ronnie_suburban wrote:boudreaulicious wrote:I learned how to nurse a starter back from the brink of death and baked up my first ever loaf of bread.
Looks great. I'm curious about starter in general because so many people have been posting about restarting their starters. But my experience is that to keep one going, quite a bit of flour is needed . . . and it's relatively hard to find right now. If I were going to bake some bread, it seems like it'd be easier to find yeast than it would be to find the amount of flour necessary to resuscitate my starter. Not that I don't prefer naturally-raised loaves but beggars can't be choosers. Wondering how much flour people have to burn to keep their starters going. When I was baking Silverton breads (Breads from the La Brea Bakery, many years ago), the flour requirements were crazy-high . . . 3 feedings a day. We use to joke that it needed more TLC than a child.
=R=
I jumped on the sourdough train when the sh!t went down 5+ weeks ago. Wifey bought me the Tartine Bread book which sat on the shelf for a few years. Now I realize what took me so long, the whole process, indeed, requires constant attention (and I'm juggling a four year old full time!)
And not long into the process I realized how much waste the feeding and discarding process would involve, which is not ideal for today's scarce resources (+ I'm a pretty economic cook to begin with.) The Tartine recipe favors a lower pH "sweeter" starter which requires everyday feeding of about a cup of flour and then discarding 80% of it, which is roughly 6 cups of wasted flour a week!
Well I've found work arounds & fortunately we like a little sour funk in our sourdough. We eat about a loaf a week (usually 2/3 in one day) maybe two. The starter gets stashed 3-4 days in the fridge. And then I feed it about half a cup of flour a day for a few days before my bake. With each feeding I "discard" a little over half, which gets saved for other projects. So I'm producing about 1.5 cups of discard a week and there's plenty of options to use it elsewhere–
Pancakes are a popular option. Big, billowy Dutch baby style. I've also been pouring the starter right into a hot pan to make thin, crepe like sour pancakes that I eat in savory applications. I realized the other day, its not unlike injera, so I'm gonna make some spiced lentils this weekend. English muffins are also on deck.
Overall, its been a fun & delicious project. I honestly can't believe how good the bread's turned out, tbh. Some of the best I've ever eaten.
Notes on flour scarcity– my main grocery, Angelo Caputo's in Carol Stream seems to be where the home cooks shop, since they are down to 50 lb. bags of store brand flour (they haven't seemed to restock in over a month.) Jewel by me had no bread flour but AP and whole wheat from King Arthur & Gold Medal. Target had ample bags of King Arthur bread flour last weekend. Its likely more supply chain-related, but I can't help but wonder if the culinary inclinations of the customers of each store might be a factor.