Stop Wasting Time & Flour Maintaining A Sourdough Starter. This Strategy is Way Better
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- čas přidán 14. 01. 2022
- It's time to stop wasting so much time and money on the way we feed our sourdough starters. There is a cheaper, easier, and more effective way. No more discard! If you bake sourdough relatively often this method will slot into your baking schedule easily.
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A big thanks to Jack over on his channel where I first saw this method.
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#sourdoughbaking - Jak na to + styl
You can dry your sourdough to always have a back up. Take some 50g of active starter, spread it thinly in parchment paper, and let it dry at room temp until it becomes super dry, then crush it and store it in a tight sealed jar. It can last years.
Would you mind outlining what you do when you go back to use that dry starter?
@@tracyparks533 I grind my dried up starter to sort of flour, then add some flour (the hart bit take ages to dissolve), and then add 100% water. The amount of dried up stater does not really matter, more is faster and less is slower.
So cool
I don't have a sour dough starter. I really wish I could buy some of this dried sour dough starter!! Someone should market it, the same way as packaged yeast! It would make it a lot easier for some of us (ok "me") who are just learning or don't bake a lot!! When I get the time or urge to bake bread, I can't wait a week or 2 to make a starter for it!
I did that in 2010 and restarted the dried out starter in March 2020 and it is still working great. I stored it in my freezer in a plastic bag.
I had a starter kept in the fridge unfed for 3 years. Took it out, fed it and it came back to life. Save your flour and just revive your starter before your next bake.
For occasional bakers, the absolute easiest thing to do: dry it out and freeze it. I just used some 27 month-old starter and it worked perfectly. Just make a batch of starter, let it rise until it's at its peak, then spread it out onto parchment paper, put another parchment on top, and roll it out until it's tissue-paper thin. Unpeel the two parchment papers, and let it completely dry. It should flake off in chunks. Crush that down into as fine a powder as you can get, bag it and freeze it. When you're ready to bake, just pull out however much you need to make a batch of new starter (5-10 grams starter powder + fresh flour + water) and you're off to the races. Your starter will never grow mold, you don't have to worry about feeding, and you'll have scads and scads of starter for the rest of your life.
Cheers!
About how much water and flour do you add to the said 5-10 grams of starter powder?
@@alexanderkempf9828 You'll want to hydrate it back to the same percentage that your starter normally is. I use whole wheat flour, so it's 100% hydration for me. Ie, 10 grams of starter power + 10 grams of water + however much flour and water you use for your levain.
How about sugar and salt for the bread?
@@siewheilou399 I use standard baker's percentages for sourdough bread. Lately, I've only been doing 50% whole wheat, so my recipe is 50% whole wheat, 50% bread flour, 85% water, 20% starter, 2% salt. The percentages are all by weight of the total flour in the dough.
Yes! I keep mine in the fridge, nearly empty, just "scrapings" as you say. Take it out a day before using it, and feed it exactly how much I plan to use for the bake. No extra feeding, just use it and back into the fridge. No discard ever, lasts for a month or more. Starter going strong now 7 years later.
Same here. Best no waste method
Wow!! Great idea!
How did you create your first sour dough stater? Most methods use alot of flour.
@@marlenepopos12 There’s a method using raisins and honey and water which ferments, then you strain the “wine” into some flour and that’s all it is! Got the recipe from a cookbook by a baker lady in New York City.
@@marlenepopos12 Day One of my new starter consisted of mixing 9 g of whole wheat flour (that I ground myself) with 9 g of water and putting it in the smallest container I owned. Why does King Arthur do it differently? Really?
my great grandmother before the time of fridges, rubbed flour into some sour dough (remnants after baking) and kept these sour crumbs in jar covered with
cloth in meat safe🔥🔥
I had my starter in the back of my fridge for approximately 4 years. There was about a 1/2" in the jar. Turned into about 50/50 liquid and solid. When I fed it as an experiment before throwing it away it can right back to life. Doubled in size in a few hours. I was blown away!
My mom's been doing that for 50+ years ❤
I second this! Mine stayed healthy in the fridge for 4 years including a move halfway across the country. I also have some dried in the pantry stored in a jar near my commercial yeast.
*edit to add that it had not been opened or fed or thought about for 4 years
I am a very old woman (85 yrs!) who is a very NEW sourdough wannabe! Your advice on maintaining my new starter is so helpful. I thought it was requiring a lot of flour to keep my starter going. Your advice about using small amounts of flour sounds good!
I’m pleased you found the information helpful. I hope you enjoy baking sourdough
I love that you're still trying new things at 85!
You’re a very YOUNG 85❤
You're not old til you're at least 89!❤
Hope you are still doing well and baking up a storm.
Yes, I use this method for the last couple years and have let scrapings go for a couple months no problem. Worst case scenario you might have to feed twice if it sits too long. My starter is 27 years old and very strong though.
omg 27 years old! That's amazing :)
_"My starter is 27 years old and very strong though."_
Wow. It's part of the family.
That's amazing.
Wow! That's an adult child. Did you name it?
Wow - impressive!
Have you tried the "old dough" or levain technique? Townsends channel spoke about how people used to keep old dough in dried form that keeps for years like a piece of thick cookie. Just crumble and mix with water to reactivate it. Could be a good experiment for long term storage.
Also Towsends spoke how in ancient times people use unwashed dough bowl continuously as it cause the bread to rise but they can't explain it. Like how in the book of Exodus in Bible they spoke of how they had to eat unleavened bread because they have no access to the dough bowl. It is in a way, the scraping method.
I bake with Einkorn and learned to use a stiff starter and make a levain for most of her recipes. That is normal to me. It isn't as stiff as a cookie but you can adjust up or down with ease. This feeding a starter daily and getting buried in it is wasteful and a bit nuts to me lol. I leave it up to 3 weeks just because I bake a lot (and pizza dough uses 60 grams) but it could go months, I have no doubt
I love your Bible reference. I am going to research this a bit more. I study the scriptures (both the Bible and the Book of Mormon), but I had never closely considered the concept of bread as you are sharing here. I am going to go watch the video you are referencing if I can find it because I can see some amazing spiritual analogies as well as bread history!
I saw on another video that you can put it on the dehydrator or freeze the starter, but I haven't experimented myself yet.
Thank you for your comment. :)
I think I found the video you are referencing. :) czcams.com/video/8J1PNDnqsfA/video.html
For long periods of not baking simply freeze you starter in ice cube trays and pack the cubes in a plastic bag afterword.
What a super great idea
This past year I didn't bake for over 7 months, I kept my starter on the fridge the whole time and did not feed it. I was afraid to take it out and feed it but I did and it was completely fine!
I've been using a modified version of Bake With Jack's system for about 3 years now. I often run experiments with my starter and have used as little as 3 grams of scraping to create four wonderful 850g loaves.
I've also recently brought back to life 65g of a neglected uncovered, and dried out starter that was left in the back of my fridge for 5 months following a motorcycle accident that left me unable to bake for a time.
My approach is always of minimalist ways and I'm never precise in my measure of ingredients. I'm relying on the feel of the dough when I mix it. My results are always fine.
Simple is best, is my motto.
My starter is now 2 years old. I don't feed it regularly, I often run it down to almost nothing and then pull it back up. I often bake with unfed starter if there is enough in the jar and then just feed the leftovers. I have found the starter has got stronger by doing this. I love having some starter in case I want quick flatbreads, or to use in a cake. Starter is about so much more than bread. Crumpets, english style muffins made quickly amongst other things. I love having a sourdough starter, one of the best things I did in lockdown.
I dehydrated several trays of fed starter at 95 degrees, and store it in a sealed jar. Rehydrate @100%, feed and rest overnight and it’s ready to go. I can easily share starter this way and I’ll never run out. Anytime I need to replenish the stock of dried stuff I feed the active starter to the desired volume, wait for peak activity and dehydrate more. If your starter is very sticky, thin it out to pourable consistency with water. Since all of that water will evaporate anyway it doesn’t matter how much you start with - it just makes it easier to pour/spread onto the trays. Crepe batter is about te consistency I find easiest to work with.
This is exactly what I do. You barely need any starter in order to make a new batch. All you need is the live culture. I also never refrigerate mine. Sometimes I let my starter sit on the counter for days on end without feeding it, and let it ferment until it looks putrid, then I discard that and use the scrapings to start a new batch, and I swear it makes the starter tastier and stronger. My theory is that putting it under stress by almost killing it off actually makes it stronger and actually gives it more time for new cultures to develop. When my batch of starter is fully active, I play calming music for it, in hopes that the musical vibrations alter the crystalline structure of the water molecules in the starter, therefore making a more structured bond in the dough. All theories, but it's super fun to experiment. Thanks for the videos!
Wtf are saying sourdough starters are saiyans?
@@miming3679 they're saying live organisms react to sound
Nice one thanks for sharing, what doesn't kill you ....
I've maintained the same starter for a couple years now. I don't even measure. Like you, I leave a couple tablespoons in the jar after making bread, throw in some water and flour, stir it up and throw it in the fridge. When I'm ready to bake, I pull it out of the fridge, (it doesn't even look very active) make up a batch and bake. I've had very consistent beautiful and delicious loaves every time. I credit Elly's everyday sourdough channel! I think we make it too hard and fussy when it's really not.
Thank you for the link to Elliy's. I appreciate it!
I've done the scrapings method for a while now since seeing Jack do it. I'd left a jar of scrapings in the fridge and forgot about it for over a month. It had dried out but I added a little water and shook the jar, left it for an hour to rehydrate it. I then fed it and it had almost doubled in size in 24 hours. After one more feed it was healthy and ready to use again. I was amazed and the bread was just as good as previous loaves.
I've left my scrapings that I fed with 10 grams of flour and 10 grams of water, mixed it up and sprinkled a tiny bit of flour on top and left it in my frige unfed for 4 months. I then feed it 2xs at room temperature and it's ready to bake again. A German lady told me about the "sprinkle a little flour on top" method. The starter will start to smell like cinnammon & works great & no waste.
You can freeze a blob of it and revive it when you're in a baking mood. It takes about two days to get a good batch going from frozen.
I do the same thing with my milk kefir grains. I freeze some in the milk kefir and take out of the freezer when I need it. Works great!
I had a sourdough starter that I forgot to feed for like 6 months in the fridge due to work-related depression, and after 2 feedings it was pretty much back in shape.
You can freeze sourdough starter in an airtight container for up to a year without damaging the starter. You don't have to feed the sourdough starter while it's frozen
Funny you should mention... I have been thinking about trying my hand at baking and I ran across a video on Jon Townsend's 18th century cooking channel where he makes a "bacteria bread" that is kind of a sourdough without the need for a starter. One simply mixes flour salt and water into a dough and let's it sit for at least 20 hours before baking. I like simple so I like the idea. As long as you know you will need it a day or two in advance it sounds like a good approach.
Love your info here. Over the years I have learned that a good starter needs little to no maintenance. Just two days ago I took out a jar of starter from the back of my fridge that i have neglected for almost one year. It had an inch of brown hooch at the top. I smelled it and it was good, no mold or anything funny on it. I poured off the brown hooch, mixed it up and gave it a quarter cup flour and same amount of water. After a while it had some more hooch rise to the top, I poured that off and fed it again. It developed hooch again but very little so again I poured it off and fed it. I left it on my counter over night and it was beautiful and bubbly in the morning. Basically under the hooch the yeast had gone dormant having nothing to eat. Yeast is pretty hard to kill. The only problem you can run into, is if some how mold spores get into it, but that becomes pretty obvious not only by the obnoxious smell but dark brown or black patches. Then you discard the whole thing. So I have learned that if you have a good strong starter to begin with, it will not fail you in the long run. I am not suggesting leaving it unattended for a year of course, but I am trying to let people know that this new idea of constantly feeding and discarding is unrealistic. You should not be discarding any of it. I come from an eastern European background. In the villages women made bread in large wood basins. After shaping the five or six loves of bread, they would scrape the left over scraps from the bottom of the basin and keep that for the next batch of bread. Some women left it in the basin and pored warm water to dissolve for the next batch. There is no need whatsoever to discard so much good flour. The only time it is acceptable is when you first make your sourdough starter.
Big word, this is basically how some starters stayed in the family for century or two and became sort of legendary, were spoken about on how good their family bread was.
We usually bake sourdough twice a week, keeping about 100 g in the fridge at any given time. The night before we bake, we use 80 to make the 250 to 300 g needed for that day's baking and the other 20 gets a feeding to make 100 g, which goes back in the fridge in the morning. A piece of tape with the last feeding date on it serves as a reminder if we skip baking, but even after two weeks the starter still acts OK.
Six YEARS of being FREE from the sourdough regiment! Got sooooo TIRED of fitting MY schedule around sourdough baking; the dread, knowing I NEEDED to use the starter and hating the waste, if i didn't. Elly's Everyday taught me the LAID BACK style of bread making she's been using for years. About a TABLESPOON of leftover starter, and a little water and flour. No scales, no real measuring. And uses it straight from the fridge,..No wait. And whole grains, also.
Just buy fresh bread.
@@Hahahahaaahaahaa store bought bread is trash vs making it at home
I've been using Bake with Jack's method for nearly 3 years now. I've neglected my starter for a couple of MONTHS to the point where it has an alcoholic hooch puddling on the surface. I just stirred it back in so as to not throw off my water to flour ratio... it becomes liquidy in appearance but that's only because of the breakdown of the gluten strands. It does not change the water to flour ratio. Anyhoo...I took 20g of neglected, starving starter and added 60g of flour and 60g of water. About 18 hours later, and viola! It was ready to go! It performed rather well, too!
Good to verify what I’ve been doing for awhile. Discard and feed, what a waste. I’ve been been baking with SD off & on for 50 plus years. Always ready to learn new tricks. My hold is a 50g (50/50) mix. Baking bread weekly but other stuff too. SD breads are mold resistant in comparison to regular breads so I adapt many recipes to SD.
Always thought the daily feeding idea was crazy and I think it puts off a lot of people start baking sourdough breads. I have about a cup of starter that sits in the fridge. Currently bake once a week and if on holiday, I may not bake for 3-4 weeks. Before I refresh the starter, I take it out of the fridge to get to room temperature, for about 8 hours, and refresh using a tablespoon of this with 100% water. Always get a nice bubbling starter - how long it takes is most influenced by the temperature is my experience. I make sure there is about a tablespoon leftover to join the mother in the fridge and if I didn't refresh for longer, I usually make a bit extra.
The "required maintenance" of sourdough starter was the most significant barrier to sourdough for me for way too long. I wish I knew this years ago.
Discovered this out of pure laziness. My Starter went 2 months in the fridge, wasn't a problem. Scoop the grey shit off the top, take a teaspoon from the bottom of the Jar. I make about 200 gram of starter and bake with 150. So 50 gram stays in the fridge.
If you leave the jar with scrapings open it will quickly dry out. Then store it in a cupboard.
Takes longer to get ready to bake but no risk of mould
My sourdough jar was cleaned out recently, but luckily not washed. Just added 15g flour, 30g water, took 2 hours more than usual, but came back strong as ever. This video is spot on! Too many crap methods out there!
It's amazing how resilient they are
Okay I watched this video which compelled me to watch a few more of your videos. I’ve been making sourdough for about 7 years (using the same starter! It’s like a family pet now). I have one tried and true recipe but it has olive oil in it and my husband is okay but not in love with the taste and texture of the bread (means more for me!). I have tried one or two other recipes that just didn’t work out so I was leery trying your recipe but thought what the heck let’s give it a go. The feeding the scrapings of the starter is genius! Since I have plenty of my old faithful in the fridge I use your technique by putting about a tablespoon of our ”pet” in with your measurements. Perfection! And your recipe yields a loaf my husband can’t get enough of! He said you should know it has “Saved our marriage” (which isn’t true because we’ve been married forever and I can’t get rid of him!).
I leave the "scrapings" in a ball on the bottom of a jar and just put a lot of flour on top of it, and stick it in the fridge. I can leave it in there for months. When I want to use it, I feed it the day before I plan to use it, and feed it again a few hours before use. Then when I've prepared my dough, I stick another tablespoon ball in the jar and cover it with flour, back in the fridge for next time.
Do you leave the sourdough out of the fridge the day before you bake?
@@lilianatimofte64 yes, otherwise the starter continues to stay mostly dormant
Good show, this is what I've been doing since I started because I thought the whole feeding/discarding routine is nuts and fortunately it comes organically to some people. Down with discarding forever! I don't keep scrapings I just keep literally whatever is left. I do ZERO, I mean ZERO calculations as to how much is within the tub when I feed it and because it's always between 1-20gr or thereabouts it doesn't really matter for this kind of scale of baking. Maybe it would matter if it was in the 100s but at this scale it makes negligible difference. I don't care and it doesn't matter and it shouldn't matter to people either. This perpetuation of insane feeding and discarding habits that people reproduced like parrots has been a big bugbear of mine. I keep my starter in the fridge permanently, it can stay there for weeks and months. You just mix the hooch back and feed it and it comes back to life.
Good to know. I kind of figured this was the case when I heard a story about how pioneers supposedly used sourdough starter as mortar to plug holes in their wooden cabins in the winter and when they wanted to make bread they would chip away some of the harden dried mortar/dough to start it up again.
I completely agree. The common method uses so many unnecessary steps. I also never ever make calculations with my starter. I just throw in a few spoonfuls of flour and some splashes of warm filtered water and stir it up. I noticed the better I incorporate the ingredients, the faster the starter peaks. If I want a slower activation period I would not incorporate the ingredients as well. Less or more water will affect peak times of the starter as well.
I always get angry at sourdough instructions and recipes that keep telling you to throw away half and that that is really neccesary for a good starter. BS! Just start with less. Don’t throw away food for no reason. They wouldn’t even think of doing that if flour and water weren’t so cheap, or if they had to grind their own flour or walk to the well.
And all the precise calculations and weighing. Yeast does not do math. Don’t worry. Eyeball half/half.
Only thing you can never be cheap with when it comes to breadmaking is time.
And if you really believe you need to discard half your sourdough all the time: don’t throw it away. Make some pancakes.
Love You. Right on the money, no frills!
How do you start a small batch to do this method? I always get discouraged with the feeding and the timing and the measurements. Thanks!
I agree with you. Watched bunch of channels, read all these books, what a waste when I am only going to bake once or twice a week. Then I started putting my small jar in the fridge and have kept in there. Take some starter from it, feed it couple of times and bake. Some people make sourdough baking look over complicated. I use Bake with Jack's knead on wet counter top method, so easy.
Cheers Bobby, I'm pretty busy so I like to keep things as streamlined as possible. I haven't seen his wet countertop method.
You don't have to have so much sourdough on hand, bubbling away at the room temperature. Just have on hand enough to make the next loaf (or loaves) of bread. For example, one can keep 25g of sourdough starter (kept from the previous bake), add 100g of flour and 100g of water, and let it double at room temperature. Use 200g of this for your bake, which should be enough for 3 850g finished loaves. Then you'd keep the remaining, 25g, amount for the next bake. I keep my starter in this way in the fridge several weeks sometimes until I bake again.
Thank you, thank you. I stayed away from making sourdough because of the discard & maintenance. So excited to try your efficient process. Blessings
It's pretty straightforward Barbara, I think you'll enjoy it
Same here. I wanted to learn sourdough bread making few years ago, but the flour waste got to me and I stopped. I'm glad to learn that there's another way. Thanks for sharing.
I'm just getting started with sourdough. I'm so glad I found this video. I hate being on a hamster wheel where I can't stop a project. Apparently, when God created yeast for us, he didn't expect us to be the slave of the yeast.
Nice content! I've been known to feed my starter & then refrigerate it for upwards to 4-6 months before I use, re-feed & refrigerate it again. It's worked for me for decades this way. Of course now I'm back to baking bread every day so even though I still refrigerate it, I make it by the quart and pull sufficient amounts out the night before I need it. Btw, you'll know your sourdough starter is potent if you drop a tsp into a little dish of water & it floats. If it sinks, it still needs more time to ferment.
Does it not go bad in that time? I could have introduced some bad bacteria in mine, but I fed my big starter and left it in the fridge. For a month it sat in the fridge, and it ended up smelling really sour+ had grey juice on top.
Yes me also mine just never wants to die lol, I've left it for months before and a spoonful put in a fresh jar and fed bang it's up n running within hours, mines very active and strong it's around 15 years old now.
Wow!!! Thank you for sharing this.
I've developed a method over the past few years of making one large no-knead loaf per week (after it cools I cut it in half and freeze half of it). I use a single larger jar for the starter and keep a few ounces of leftover starter. The afternoon (late) before I bake I feed the jar flour and water so that it's just under half full. By about 9:30 it is doubled in size. I use about a cup for my bread dough and a half cup for a sourdough pancake batter. I put the remaining starter back in the fridge and leave the dough and the batter overnight on the counter. I form my loaf and make pancakes while it rises. Practically no waste, and I'm only feeding it once a week.
Also, I'll occasionally feed the starter mid week and use that batch to make pretzels, pizza dough or bagels (these work well if the starter is in the "discard" phase).
I’m new to sourdough and after a few loaves I’ve discovered I can leave 40 grams-ish of starter in the fridge and bring it out and feed it make a loaf and put about 40 grams back in fridge. No discard ever. My starter works great!
That's what I do ... I keep about 3 ounces in the fridge and feed it when I need it.
Mine is 5 years old. I bake bread (buns, mostly) or make pancakes/waffles every other week or so.
Bake with Jack is awesome. I use the scraping method. I have left my starter (Floyd now 2yrs old) for up to 2 months in my fridge. I take him out pour off any hooch on top and add water and flour. Boom back to life to make great bread. Sourdough rocks!!! P.s. your Channel is great 👍. Thanks for the video.
Cheers Dr Evoy!
I am a newbie and I would not do this crazy discard ever.
Keep mine in the fridge and feed before I bake.
My schedule is too irregular.
Glad more people "come to their senses "and don't throw such treasures away 😊
I use the discard from feeding as flavor in biscuits. (Edit: I know this is cooking, but it's faster cooking that can be more easily worked into a busy schedule.) Gives them a nice punch. Equal parts discard and flour by weight measured into a measuring up. 10-20% butter to flour by weight. 1 tsp baking powder per cup of dough. Enough water or milk for the style of biscuits you want.
To store the starter, the scrapings method is simple and PERFECT. I learnt about it 4-5 years ago from "Bake with Jack" and it became my standard procedure.
To develop a sourdough starter without wasting a bunch of flour there is a method called "reto cucharilla" by Spanish author Ybán Yarza. Just for fun I tried it. By the 3rd day there was some activity and a few days later it was a beautiful bubbly/spongy mini-starter. It requires 1 teaspoon of flour to begin with and an extra 1 teaspoon every day.
Love your work, brother!
I've had success feeding my starter and immediately putting it in the fridge. You could do the same with your scrapings, just give it a mini-feed, pop in the fridge so it doesn't exhaust, and that will keep it going. You can freeze some, too, as a backup.
Cheers Mrs. Patriot!
Our gabled house has a video about keeping the starter for longer (she learned it from her German mother). She makes sure to add flour on top of the starter, don’t mix , place in fridge then feed it the night before you’re ready to use. Btw thank you, thank you, thank you for simplifying the process for me, less stressful.
Amen! Bake with Jack taught me all about this!
I've used 5 lbs. of flour and just now passed the water test and put it in the fridge.
Hope it survives.
My first time.
I was told sour dough bread doesn't cause inflammation as bad as other breads.
I have arthritis.
I love bread and have been doing without.
It definitely makes a difference.
I definitely will be trying this
Thanks.
So good to hear your message! - I have a starter that is 14 years old. It is made from organic rye flour. I decided some years ago that I wasn't going to waste all that flour throwing it down the drain. So I've been using your method for some years now. The longest I've left the starter in the fridge is 6 weeks. When I've been away on holiday I've asked a couple of friends to also store some starter for me.-as an insurance - I've not had issues with the starter after 6 weeks!😀
If you want you can even store it with even less need to look after it.
Just dry it.
Take a spoon out of it (or all of it if you want) spread it nicely thin on a sheet of parchment paper and put it in the oven. Turn on the lamp (not the heat itself) in the oven and let it dry.
If your oven is capable of that, you can also turn the heat to 35*C/ 95*F
To speed up the process.
(But don't exceed 40*C/104*F, because the sourdough won't like it and might die)
Then either use your fingers or a mortar and pestle and make a nice thin power out of it.
Just put it in a jar, store it somewhere warm and dry and you can store it forever.
You can also use that technique to store some "emergency Sourdough" culture from your original sourdough mother culture incase something should happen to it. Similar to normal dry yeast.
To wake it up again you just need water and flour.
Depending on your the recipe you use and how much sourdough you need, after 1-4 days you have grown back your whole sourdough culture again.
Basically you can store it like that as long as you want. Even decades and ceturies, as long as it is kept dark, dry and sort of warm.
I started my sourdough bread journey with Bake With Jack, so I was happy to hear you reference him.
It’s true. You do not need to keep a lot of starter on hand. Just feed your scraps, and you are good to go.
Dried starter is not dead starter. There is a group, Carl’s Friends, that distributed samples of a family starter that dates back to the Oregon Trail. They Ship out about an ounce of dried starter, which can be added to flour and water to create a new batch of starter.
I keep about 100 g in the fridge for up to 2 weeks, add 50 g of dark rye flour and 50 g of water the night before I bake , leave in the kitchen and have been doing this a few years now with no problems.
Admittedly, the problem of constant feeding is one of the reasons I have not baked Sourdough any more than I have. My work schedule is unpredictable and emergency calls often change plans with no time to respond, combined with an infrequent baking schedule and maintaining a starter was a chore I was not interested in. This method sounds like a great way to maintain a starter for the 1-2 weeks between Sourdough baking I would prefer. Thank you.
That scraping method from Bake With Jack helped me a lot also! It makes sourdough baking so much easier. Usually I bake every 2-3 days and the longest period without feeding was about one week so far and the starter was nice and active.
Truly BRILLIANT! Thank you so much! This is exactly the kind of information I need.
Massive appreciation here from a new baker .....im learning a lot from channels like yours
Cheers Total Clarity :)
Kept my scrapings in the fridge for over 7 months. Used it the other day to make a lovely rye sourdough bread, it is yum! Popped my scrapings from that back in the fridge. Agree, a huge thank you to Bake with Jack! He's the lad!
Top chap 👍
Amen! I only bake about every 3-5 weeks, so I feed my starter once weekly. BUT, only like 25g each of flour & water to 25g or less of week old starter. Yes, I toss about 50g of starter weekly down the drain. Waaaaay less than what I was wasting when I first started! Early on the morning that I'm going to bake, I make a levain by taking all the starter I have in my fridge and adding 150g water and 150g flour. I need 300g of levain to make my 2 loaves. So, I'm left with a little more than scrapings. What's left has been well fed & gets refrigerated 7 days before feeding again.
This is _so_ useful. I agree - I was using _far_ too much flour with my starter.
I’ve done this for the last few years. I found that I just couldn’t afford to keep feeding a starter. I thought that if the archeologists used a sourdough that was 3,000 years old and it worked then I could probably use my starter forever! Then Jack popped up on my CZcams recommendation and he showed that you only need to keep a few scrapings of sourdough to start a levain. Since ten I make a batch let it go in my quart jar and when it gets down to the bottom I just add ½ cup of distilled water and 1cup (imperial) of distilled water. Works a treat let it rise use some for sim more bread. Cover and put in the fridge. Now some folks like to start with a fresh jar every time… I’m happy using the same old jar. It looks a dog’s breakfast but it sure makes great bread!
Why distilled water? That seems a bizarre choice
@@mattymattffs Maybe he has well water, where the acidity levels are weird? My uncle lives like that(well water), they only use bottled water for drinking and cooking etc...
@@mattymattffs Many people have city water and it's treated with chlorine. This will kill your natural yeasts and bacteria in the starter. I have well water and use that with no issues. My starter is very active
@@mattymattffs you must not use tap water straight from the tap, being it is chlorinated and many other things that will kill the yeast. If you take a pint of water from the tap, let it rest on a counter for 24+ hrs it will dechlorinate itself, but I’d highly suggest running it through a filtered system like a zero water or the likes of, as an added security to get out some of the extra junk that they put into water. Happy bakin
So you add 1 1/2 cups of distilled water & no flour ?
Great video! I have used Bake With Jack's scrapings starter, and it worked fine, as yours did. Now however, I make a 300 gram starter, and will leave it at times in the fridge in excess of two months, and then feed it twice, back to back. It works really well, and no constant feeding!
I use a similar method. I got sick of all the silly schedules and routines. I just keep a small jar of starter in the fridge and when I want to make bread I take out a couple tablespoons and make my levain in a clean jar. Whenever my fridge starter is low I just add more flour and water. From time to time I transfer my fridge starter to a clean container to prevent mold from growing. My starter is super strong and survived being abandoned by me for nearly a year once. If your starter is good that stuff can take a beating and doesn’t need any of the fussiness.
I love this concept! I gave up previously due to so much discard! Will try again!
I have been using the scraping method for quite some time now and I love it! No fluor waste and I’m always ready to bake within 6-8 hours. Thanks for a great channel! 😃👍
I have made thousands of sourdough loaves over the last ten years for the local Farmers market and at other events. Quite by accident - a combination of fatigue and indolence - I discovered that starter can be completely dried out in the open air of the kitchen (without a lid - not ever!) and it will revive easily within one to two feeds. I keep a fraction (a smudge) in the bottom of a cheap plastic pot and just hydrate and feed it when I need it. So, my starter spends one week looking like a dried up river bed, the following week like a sponge like volcano! I start with less than 50 grams of the dried puzzle pieces and build it towards 10+ kilos within 5 days. To be perfectly clear to all would-be novice bakers, there is no need to be precious about any of the process, just run the right feed cycle (10-12 hours) with the right mix of water and flour (50/50, or something close) and use the starter on the up cycle of its growth (9-12 hours) and you will have fantastic bread!! N.B. Never put your starter in the fridge unless you live in a tropical zone, and even then just for holding or retarding it. If you don't need to then just don't, though summer in temperate zones can test your timing - just cycle it earlier!
😀👌🙏🌟
gamechanger!! thank you for your excellent videos and valuable tips
my goto is using a stiff starter, keeping it at 50% hydration allows the starter to remain strong for a long time. Also just keep like 20 grams worth of starter at time is the best way I've found. Since it's a stiff starter it only requires like 1 or 2 feedings to get to full force and it'll stay that way for multiple days,
Thank you sir for your incredible work and content. It's one of the top sourdough channels out there, in my opinion. You're clear and concise and I really appreciate all the work that goes into the production. Keep it up!
That's really appreciated Andy, thank you
Great video.....
I no longer worry about my starter and a regular feeding regime; yes, in the early days of my sourdough journey I was quite particular with my feeding, but I took a more relaxed and laid back approach to feeding around 2 years ago and only feed it before I'm about to bake. I have never looked back since and always get great tasting (and looking) bread, with a good open crumb with this approach.
As I say, I feed my starter the night before I want to use it and calculate the amount of flour & water to add so that I have around 20/30g of starter left over after using it the next day to make the dough - I store my starter in once finished with. On one occasion I revived a starter found in my fridge after well over a month of not being fed, it looked a bit off and smelt pretty rancid, but after a few feeds it was fine. In other times I've taken the starter directly out of the fridge and used it to make dough without first feeding it, yes it took longer to rise, but the bread also turned out fine.
In my view don't waste good flour and time on daily feeding routines - starters are tough enough not to need it!
This was a great clip! Thanks for the info!
I had exactly the same experience. When I started with sourdough, I had tons of discard & starter.
I'd manage by mixing it with some eggs to make pancakes, but it gets tiring after a while - even though the kids are a big fan.
The solution was a little planning: keep a little, feed in the evening for making your dough the next day, to bake the day after that.
You are spot on. Planning is a big part of it and something I neglected a little. I got tired of discard recipes. If I want to make sourdough pancakes or crumpets I'd rather plan for it and make a touch extra starter.
I learned to make bread from "Bake With Jack" but I make bread about every three days. I might just try sourdough instead of active dry yeast.
Excellent practical advice, thank you.
Well done! I'm always up for any plan that excludes waste! We can't afford any kind of waste these days! 👍🏽
That's what I do for my weekly bakes. I keep ~30g of starter from the prior bake and add 80/80 g of flour and water in the late evening. It works well. Lately the bread I'm making is 85% hydration and 87% whole wheat bread flour, 800g of total flour for 2 loaves.
Great video again, bro. I've used this method throughout my sporadic baking over the years. Key tips I have for this method. Try to refrigerate the starter as you have, but try to get it in the fridge just before it peaks, keeps the acid levels lowers, and gives the yeast a better environment to rest. Feed about every 3 days if not using it to keep it active for when you do what to pull it out and bake like you have.
I also found that even after 5 months of being left in the fridge, it is a great way to start again building a lively starter quickly and keep its complex flavour. To do that, just take it out of the fridge, feed as usual, may take a few feeds to become as strong/active as desired.
Hope this makes sense and helps a few people keep their bread rolling.
Very helpful! What a great video! Been doing this same process for probably a couple of months now as I was getting frustrated wasting a lot of flour and space in the fridge keeping jars full of discarded starters.
Been there, done that! This is genius. Works perfectly for me.
Nice to see this working for you - I have been doing this same method myself for a couple of years, care of Jack’s seminal video. On a Friday night I add 150g of water and 150g flour to my scrapings jar, make sure it’s well mixed and then leave it out for an hour or two before it goes into the fridge until morning. Saturday I make my 3 sourdough loaves, and prove them in the fridge over night. Bake Sunday morning. Amazing results every time.
It was a game-changer for me Simon, love it
Great video Phillip. I just took my starter and placed 25g and added 55g of flour and 55g water. We have these 16 oz plastic deli containers that we buy from Amazon. It is the perfect size for the amount of starter.
Thank you for this video. I definitely will try the sourdough starter again! I tried it during the pandemic and I wasteed so much flour trying to get it started and maintaining it and I wasn’t making bread more than a couple times a month. I bake bread all the time and I haven’t been making any sourdough bread since then. But now, with your methods, I will definitely get back into it!
I have been using the bake with jack scraping method since I started, I was lucky to find him within a month of my sourdough journey.
Glad you posted this - I do basically the same as you and have no discards whatsoever. I bake about twice a week, so use the frig as a time out like you described. I have another couple of guys I follow who even use the starter straight from the frig and let the dough rise overnight. I mean, when you add flour and water to it, it's basically just one big feed.
Exactly Martha! A life without discard is a good life lol
@@CulinaryExploration it depends. I intentionally create “discard” to make pancakes 😅
@@rtaveras84 I guess I'm still a newbie but I too love having discard. I fry it in a pan with peanut oil and coat it with cinnamon and powdered sugar. Makes an awesome desert or even with coffee in the morning. And the sourdough waffles ....YUM!
@@TravelinMama73oh will have to try this!!! You fry just the discard, nothing else added till after (the cinnamon and sugar)?
I also think this method will help to build a stronger starter. A single 1:40:40 feeding is basically equivalent to ~4 cycles of 1:1:1 feeding. My starter is only a couple of years old but it's had the feeding cycles of a 8 year old starter.
Also, don't scrape... Just add the water needed for the feeding in the jar 1st, put the lid on tight and shake vigorously to incorporate all the bits stuck to the sides of the jar, then add the flour and mix.
Good idea to keep the jar clean💯
Great idea!
I add a little extra flour to the fridge scrapings to dry it out. Lasts longer in the fridge. Then I wake it up with a little warm water and more flour for baking.
I did the scrapings savings for 2 months and 3 weeks. I gathered what was on the bottom, put in new clean jar, and within 2 small feedings, it was back up and running.
I was struggling to maintain my routine for baking sourdough bread because of very hard feeding and kneeding schedule. Your videos have inspired me!! It is so much easier now! Thanks a lot for your videos!
You are really welcome, I'm pleased the videos are useful for you. Enjoy your baking :)
I never feed my starter until I'm ready to bake. I bake two loaves every weekend, and only feed the starter on Friday night, so it's ready for Saturday morning. I have gone with starter un-fed for a month or more, without issue. I started baking sourdough about a year and a half ago, with some failures, but I have produced many fantastic loaves. Your videos keep me going and inspire me to try to make perfect loaves of bread. I find the 65% hydration works perfect. I live in Michigan, USA. Can you do a video on sourdough rye bread, I have struggled with it, thanks for all you do!
I always feel like my bread doesn't rise as well without a few feedings to get it amped up. Maybe if I dropped the hydration down I could focus less on that. Thanks for the idea.
I would also like to see a 100% rye bread video as that is all I bake. After seeing your video I also dropped my hydration to 65% and it was much easier to work with but it didn't rise as much. Any advice
Rye sourdough czcams.com/video/aZ1W8xa80eM/video.html
I'm very excited about this system. I too wanted to bake it but did not want to deal with the daily feedings....cant wait to try thanks
Thank you, Phil, for your excellent content and videos! I have been using Jack's method for almost two years and bake two loaves every 10-14 days (I do not feed the scrapings in between baking intervals). As he recommends, I have always used fresh ground organic rye for my starter. However, it appears you are using white bread flour for your starter, so I am going to convert my starter to strong white bread flour (SWBF) on my next batch (simply by using the white flour in place of the rye flour), just to see the difference (i can always go back to rye flour and vice a versa). Thanks again!
I have been using my rye flour starter now for a couple of months as I only bake 100% rye flour bread. Definitely going to try this method
I do something similar except I bake with the "discard" at this point because my baking frequency is completely random and I don't want to be bothered with schedules, feedings, or commitment of any kind. The only trick with this method is to add a pinch of yeast into the dough. I know most purists would scoff, but it's just the perfect compromise for me and I'd highly recommend it for beginners too.
We should have the flexibility to do whatever works for us. Sounds like your method works perfectly for you :)
I have even baked bread only using fast acting yeast... For shame I know....
I stumbled on the same method through trial and error over the last six years. Works brilliantly.
Thanks for sharing, I've always wanted to have a starter on hand. But didn't know much about it.
I've gone as long as 2 months in the fridge without feeding a starter (we were doing an experiment to see how long it would still be viable). Took the starter out of the fridge, stirred it up (because some liquid was on top of the starter) and took 50g starter and added it to 50g flour and 50g water to create a biga and left it covered on the countertop overnight (about 9-10 hours). Next morning it was ready to go and added 150g water and 150g flour and baked a delicious boule later that day.
TLDR: healthy starter can easily be left covered & unfed in the refrigerator for at least two months (probably much longer).
Same here. For 3 months my starter remained untouched in the fridge as we were moving house at that time. To my greatest amazement it was still well and working when I finally came round to baking again. So why is this fuss about pampering the starter all the time? 😉
Andreas Sommers (german baker) showed that his sourdoughs were usable even after 6 months in the fridge
@@warmesuppe Wow, 6 months is quite a long time, but based upon how easily the starter bounced back for me, I was certain that 2 months was not close to the limit.
Presumably if you are going to put the scrapings into the fridge to store for a month or so without feeding:
1. You can seal the lid on the jar to trap moisture because the starter has already fermented and peaked and won’t be producing any more CO2 (threatening the jar rupturing) so won’t be expanding in the fridge.
2. A teaspoon or so of water into the scrapings jar before you seal the lid should be plenty for it to stay hydrated and prevent it from drying out.
3. Scrape the scrapings down into a contiguous mass at the bottom of the jar, rather than leaving them smeared on the sides of the jar. The mass will do a better job of staying damp and resisting mould than a thin film all around the jar would.
I no loved it!.I’ve been practicing baking bread for a month now,and I will try out your method. Thank you very much.
I just use the dried up bits and add water and flour. Works just fine.
Many times I leave the starter in the fridge for months, and it doesn't take much to wake it up.
Many years ago, I had at least 4 "different" starters stored in my fridge. One I grew myself and the others were from friends. One was said to have been in use for over 200 yrs., another over 150. They produced breads with somewhat different flavors. But over the months, their growth characteristics and flavors became indistinguishable. Now I only grow one though I have dessicated and frozen others. As to maintenance: I do pretty much as you've shown. After using almost all of the starter to bake, I add about 2 tbs. of flour + enough distilled water to make a thick paste, put the lid on tightly and store it in a cold fridge. If I'm not going to use it for at least 3 wks, I take it out, feed it with 2 tbs of flour, water and put it back in the fridge at once. I take it out the day before baking, discard about 1/2 of the then runny, spent flour (why? I prefer a less sour taste), feed it with about 1/2 the volume I'll want for baking, let it grow out, feed it again, grow and use it. Usually works very well. IF another feeding is needed for adequate vigor, I will then discard some first to keep the volume manageable.
A nice tight method. You aren't really getting any wastage. Cheers for the update :)
Had failed to feed my starter for well over a year. Took it out of the fridge, poured off the "hooch", added a little flour and water. Next day it was bubbling away. It wasn't strong enough for baking but in a day or two it probably would have been.
This is how sourdough bread was made in the past. It was used by pioneers, carried in covered wagons or packed on a mule. The early miners in the American west were called sourdoughs, because they lived on the bread they made, with scrapings from the day before, for years at a time.
THIS is a gamechanger for me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Great news Silver Willow :)