Thursday, June 16, 2011

Sourdough Part 1: a primer, aka, your starter

Everyone? I would like you to meet Jack. This is Jack, in the photo above. He's my sourdough starter. I'll get to why he has a name in a minute; first let's talk about sourdough for a bit.

What makes sourdough so, well, amazing? Why is it sour? And what in the world is a "starter?" I'm sure if you're following a cooking blog you've heard the word "starter" before, even if you don't know what it is. The basic concept is this: all bread products needs a levening agent in order to rise. It can be chemical (baking soda, baking powder, etc.), mechanical (whipping something into a frenzy to incorporate air), or biological. In most cases, biological leveners are yeasts.

Yeast is a naturally occuring organism in the air. When yeast is added to bread it will eat sugars in the dough and release CO2 gases, which makes the dough bubble and rise. The yeast dies during the baking process but leaves its lovely air bubbles throughout our breads, making them light and fluffy.

Most people are familiar with the yeast that comes dry and in little yellow packets from the grocery store. This is dried, dormant yeast, but once you add sugar, moisture, and heat, these little guys come to life and do their CO2 magic. But how does that differ from a starter?

A starter is a LIVE yeast that is cultivated and kept alive through regular feedings. Every couple of weeks or so I pull Jack out of the fridge, feed him some fresh bread flour and warm water, and watch him grow and multiply. Then I take out what I need for a recipe and put the rest back in his jar and put him back in the fridge.

And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is what is meant when you hear a starter is 75, 100, or 150 years old. That starter began by catching live yeast cultures from the air and feeding and caring and using it for that many years. That is what makes sourdough sour. The older the starter, the more flavor. You'll also hear a sourdough starter refered to as "the mother" since all bread comes from it. That's also why sourdough breads can taste so different based on where they were created. Different areas have different yeasts.

Jack is a very, very, VERY young starter, but I'm attached to him. When I was in culinary school our chef instructor created Jack especially for us in September 2009 and named him Jack, after his fat cat. Chef said if you name your starter you're more likely to feed it, rather than neglect it in the back of your fridge. Jack isn't very sour yet, or even very strong, but he still makes yummy bread, and has even already "spawned" some offspring when my mom took some of Jack to keep her own starter!

The next entry will be all about how to feed your starter and keep it alive. If you're interested in getting your own sourdough starter there are hundreds of websites available. They'll simply ship you a little packet with a dried out starter (similar to those little packets at the grocery store) with instructions on how to reconstitute it. You can also create your very own personal starter at home with nothing more than a bowl of flour and water, and a little time. There are also lots of instructions online to teach you how to catch native yeasts.

I hope you guys will enjoy this new series of posts! I'm looking forward to sharing my results with you.

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