
Where is everyone getting all of this sourdough starter? - gmalay
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pke4dm/where-is-everyone-getting-all-of-this-sourdough-starter-all-of-a-sudden
======
StrictDabbler
Literally from the yeast in the air?

The article acknowledges you can get it from the air but raises two
objections: it takes five days to do so and a new sourdough starter doesn't
have the full classic sourdough taste.

Ok? It still makes bread work.

It's a little sad to see a reporter using FUD to obscure one of the ingredient
sources that literally can't be hoarded, and pushing people toward visiting
their local pizza shops or whatever instead of staying in isolation.

~~~
jdoliner
> Literally from the yeast in the air?

Exactly, yeast is the original opensource technology.

~~~
wiredfool
It’s more likely that the yeast is on the flour already, as it’s going to be
more likely to be somewhere where there’s a food supply for it.

That’s likely why organic flour is better for starting, as it’s got less in
the way of microorganism inhibitors.

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ceejayoz
> You can make your own starter, but it will be weak and basically tasteless
> for about 5-7 years. We sell verified OLD starters.

Is there science on this? My March 2nd starter is plenty flavorful and
pungent. You throw away (or find another use for) virtually all of it daily,
so it seems an odd claim; after a couple days the original starter cells are
basically at homeopathic levels of concentration.

~~~
wiredfool
Old starters are good enough that no one has given up on them because they
suck.

Personally, I’ve tried sourdough a couple of times, never gotten the starters
to really work (despite having done tons of other bread). I’m trying it again
now, but I’m kickstarting the starter with pickle brine (not vinegar, the
actual lactic fermented brine). There’s some bacterial activity, but it’s too
soon to tell if it’s going to work.

But in the meantime, I’ve got a yeast starter going from my last commercial
yeast, because I’m out of yeast and so was the store. It’s been going a week
now, and it’s working reasonably well, and even getting a bit sour, with none
of the problems of weak rising that you can get from a more pure sourdough
culture.

~~~
karatestomp
My couple tries, the bread hasn’t risen well, the starter takes up fridge
space, flavor’s not great, and the damn thing wastes tons of flour if I’m not
using it nearly every day. I’ve put it in the “maybe when I’m retired” pile
and will keep making very decent bread with dry active yeast in the meantime.

~~~
chihuahua
I'm not sure if keeping it in the fridge leads to a good starter, at least
initially. I'd let it sit on the counter for the first week or so, to give it
a chance to develop.

~~~
karatestomp
This’d be _yet another_ topic on which everyone has very different “definitely
the right way” advice, too, which isn’t helping. Though I have started them on
the counter, it’s just after that they have to go in the fridge if you don’t
want to waste flour on them every single day, apparently, and even then
they’re still very hungry. Throwing out flour hurts when I know I could have
made something good with it. I’ve tried recipes to use up “waste” starter
without having to make bread with it, but it was still more effort than doing
the same thing with other ingredients and the flavor was... poor.

------
wiredfool
That article has a new anti-reader mode feature I haven’t seen before —
there’s an unrelated article on whiskey stones in the reader mode, while the
real article is on sourdough.

~~~
morsch
Don't worry, just open the ("related") article about Dalgona coffee[1] and
enable reader mode to get the sourdough article. Obviously!

[1] [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bvgbk8/people-all-over-
th...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bvgbk8/people-all-over-the-world-
are-making-frothy-dalgona-coffee-thanks-to-quarantine)

~~~
wiredfool
Ah. That’s perfectly user hostile,

~~~
cjhopman
Why would you even think to blame the site for that? It's almost certainly a
problem with the reader mode you are using.

~~~
woodrowbarlow
if this is the only site that exhibits this bizarre behavior, it seems
perfectly reasonable to hypothesize that the site is responsible.

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geofft
Don't you literally make sourdough starter out of thin air? Why would you get
it _from_ somewhere in the age of social distancing?

I would have assumed that the answer is people are leaving flour and water out
(and I'm sort of thinking of doing so, myself), so I'm surprised that the
conclusion of this article is that they're actually getting it from somewhere.
My goal isn't to make the tastiest sourdough, my goal is to have bread at home
without leaving the house. (And I don't have any yeast.)

~~~
gorgoiler
Thin air, but I believe also whatever was living in the flour and bran one
uses to make the starter mix.

Flour meal naturally contains a lot of yeast and bacteria.

------
throwaway5752
There are tons of great bread making resources. A beginner is really well
served at King Arthur:

Creating a starter: [https://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2012/04/05/creating-
you...](https://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2012/04/05/creating-your-own-
sourdough-starter-the-path-to-great-bread)

Maintaining a starter:
[https://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2012/04/08/maintaining-...](https://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2012/04/08/maintaining-
your-sourdough-starter-food-water-and-time)

and the remainder of the starter-specific articles under the tag
[https://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/tag/sourdough-
starter](https://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/tag/sourdough-starter)

Anyone starting out should also try a no-knead preparation. The NY Times's
recipe is famous: [https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/11376-no-knead-
bread](https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/11376-no-knead-bread)

If you have a large enough dutch oven with a lid, those trap steam and you
don't have to have a tray of water in the oven.

~~~
ceejayoz
I can't recommend the book Flour Water Salt Yeast enough.

It's written in a way that really appeals to my analytical mind, and it took
me only a couple tries to wind up with really amazing bread.

------
ChuckMcM
Heh, my wife has some sourdough starter that she got from her Mom who got it
from here Mom etc. It's like pre-civil war sourdough starter. Except that like
anything that grows it evolves over time. So I presume it picks up local yeast
as it grows and eventually becomes a "local" variant. I find it particularly
interesting that different starters make for bread that tastes different.

If you are bored you can do the same thing we did which is to take your
ingredients and make loaves from different people's sourdough starter. All the
same ingredients except for the starter and experience that for yourself.

~~~
mabbo
> I presume it picks up local yeast as it grows and eventually becomes a
> "local" variant

I had a funny experience of exactly this recently.

I got a starter from a friend a year ago and have been feeding it and using it
regularly since. But recently, my father had some health issues and I had to
go live with my parents for a couple weeks to help out, back in the small
rural town they live in. I took my starter with me, and made a couple loafs of
bread for my parents, feeding while I was living with them.

But when I got home, my starter was _different_. I grows way faster now. It's
much more active. It seems to generate a lot more CO2 than before.

I suspect during my visit, my starter picked up a new strain of yeast which
has joined the ecosystem in my jar. And it's made for some great bread.

~~~
modo_
I read the book Sourdough by Robin Sloan a few months back. Your anecdote
reminds me of it! You might enjoy reading it -- it's a fun/quirky mix of
technology and bread, set in SF.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33916024-sourdough](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33916024-sourdough)

~~~
Urgo
+1 for the Robin Sloan novel. I really enjoyed it as well and it was actually
the first thing I thought of when I saw this story posted.

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bmohlenhoff
My wife created a starter from scratch last year using only water, honey,
flour, and raisins. I think the recipe was similar to this
([http://www.bellarminemagazine.com/making-your-own-
sourdough-...](http://www.bellarminemagazine.com/making-your-own-sourdough-
starter/)). It has since churned out a loaf or two on a weekly basis (and the
discard turns into pizza dough.)

My ability to remain in ketosis is apparently indirectly proportional to the
availability of delicious fresh sourdough bread.

------
calibas
It's a living culture of bacteria and yeast, it grows exponentially when given
enough food. So long as you've got flour and water you can make as much as you
want.

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geuis
For the curious, here’s the simple instructions for growing your own starter.

Everything should be measured in grams for ease of use.

When baking bread, everything is done using the bakers percentage. All this
means is that all ingredients are measured in relation to the total amount of
flour being used. If you’re using 100g of flour, then at 75% hydration you add
75g of water. Note that to be super precise when you get more experienced, you
want to include the amount of flour and water in the starter used in the loaf,
but when getting started it doesn’t matter.

Use bread flour specifically. All purpose flour doesn’t seem to have what the
yeast and lactobacilli need. It can grow, but the resulting starter is weak
and prone to getting mold infections easier.

For a period of a week, each day mix an equal amount of flour and water by
weight. I always use 100g of water and 100g of flour. This is considered 50%
hydration.

On each day, throw out 90% of the mixture from the previous day. You aren’t
wasting anything. The flour from the day before has been eaten up.

Weigh the remaining starter (20g in this example). Then weigh out 90g of water
and 90g of flour. Mix all of these together.

One thing I’m trying to get across is maintaining a consistent total weight,
200g in this example.

After 5-7 days of repeating this process, you will have a healthy starter
culture where the predominant microorganism culture is wild yeast and
lactobacilli. These two work together symbiotically. The yeast eat the flour
and excrete things the lactobacilli eat. In return, the LB excrete lactic acid
which gives the bread the sour taste and works to suppress other bacteria and
molds from growing.

Use and maintenance:

Once you have a healthy starter, you change the ratio of water to flour when
feeding it.

When baking, you generally want a starter that is 75-80% hydration vs the 50%
used during initially growing it. All this means is that after baking for the
day or if you’re just feeding the starter daily to maintain it, you take the
10% of yesterday’s starter and add it to a mix of 100g of flour and 75g of
water.

I always bake my sourdough at 75% hydration and maintain the starter at the
same ratio. It makes the math easier and the bread comes out fine.

After a lot of experimentation I eventually locked in a recipe that has my
specific amounts, so I don’t have to do the math every time.

If anyone wants my bread recipe, leave a comment here and I’ll add it later.
Don’t have my book in front of me right now.

~~~
happytoexplain
>If you’re using 100g of flour, then at 75% hydration you add 75g of water

>I always use 100g of water and 100g of flour. This is considered 50%
hydration.

Well, which is it? :)

~~~
geuis
Gotta read the whole thing

> When baking, you generally want a starter that is 75-80% hydration vs the
> 50% used during initially growing it. All this means is that after baking
> for the day or if you’re just feeding the starter daily to maintain it, you
> take the 10% of yesterday’s starter and add it to a mix of 100g of flour and
> 75g of water.

I’m describing two different parts of the process. 50% hydration is for
growing the starter from scratch. 75% is for maintenance and baking.

~~~
happytoexplain
I wasn't referring to the difference in values, but the difference in meaning
- though I could be misunderstanding, you appear to be defining "hydration"
both as an exclusive percentage (75 water + 100 flour = 75%) and an inclusive
percentage (100 water + 100 flour = 50%).

Edit: Nevermind, just saw your correction!

------
mmastrac
This didn't seem to be mentioned in the above article, but you can get yeast
from fruit - preferably pre-dried:

[https://twitter.com/shoelaces3/status/1244252079041974272](https://twitter.com/shoelaces3/status/1244252079041974272)

> Scour your kitchen for any dried fruit: grapes, raisins, prunes, apricots.
> Fresh fruit works too, but it's best to leave it unwashed, and given our
> current situation this is probably not a wise thing to do unless you've
> grown the fruit yourself and trust it.

> Take your fruit (or, if using fresh fruit skins--please use your judgmenet),
> pop it into a jar, and add a little bit of water to it. 2 or 3 tablespoons
> (30-40 mL) is more than enough. If you stir the fruit around, you'll notice
> the water gets slightly cloudy. That's the yeast!

------
akeck
The Pineapple Juice solution: [http://www.thefreshloaf.com/10901/pineapple-
juice-solution-p...](http://www.thefreshloaf.com/10901/pineapple-juice-
solution-part-2)

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zabil
Some of these starters have interesting names. A bread maker gave me one
called "California gold rush". He also had another, rather grimly named,
"Black death". It's from those times.

However, I don't think the yeast will remain that old as we feed it with flour
which has it's own yeast culture so eventually everything gets mixed up.

~~~
chihuahua
I wonder if there is going to a misguided arms race of extreme sourdough, just
like there was for craft beer (and hot sauce) "Oh your IPA has 120 IBUs?
That's cute, mine has 150IBUs. Booyah!"

------
chihuahua
Flour is difficult to buy in some areas. It seems that lots of people have
suddenly started making bread. I wonder how long they will keep doing it.
What's interesting is how few online stores have the ability to show only
things that are in stock. We never thought this would be a useful feature.

~~~
shade
What I've personally found frustrating: I'm looking for things (yeast and
flour) that I know will be back in stock eventually; it would be nice if sites
would let me backorder it so I can get into the queue for when they have stock
again rather than having to check on it constantly.

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haunter
I got natural yeast from my local bakery. People buy less bread and such so
they still have a lot of yeast they won't use and the shelf life is only 20-30
days so they started selling the yeast they buy wholesale. Huge 2kg brick.
Used a bit but put the rest in the freezer.

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bhouston
I started on this last week as well.

Seemed like something you can do with simple ingredients and time, and well
I've got lots of time to feed a starter twice a day. It actually is growing
well.

We'll have to see if it works well once it is made into bread.

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tmaly
I bought 2 pounds of active dry yeast a few weeks back. I just pulled out the
bread machine I had for over a decade and made a loaf with my daughter. She
had a ton of fun adding the ingredients.

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girzel
If you're in Seattle (ideally near the University District), I'd be happy to
share some of my very healthy starter. Leave a window open and I'll huck it
in.

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yumraj
Has anything tried kickstarting their starter using yogurt? Perhaps a little
yeast and yogurt to speed things up??

~~~
dragonwriter
> Has anything tried kickstarting their starter using yogurt?

Why would you kickstart a yeast (fungus) culture by giving it competing
organisms (bacterial cultures) from yogurt?

~~~
yumraj
That is where the sourness in sourdough comes from. sourdough starter has a
balance of yeast and bacteria.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sourdough](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sourdough)

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BooneJS
I lack wheat and rye flour, otherwise I’d have made a starter by now.

------
zenpaul
I can relate! I started my SourDough starter SanDy a week and a half ago and
have made a couple of great loaves since then. I'm on my way to the store
tonight for more flour.

