Calling sourdough starter experts!

[stclair]

As I can’t find yeast for love nor money, I’m on day 3 of a sourdough starter (from bbcgoodfood recipe). What I am confused about is the pouring off of half the starter when ready to bake. Is this to be used to add more flour and water to keep the starter going? Otherwise It seems wasteful! If it isn’t, why pour it away?

another question!!
once its been fed, how long until you can use the starter?
thanks.

So can starter yeast be dried or would that require fancy equipment?
I'm just thinking if I'm giving away surplus id rather give a block rather than a jar with some foamy liquid in.

This has some helpful advice about looking after your starter as well as creating one from scratch: www.rivercottage.net/news/river-cottage-sourdough

I threw mine in the bin also 🙈 cakes are much easier!!

I’ve begun my starter today, after planning to for yonks! I know you can make a starter with any/most flours, but can you feed it with different flours or do you always have to feed it with the same type of flour you started with? And can you only make that flour-specific sourdough, or can you make any flour-type sourdough? (Not sure my second questions makes sense, but it does to me!) Thank you.

Great pics everyone! Good work.

As far as I know you can feed your starter with any flour; but when you want to use some you do need to use the flour you will be using to make the bread. So if you have a starter made with wholemeal but want to make a rye loaf, when you need to feed the starter to increase the amount use rye flour if you see what I mean?

@APurpleSquirrel thank you so much, that’s really clear & helpful!

I’ve made a marvellous banana bread with my sourdough discard today using this recipe. Very tasty!

www.theperfectloaf.com/my-top-3-leftover-sourdough-starter-recipes/

@Whataroyalannoyance Yes, you can. My sits in the fridge for about a week between bakes; longer sometimes if I go away. I do a double feed before baking though
Also: usually around 24 hours between feeding and starting your bread recipe. You want to catch it when it's at its height and before it starts to subside. You'll learn this with practice if you always use the same container and the same quantities, or just as you get to know your leaven. Honestly, it's one of the family ... but more predictable and a lot less trouble :)
@YummyInMyTummy yes what purplesquirrel said, but you can also use a starter fed with white flour in a rye loaf if you want a combination (for example). But you can also take some of your white-fed starter and feed it rye (or wholemeal - I've never tried that) to make a different starter. YOu don't need to run two different starters simultaneously.

I make waffles with my discard now (Smitten Kitchen's overnight waffles, adapted), but in the early days I put it on the compost heap.
You can also mix it with a little bit of yeast to get the best of both worlds. You can halve (at least) the normal quantity of yeast in the recipe
Crumpets are also an option, but I'm crap at crumpets. I tried pancakes once and didn't like them at all.

Re discards: you really need to discard most of your leaven before you feed it. You just want a little bit of the leaven with all the yeasts and bacteria in it, and then lots of food for it to work its way through. Otherwise it won't grow and improve. I leave about 1-2 tbsp in the bottom of my jar - I think discarding half is not enough, ime

Dh is making a loaf of something sourdough every other day!

Pizza
Pancakes
Banana bread
Bread

It’s amazing.

Thanks for that River Cottage link purplesquirrel it's very helpful. He says to cover the starter with a cloth but doesn't mention if you should continue with a cloth or put in a kilner jar\or screw top in the fridge.

We keep ours in a plastic tub with lid (not a full airtight seal) & DH leaves the lid off if needed or on if not. When he did the rye starter at the weekend the starter produced so much gas/bubbles it blew the lid off!

I’ve been making sourdough for several years, using a rye
/grapes combination to get it going, and feeding it with rye flour. I keep the starter in a sealed Tupperware in the fridge, and just take it out the night before I want to bake. Always have things at room temperature.

And I can recommend Vanessa Kimbell’s Sourdough Bible. Really straightforward.

Wow Purple !!! I always wondered how bakers here ( in Fr.) manage to bake proper Baguettes from pure spelt flour. We only eat spelt bread and I have never managed to make my own pure spelt bread the traditional way (well not a nice risen 'fluffy' loaf if you know what I mean )

I must begin it.

That looks lovely mazy

@mazylou that looks fantastic. I am attempting a starter using Greek yoghurt. On day 5 of second attempt (1st I realised flour was ood so figured that is why it wasn’t working). I have bubbles and have just fed it again but it’s nowhere near floating. So I just chuck in a couple of chopped up grapes to encourage it a bit? When do I remove them?

Also, I used semi skimmed milk instead of skimmed as per recipe...could that be causing an issue?

How old does the starter need to be to start using the discard? My starter is about 7 days and is bubbling but not rising much yet :(

These starters using yoghurt confuse me - I have been baking sourdough for almost a decade and all my starter has ever been is flour and water.

A good test to see if your starter is ready to use is the float test - drop of a teaspoon of the starter in a bowl of water - if it floats, it is ready to use. My starter is kept in the fridge and is taken out the night prior to using. I discard the majority of the starter and feed it. I leave overnight RT and use for 2 days feeding every 12 hours (1 large boule and 1 batch of sourdough spelt bagels). I bake the boule in a La Cloche which has been fantastic to ensure consistent bakes.

A great use for discards (I call discards the starter which is spent after being in the fridge for a week and thus unusable to get a proper rise out of bread immediately) is crumpets. This is one recipe which requires spent starter as opposed to one recently fed.

I leave grapes in the starter. You can fish them out but they kind of disappear anyway.

ps are you maybe missing the rise? The starter rises and then falls again.

I'm wondering if that's my problem @AnnofPeeves

Do you have to use it before the rise falls?

There's some info here on when you use or (with photos) www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2012/04/08/maintaining-your-sourdough-starter-food-water-and-time

Have to say I'm not remotely scientific with mine, so doing all by when it looks and feels right - kind of fairly risen, but not enormous, with a jellyish texture. Sorry, that's probably not much help.

For best results, the starter should be used when most active (near or just after max rise). I find that my starter peaks at about the 10 hour point post feeding (Temperature dependant).

I wouldn't get too hung up about the discard, sometimes I make pancakes, sometimes I just compost it. It's not an enormous amount of waste.