I’ve done a lot of baking over the last year or so, mostly bread. I don’t really do cakes. Too sweet and they make you fat. I use beer for that purpose.
Anyway, I’ve been avoiding sourdough because it always seems to me to be just a bit pretentious and elitist. Also, I couldn’t be bothered with all that starter culture stuff.
One day though, my niece Frances said she had made one, and that it was getting a bit out of hand, so I asked whether I could have some. I could, I did and I’ve been making sourdough for the last month or so.
I don’t bake everyday, so I have to keep it in the fridge, but that’s not a problem, you just have to remember to get it out and feed it well in advance.
About feeding. Frances said to me 100g flour and 100g water a day ( assuming you are baking every day ), but what I tend to do is to put 50g of each in when it goes into the fridge and 50g each when it comes out.
About baking. For my normal bread recipe I use 500g flour ( usually 400g strong white and 100g of something interesting – rye, malted, wholemeal – I’m sure you get the picture ), 300g of warm water, yeast and a bit of salt.
When I started with sourdough, I’d just use the exact same ingredients (apart from the yeast), throw 100 – 150g of culture on top and mix it all together. It made the most horrible sticky dough that I’ve ever used. Bread was good, but the process of making it disgusting.
After much ( some ) trial and error, I worked out that water takes up about half the volume that the same weight in flour takes up, so for every 3g of culture, 2g of it was water and 1g was flour.
Then I adjusted my basic recipe accordingly, and subtracted that from the required ingredients. For example, if I used 150g starter culture, I could subtract 100g water and 50g flour from the rest of the ingredients.
Bingo! No more sticky mess, just a nice workable dough.
Sourdough purists probably wouldn’t like it, but then I don’t like their sandals.