ottawa foodies

We trying the Canadian Living Cookbook version. Has anyone tried it? We started it an hour ago, and already it’s taking over out kitchen........Help!

I have made sourdough in the past. How much flour and water and yeast did you use and what was the size of your container?

2 cups each water/flour, a tbsp of yeast, and a pinch of sugar. We started out with a container holding about 10 cups, and that wasn’t big enough, so we transferred it to a 4 litre jar, which did the trick. The initial chemical action subsided after a couple hours, and the starter is now pretty quiet.

I don't think you're supposed to add yeast for a true sourdough starter. Just water and flour and let the wild yeast do it's thing. If you added yeast, no wonder it took off so quickly, it's also probably outcompeting the wild yeast so you won't get any of the sour/complexity that you may or may not want from sourdough.

G-Lo, yes you’re right about that. We looked up a bunch of recipes, and this one seemed to be pretty simple. Our goal was to make something that we could keep and use for the foreseeable future, given that it’s hard to buy yeast in grocery stores these days, and not so much to be sourdough purists.

Nothing wrong with starting a sourdough starter with yeast. Most people do as you can wait a looooong time to start it with wild yeast. Those amounts to me look excessive and you will end up wasting a lot. However, you look like you got good action going which is great.

Feline: thanks for the encouragement/advice! We’ll see how it goes......

Hope it tastes as good as it looks.......

Looks like bread to me!

Here's my sourdough from yesterday, using a starter a friend dropped off a week ago, our first ever attempt:
imgur.com/gallery/4nPUxHq

Damn G-Lo, that looks rustic, and artisanal.......and delicious.........

Thanks, it was great.
I've heard some people being able to grab sourdough from bakeries. A friend just recently got some from Corner Peach, so it could be worth asking around

Thats some nice looking bread! yes you can definitely do starter with yeast. Although my user name and picture show a nice loaf, its been years since I've been baking. My daughter wants to start making some sour dough - so this is good encouragement.

Little known secret for sourdough starter - include a cup of brewers' barley but it has to be one of the ones with active enzymes like 2-Row, 6-Row, Pale Ale or Pilsener. The reason is that they have a bacterium which live naturally on the outside which is extremely good in sour dough. In fact in Germany brewers use the bacterium in what is called an "acid rest" when they have to make pH adjustments during the mash and still adhere to the Reinheitsgebot. In most other countries brewers just add chemicals like chalk to adjust pH.

Anyway if you get a small amount from Defalco's and grind it into flour and include in your starter you are guaranteed amazing results. I have some starter from a brewer friend who started it about a month ago and it is amazing.

There is my loaf from the weekend - about 60% whole wheat flour thus the colour