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My First Sourdough Starter

Vea Carpi is a homestead mama, baker, & author living on a ‘maso’ in the Italian Alps with her husband Renzo and her three children, Pietro, Viola, Sole. Vea is passionate about making delicious and healthy food as well as serving it at the Farm-To-Table restaurant that they operate as a family.

SOURDOUGH STARTER: THE BIRTH

 

INGREDIENTS AND WHAT YOU NEED:

 

  • Stoneground organic plain flour
  • Tap water
  • An empty glass jar around 500g

 

 

DAY ONE

  • 50gr stoneground plain flour
  • 50gr water

 

Mix well, put in the glass jar and cover with a thin cloth. Leave it to rest in the kitchen at room temperature.

 

DAY TWO

  • 50gr from the day one mix
  • 50gr water
  • 50gr stoneground plain flour

 

After 24 hours, take 50gr from the day one mix (throw away the rest) and add 50gr of water and 50gr of the same flour. Repeat this for 10-15 days. At this stage, the part of mix that you don’t use has to be thrown away, as it’s too acidic and can’t be used to bake (someone suggested to dilute it well and use it to water your vegetable patch).

 

After a while you should start to see some bubbles on the mix’s surface as well as on the sides. This means that the fermentation has started.

 

These bubbles will normally start to appear after just a few days, but this doesn’t mean that your starter is ready. Keep patiently feeding it every day.

 

You will know that it’s ready when:

  • its volume grows in the 8/10 hours after you’ve fed it

  • it has a slightly acidic smell, but not too strong; it should remind you of fresh yogurt

 

Once you’ll notice these characteristics, and not before 10-15 days, you can start using it to bake bread. From now on keep it in the fridge and only take it out when needed.

SOURDOUGH STARTER: THE LIFE OR THE FEEDING

 

Once your sourdough starter is ready and working, it’s important you keep it alive by feeding it. This operation is simply called the feeding, and this is how I’ll refer to it from now on. You have to feed your starter every time you want to bake some bread.

 

Feeding your starter is very simple:

 

weigh the starter, add the same weight of flour and water and mix well (for example: if you have 100gr of starter, add 100gr of flour and 100gr of water).

 

For this procedure I always use the same flour: stoneground biodynamic plain flour.

 

I suggest you bake bread at least once a week. This way you’ll have a vital starter, as well as a delicious bread and always fresh.

 

 

FEED THE STARTER

  • WHY? To keep it alive
    • I’m alive, don’t forget about me!
  • WHEN? At least once a week before you bake your bread

 

 

WHAT YOU NEED:

  • Spoon
  • Glass jar with starter
  • Bowl
  • Kitchen scale
  • Water
  • Organic plain flour

 

 

STEPS:

  1. Weigh the amount of sourdough that you want to feed (e.g. 80gr)

  2. Put it in a bowl

  3. Weight the same amount of water and flour (e.g. 80gr flour, 80gr water, 80gr starter)

  4. Add water and flour to the starter in the bowl. Mix well until you get a uniform mixture

  5. Put everything in the clean jar

  6. Close (not too tightly) and put in the fridge

 

 

THE BREAD TIMESCALE

 

The bread timescale is a table that will help you remember at what time of the day you’ll have to do each step of your bread making process.

 

My suggestion is to print it and hang it on the fridge, so that you can quickly have a look at it at all times.

 

I have avoided to put any specific times on purpose, because there’s no standardised bread timescale. There are as many timescales as there are hands that bake the bread.

 

Every starter is different, alive, it breathes.. let’s learn to breathe with it.

 

I have left an empty column beside each step: there, if you wish, you can write the time at which you do each step.

 

It might be very useful, especially at the start, to check the timescale and correct anything that doesn’t work.

 

You’ll see that the exact time of each step will change according to the season and the temperature of the room in which you’ll make the bread.

 

MOUNTAIN BREAD PATTERN

 

Share your natural bread on Instagram tagging @mas_del_saro

 

Use the hashtag #masdelsaro so that I can see what comes out of your oven following my recipes.

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