Alicia, tell us more about the starter culture. And how do you knead the sticky rye dough?
I took all the information from another site. I personally tried everything! I have been baking on rye and wheat sourdough for a long time and everything works! Delicious, healthy and reliable!
How to make sourdough?I know that there are many ways to put the sourdough, in my opinion this is the simplest one and the bread is very tasty with this sourdough.
It is best to use rye flour sourdough, and then if we want to bake white bread, we can make wheat sourdough from rye sourdough. It will take 5 days until our starter is ready, but this is only the first time it takes so long.
How to make rye sourdough?The first day:And so we need 100 grams of rye flour (grade 1150) and 100-150 ml of lukewarm water (carefully, the water should not be warmer than 40 °, otherwise our sourdough will not work).
In a plastic or glass clean cup, mix the water and flour to make the dough like pancakes. Choose not too small dishes, otherwise the leaven can escape, somewhere 1.5-2 liters is enough. Now you need to cover the cup with a lid or transparent film, but not quite tightly and put it in a warm place for 24 hours.
Second day:Now our leaven is hungry, for this we must feed it. Do not be surprised if the leaven does not smell pleasant, this is normal, I will write more about this later. And so we take out our leaven and mix it well. Add 100g. rye flour and 100 ml. lukewarm water and mix well again, cover and put again in a warm place for 24 hours.
Day three:Again we do the same as on the second day: stir in the leaven, add 100g. rye flour and 100 ml of lukewarm water, mix, cover and put in a warm place for 24 hours.
Day four:Today we feed our sourdough for the last time: again we need to mix the sourdough, add 100 grams of rye flour and 100 ml of lukewarm water, mix, cover and put it back in a warm place for 24 hours.
Our long-awaited has come
fifth day, our starter is ready. Today we can bake our first bread, to which we will add quite a bit of yeast, because our leaven is still young and does not have much strength, and next time it will be possible not to add yeast. Just do not forget to put 50-100 g of the finished sourdough in a clean jar, screw the lid and put it in the refrigerator, this will be our starter, we will need it later when we want to bake bread again.
Be careful, in no case should yeast, salt, etc. get into the starter, otherwise it will die, do not forget only flour and water are included in the starter.
The starter can be stored for up to two weeks, and if we decided to bake, then we need to remove the starter from the refrigerator a day earlier and feed it this way or that, and the next day it will be possible to bake bread.
Notes: from these proportions you will get about 800-850 grams. ready-made sourdough, choose for the first time such a bread recipe where you will need almost all the sourdough, so that only 50-100 grams are left for the starter, otherwise you will not know what to do with the excess sourdough later. Another possibility: take not 100 grams for the sourdough. flour and water, and 50 grams each, then you will get 400-450 grams. ready-made sourdough.
How to make wheat leaven?If you still want to make wheat leaven, then do almost exactly the same. It will only be better if you still take rye flour on the first day, the sourdough will start to work faster, and on the other days add wheat flour. Since we do not need so much wheat leaven, it will be enough if we take 50 grams of water and flour, so that you do not have much excess leaven left. Another small digression, it is best to grow wheat leaven not 5, but 6-7 days.
How to store the starter?The starter is stored in the refrigerator for about two weeks, the colder the better, but not in the freezer. You can store it in a clean glass jar with a lid for example from jam. I store it in a plastic container with an airtight lid. And my starter feels very good there, it has never happened to dry out yet. Choose a jar that is not too small, since our starter, who usually sleeps quietly in the refrigerator, can suddenly wake up and if there is not enough space in his bed, he can run away.
How to feed rye starter starter?In this topic, I want to explain to you how to make rye sourdough from a starter.
This can be done in two ways. The first way is easy, we feed the leaven once. And the second, well, is a little heavier, here we feed the sourdough 3 times.
Whichever way you go, you will need to take the starter out of the refrigerator one day earlier and put it in the kitchen for about an hour to wake it up. For example, if you want to bake bread on Tuesday, you must remove the starter from the refrigerator on Monday morning.
If you go the easy way, then do it:
1. Look in the recipe for how much starter you need.
2. Now divide the amount of starter you need in two and you will have the amount of flour and water you need.
Example The recipe says you need 600 grams of starter culture. 600: 2 = 300, which means you need 300 grams of flour and 300 grams of water. Just in case, so that you have a little sourdough left on the starter, add 50 grams more flour and water.
3. In a large enough bowl, stir together the flour, lukewarm water (no more than 40 °) and our starter.
4. Cover the cup with a lid or plastic wrap and place in a warm place and forget it for 15-20 hours.
Done! Now, first of all, do not forget to remove 50-100 grams from the starter for the starter. And the rest of the leaven can be used to bake bread.
But it will be better if we go the hard way (which is actually not hard at all).If you still decide to go the hard way, do this:
Look in the recipe for how much starter you need and divide this amount into 6 parts, because we will feed the starter in 3 passes. So if we need 600 grams of leaven, then 600: 6 = 100. This means we need 3 times 100 grams of flour and 100 grams of water. Right there again, so that we have enough leaven and a starter, we need to take 130 grams of flour and water
Example: Today is the day before bread is baked and I need 600 grams of leaven.
At around 9:00 am, I put my starter out of the refrigerator and gave it an hour to wake up.
At about 10:00 am I feed him for the first time. To do this, I mix 130 grams of lukewarm water and 130 grams of flour so that a dough is formed as thick as pancakes. (maybe the first time you need more water, it depends on the flour). And I add my starter there, mix everything well and put it in a warm place, covering it with a lid. The ideal temperature for this place is 26-28 °, it can be an oven with a lamp on, but only a lamp.
At about 4 pm, the time for the second feeding came. this is how my starter looked, it gurgled so well that I had to grab a bigger cup. To this leaven, I added 130 grams of flour and 130 grams of lukewarm water (no more water is needed here). I mixed everything well, covered it with a lid and put it in place a little cooler than the first time. The ideal temperature is 22-26 ° with a completely switched off oven or bath room.
The next day at 6.00 in the morning I added 130g again. flour and 130gr. slightly lukewarm water. Mixed well, I hope that the photo clearly shows how much mass I got. Cover again and leave to stand in the kitchen. The ideal temperature is 18 to 22 °.
At 9:00, my starter was ready. Now you need to remove 50-100g. starter culture and you can start making bread dough.
This is my time, you can work as it suits you best.
You do not need to observe the time minute by minute; in an hour less or more nothing will happen to the leaven.
The ideal distance between first and second feeds is 6-8 hours. Between the second and third feeding 6-12 hours. And after the last feeding until baking 3-4 hours.
Falling temperatures are good, of course you can do without it, but falling temperatures improve the taste.
How to refresh and feed wheat leaven?
We need to feed the wheat sourdough a little differently with rye. Basically, you will read something like that in recipes.
For starter culture:
30 gr. refreshed starter or active
100 g flour
100 g water
What is this refreshed, another name for an active starter?So, if you removed the starter from the finished starter in the refrigerator, then it is no longer active, but sleeping, you need to refresh it so that it will work again.
To do this, take 15 grams. flour, 15 grams of water and no more than 1 teaspoon of wheat or rye starter, mix it all and leave it to stand for 8 hours. That's all you now have 30 grams of active, refreshed, live starter, which you should now feed ..
Add 100g to this refreshed starter. flour and 100 gr. water (or as much as you have in the recipe), stir, cover and leave for 8-12 hours (the exact time is usually indicated in the recipe), the leaven should grow 2-3 times during this time (depending on its moisture content) and now -that (or) will begin to fall off. Do not forget to put a little of the finished starter culture on the starter.
Do not take too much starter for refreshing the wheat sourdough, 1 teaspoon is enough, otherwise the finished sourdough will be very sour and of course the bread will not turn out tasty.
If you bake bread every day, it means that you and your starter are constantly feeding, perhaps even without putting it in the refrigerator. In this case, your starter is active and quite enough if you feed the starter only once, for this take the amount of flour and water you need, a teaspoon of the starter, mix everything, cover and leave for 8-12 hours.
