I bake a lot, and decided a few days ago to experiment with sourdough. So now I have a starter “perking,” and it may turn out to be crap (my method for starting it was “read a bunch of directions, then mix up whatever I felt like that seemed mostly right.” This is my major method for baking in general, anyway, and I haven’t yet killed anyone, so I assume that I’ve nailed it.) But, my questions:
Have you yourself tried making sourdough starter? How’d that work out for you? Preferred methods? Notable successes/failures? Favorite recipes? (Really, I’m mainly looking for the last bit, but I’d love to hear what did or didn’t work for you. I’ve read all sorts of blogs about how chlorinated water/metal utensils/starting my sponge when the moon is waning will cause all sorts of bad outcomes. Frankly, I ignored any bits that didn’t conform to what I think I know about baking and chemistry, but I’m fully prepared to learn the true meaning of hubris.)
I’ve made starters a few times over the years, and each time used your method (let’s call it the “little bit of everything” method). It more or less worked each time, but there were definitely a few good ones (that I held on to and fed for a while) and a few bad ones (that I threw out after one or two uses). Some of my thoughts:
All of my starters used pretty simple ingredients. Flour, tap water, a pinch of sugar, maybe a dab of malt extract (I brew beer). No exotic grains or bottled water. My experience with both brewing/winemaking and baking is that tap water with a “normal” amount of chlorination is fine.
I usually cheat by adding a few grains of bread yeast or a couple drops of brewers yeast starter to ensure that I at least get something growing in there that will be useful for making bread.
A lot of recipes suggest leaving it out in your kitchen overnight, or even rely on whatever microorganisms might happen to get mixed in when you sift the flour. I’m sure that will work for some people, but like I said I like to guarantee that I get something growing in there so I just put it on the back porch uncovered on a nice breezy day for a couple hours. TONS of bacteria and yeasts will find their way into it then, especially if a leaf or bug happens to blow into it.
Since making the starter is pretty easy, and I usually saw a lot of batch-to-batch variation (probably because of the haphazard methods I used) I’d usually do two or three at a time, and keep the best one.
Once you have a good starter it’s easy to keep it going more or less indefinitely, so my advice is to do some experimenting and keep (or even combine) the good ones.
There are yeasts and bacteria aplenty in flour already. I just make a sloppy flour/water mix in a jar, cover the neck with cloth and check every day until something happens. Pour off clear fluid that gathers on top and after a week, give it more flour and water - and it makes a sourdough starter.
Flavour is quite variable, but that’s normal.