulk (about 4 hours). The baking container can be almost any small covered pot (avoid willow baskets since the sticky dough is difficult to remove). If you want to pre-heat the pot for a crisper crust, put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in the oven as it preheats.
4. You can bake the dough in an oven and container both preheated to 450̊ for approximately 1 hour. (In which case you need to raise the sourdough in Step 3 in a cloth: Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned.) To obtain better oven spring place the risen dough in its open container in a cool oven, set the oven at 450̊, turn it on and bake for approximately 1 hour and 10 minutes.