There a million articles and blogs out there about making a sour dough starter. I started making sour dough about 6 years ago now and for a long time I made it on a weekly basis. Because there’s so much out there on sour dough starters themselves, this post will be mostly focused on just my personal tips and tricks versus details of how to get your starter going!
Also, if you haven’t read this article about sourdough, stop reading the blog and click this link.
Quick project summary: In my time as a mom to a sour dough starter, I created starters a few different ways. First, I had a traditional starter that I made from just flour and water. This one was a pretty solid starter but it took quite some time for the flavor to really taste like sourdough – probably about 4-6 months. Second, I made two other starters – one use a sourdough starter pack and another using live starter (to help my starter get going) from King Arthur Flour. Personally, among all these starters, I found the King Arthur Flour starter to be the most flavorful. I know everyone wants to make their starter from scratch and some might consider this “cheating” but I do not and really enjoyed this method!
For quite some time, I had two starters going at once. This helped me not to overuse one starter (because I was baking bread at a rapid pace) and also helped me experiment a bit with how I was feeding the starters, too. Ultimately, during a move, I got rid of the starter that was a bit less flavorful.
Enough about starters themselves and on to the actual sourdough bread baking. Personally, in my early sourdough days, I loved to bake a bread that was bakery style – no yeast, dutch oven, and a multiple day process of kneading and rising (very instagram worthy!). Over time though, I wanted a quicker option and some bread that would be a bit more sandwich style – for this, my favorite is King Arthur’s Rustic Sourdough. I would modify this a bit and make the rustic sourdough in two long loaf pans – I’d also add in some spices (my favorite being rosemary).
Things I loved about this project: Having a sourdough starter is fun to maintain and to play around a bit with the chemistry of the bread. Personally, I felt like making a starter was one big science experiment and brought me back to my lab classes in grade school. I genuinely enjoyed seeing how my starter evolved. Also, once you starter gets really active, there’s so many options for what to make and I enjoyed experimenting with pizza crusts and other non-bread options.
Most importantly, baking bread is like therapy for me. When I have a busy day ahead at work or something is on my mind, I’ll often start by getting some type of bread going. The kneading process is really relaxing – it’s a combination of attention to detail and working with your hands that I feel is clutch for helping resolve some stress or anxiety.
What I would do differently: I lost a bit of steam on making sour dough and I started focusing more on other breads. When that happened, my starter slipped a bit! Be right back while I go work on my starter.
Things I also enjoyed while doing this project:
-Binge watching the Americans while making tons of bread
-Eating sourdough with homemade jam (and all other toppings!)
100 Little Projects 