Live Sourdough Starter

I’ve tried off and on to learn how to make sourdough bread, always craving that San Francisco sour taste and texture we all love. I have ordered King Arthur starters in the past, but always gave up. The flavor was never there, and every loaf was too dense. This go-around, I decided to order a new starter from Amazon for fast shipping, and I’m so glad that I did. I can’t keep up with this very active starter! It is like a pet that needs constant feeding! And so that translates to dough that rises and has nice big bubbles in the texture. And the sour flavor is there! I am a hero at home with sourdough bread coming out of the oven at least 3 times a week. And that’s with me working full time. Here is my process, using King Arthur’s recipe and a few other things I’ve learned: If dinner plans for the next day involve sourdough bread, then the evening before, when I arrive home from work, I take my starter out of the fridge, give it a little stir and feed it about 1/4 cup of flour. I leave it on the countertop while going about our evening routine. A couple hours later, after the family has had dinner and the kitchen is cleaned, and I’m about to close the kitchen for the night, I’ll start the bread. The starter by now looks happy and bubbly. Almost foamy bubbly. You can take off a pinch and put it into a cup of water. It will float if it is ready. So then I pour about a cup of the starter into a container that has a lid. At least a 2 liter container. Then I go back to feed my starter up to a cup of flour (depending on how much room is in my jar) and an equal amount of water, mix, cover, and return to fridge. Then back to the container of freshly poured starter, I add 3 cups unbleached white flour and 1.5 cups water. Stir really briskly for 1 minute. Cover and put in fridge for the night. The next morning before work, I add 2.5 teaspoons kosher or Himalayan salt, and 1 more cup of flour. I stir this just till the flour is absorbed. The dough looks kind of raggedy, but the salt and flour is mixed in enough to start the next phase. Let this sit for 30 minutes. Then just before leaving to work, add up to a cup more of flour while kneading into a soft and slightly sticky dough (feels tacky but doesn’t stick to hands). I can’t usually get more than a 1/2 cup in there. So for the recipe I end up using a total of 4.5 cups. The recipe calls for up to 5 cups.you don’t want the dough to be too heavy bc you’ll love the light airy and bubbly texture of the finished bread. Knead until smooth. Return the dough to the container and keep covered. This will be about 1 liter of dough. Now if someone isn’t home to help me with the next steps, I’ll bring the dough to work. This just means i won’t be able to start cooking it until 5:30 or so. The next process is easy. Every hour, the dough needs to be gently lifted and stretched and folded over itself while carefully preserving the air that has filled the dough. Having slightly wet hands helps. Go around the container and do this 4 times to get all 4 quarters of the dough lifted and folded over itself then cover and wait another hour. Each time you do this, you’ll notice the dough is changing! After 4 or 5 times, the dough is ready to rise in its proofing container. This is about 2:00 pm for me. I get a piece of parchment paper and a bowl about the size of a regular sourdough boulle. I wet the parchment paper and wring it out like a wash rag so it is soft and mouldable to the size of the bowl. Line the bowl with the wet paper. Then lift the dough out of the container, being careful not to lose any of the air that has developed in the dough. Remember there is no added yeast helping out your starter. The starter is doing all the work, so try not to lose what it has done for you. Gently fold into a soft ball of dough, tucking edges underneath till top is smooth. Lay the dough gently into the parchment paper-lined bowl. Cover, and let rise 2 hours. Preheat oven to 425° with a lidded Dutch oven inside that is about the size of a sourdough boulle. The Dutch oven pot will get very hot. Cut a 1/4” deep slice or two across the top of the dough at this point. When the oven is preheated, remove the Dutch oven and lift the dough by the parchment paper, carefully setting it down into the hot pot. Put the lid on the pot and return to the hot oven. After 20 minutes, remove the lid. Continue baking until the bread is a deep golden brown. Remove from the pot, pulling up by the parchment paper to lift. Set your beautiful bread on a cooking rack. Discard the parchment paper. Allow to cool completely before cutting!!! That is the hardest part!! My favorite way to eat is toasted with butter. My family also likes to add honey. It is also delicious plain! Good quality flour is important. If your flour has a cheap smell to it, do not use! I also use filtered water to both feed my starter and for my recipe.

Excellent sourdough starter! Check out the photo, which I took after 4 days of feeding. It is a very active starter! And... I'll admit, I accidentally neglected to activate it until 8 days after I received it! The video instructions are spot-on. The first two feedings I did not see any rise and very little bubbling. But the third day it doubled. And the fourth day it more than doubled. Today I'm making sourdough bread! Now mind you, I use the Yendse Sourdough Starter warmer to keep the temperature right at 79F/26C and retain humidity. I've tried reconstituting powdered starter. It worked. But this is SO much easier and quicker (especially with the Breadtopia video tutorial). I HIGHLY recommend this Breadtopia Sourdough Starter!

This yeast is fabulous. I've made sourdough for decades and this is by far the best sourdough starter I have ever used. And it is easy to care for it. Using this yeast and slightly modifying Breadtopia’s recipe (I omitted the whole wheat flour and used the best of white flours: Bob’s Red Mill Unbromated Unbleached White Bread Flour, and King Arthur’s Unbleached White Bread Flour) my first try resulted in a loaf that tasted as good as the best San Francisco Sourdough bread. Thank you. Breadtopia for your starter and your recipes!!! For those unfamiliar with using sourdough starter, it is a yeast culture that you can store in the refrigerator in a jar, and as long as you use or feed it (add a little more flour and water) weekly, it remains healthy and will make countless loaves of bread. Packaged yeast is good for one loaf! Commercial style yeast rises quickly and basically adds air holes to dough. If you try to convert it to starter, you must let it reproduce or ferment overnight, and most packaged yeast produces a lot of alcohol as a byproduct if allowed to ferment overnight which ruins the flavor. In contrast, the natural wild yeast in historical traditional sourdough starters is the kind of yeast used to bake bread over many centuries. It is slow rising and the dough must rest overnight to rise. However, its fermentation results in a pleasant sour flavor (like yogurt, it has a tangy flavor rather than the flavor of alcohol produced by faster rising yeasts). And this slower acting wild yeast does more than add air holes to the dough. It transforms the dough, giving it an entirely new fluffy sponge texture which is characteristic of good sourdough. The gluten in this sourdough is reduced to minimal, and healthwise, gluten is a problem for many people, so this wild yeast offers another way to minimize gluten while enjoying the wonderful texture and flavor of genuine sourdough bread--which I consider to be the best bread ever. (First thing I noticed about this yeast was this transformation— the dough was so fluffy it looked as if the gluten had been predigested by the yeast (bread makers call this fermentation), then I looked on Breadtopia’s site and found an article about this. Another advantage of the lack of gluten in this sourdough is that it makes excellent pizza dough. And even a bread baking mistake can make a premium pizza. Most of my loaves of bread came out close to perfect. One day I let the dough rise too long, and it fell. I tried doing a third rise, but it only rises twice! So, I divided the dough and wrapped and froze half of it, refrigerating the other half. Two days later, I added 1 teaspoon baking powder (BP) and 1/2 teaspoon baking soda (soda) to the dough. Then I spread it out on a pizza pan oiled with olive oil, and baked it for about 10 minutes at 365 degrees until just barely done, but not yet beginning to brown. Then I removed it from the oven, added sauce and toppings, and cooked it for 10-15 minutes longer. It had the wonderful flavor of sourdough, plus it was crusty on the bottom, with a soft but fully cooked middle. This dough does not get gluey in the middle like some. [I soon plan to try the same with the frozen dough, hoping that it can be made ahead, frozen,and thawed, adding BP and soda just prior to baking.]

Had to leave a review about how awesome this starter is! I spent about 2.5 weeks trying to make a starter from scratch and it just wasn't strong enough to ferment my loaves. I opted for this starter since I grew impatient but it was off to a rocky start. The starter had been delivered earlier than the expected delivery day and ended up sitting in my mail room for 3 days before I grabbed it. Since it was in stable ambient temperature, it was fine and after feeding it and transferring it to a new jar it started doubling in size 2-3 days after the first feed. I was nervous about trying a loaf so I started with an easy focaccia bread and it came out amazing. I didn't cold proof so the flavor was not as strong as I wanted it to be. I then tried a sourdough bagel recipe as another trial run for the starter and they came out perfect with better flavor. I started feeding the starter 50/50 King Arthur bread flour and whole wheat flour since I like the more acidic taste that comes from the whole wheat. I finally made my first loaf (one week after receiving the starter and keeping it at room temp) and the rise and loaf itself look beautiful. Haven't cut into the crumb yet since its still warm but this starter is amazing and I'm so happy I bought it!

This starter came alive immediately after feeding it. It's very vigorous and has excellent leavening qualities. It just takes a couple of hours after feeding to bring it to full, bubbling potency. It also seems to be very robust, after sitting in the fridge unfed for well over a week it just takes one feeding to bring it back to full potency immediately. If there was anything to complain about it's that the first few breads I baked with this starter were almost too sour. Almost, they still tasted great, but the sourdough flavor might be somewhat overwhelming for someone not used to it. It's very easy though to "sweeten" it and obtain a much milder sourdough flavor. This is what I did: First, when feeding it don't just double its volume, but quadruple it. I.e. for a given weight of sourdough starter (e.g. 100 grams) add 1.5 times that weight in flour (150 grams) and 1.5 times that weight in water (150 grams), to obtain four times the original weight of the starter (in this example 400 grams). Use this quadrupled amount of starter immediately after it has come to full potency to make your bread dough, which in my case only took about 4 hours. Second, use a high ratio of this quadrupled starter in relation to flour when making your bread dough. I used 550 grams of the starter, fed as described above, with about 526 grams of flour (a mixture of all purpose, whole wheat and whole spelt). In baker's percentage terms this means my final bread dough consisted of well over 100% starter (more than 100% starter weight in relation to flour weight). The resulting bread had a very mild, almost indiscernible sourdough flavor. Other breads I baked with starter fed with less flour and water, and less starter in relation to final bread weight, had a very noticeable tangy flavor. All variations in between are possible. What you need to know is that the yeast multiplies much faster than the lactic acid bacteria, so feeding the starter more flour and water, using it sooner after feeding, and using a higher amount of starter to leaven the bread will result in more yeast development and less lactic acid development, and subsequently in a milder flavor, while feeding the starter less flour and water, letting it sit longer, and using less starter to leaven the bread will result in a more tangy sourdough flavor. With this particular starter, you can achieve both extremes and anything in between, thus I would highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in varying the flavor of his/her bread. Happy baking!

I followed the video instructions exactly and fed it as soon as it arrived to my door. First thing i noticed was a strong pungent almost "vingery" smell that never went away in the first 3 feedings which the video prescribed. The starter never really activated. Best it would do is create tiny small bubbles on the surface but nothing like my own starter given to me by a baker friend (which their starter smells really good as I continue to use it... a wonderful "doughy" smell. After their instructions failed to activate their start in a healthy way, I resorted to a 1/1/1 approach and noticed the pungent smell was reduced and color was turning more white (not the pale yellow that was evident up to that point.).. Still to no avail as I left it out at room temperature 24hrs and while the bubbles became larger over this time... still very very little activity going on there... leading me to thing their starter was no good. The pic below is almost 24hr wait time sitting out room temp.

I can’t believe it worked the first time! It takes patience to feed your yeast water and flour for up to four days to get a sozeable amount of sourdough starter, and I discovered at the end that if you turn in your oven briefly to get it to 90F, it works great to speed up proofing or rising. I purchased a second starter on Amazon and made both. This one is clearly the winner for the glossy outer crust and nice large holes inside. The only downside, which may be my inexperience, is that it is not as sour as my favorite Boudin, however maybe extra starter will help that in the future. Very impressed. Also, don’t forget to purchase a good kitchen scale. Most bread recipes are by weight and not cups. To keep the bread moist while cooking, I used baking parchment with a clear Pyrex bowl over the top of a metal grill plate. It worked wonderfully to keep it moist. The larger boule was made in a cast iron dutch style pot, again to keep the moisture inside for the first 20 min. The free recipe I used was “ Sourdough Bread: A Beginner’s Guide” from the clever carrot, but there are many out there. Happy Baking!

Much faster and more reliable than making your own starter! Great results! I was concerned about the starter’s viability after the time it took to arrive. When I opened it the signs were positive: it was very bubbly and ripe with an inoffensive sour smell and no hooch separation. I scraped it into a jar and fed it right away. There didn’t seem to be any down time at all. It started up with regular starter behavior without any problems. After a few days to make sure it was going strong I baked a beautiful bread with it in my Dutch oven. The flavor is a mild sour. I can tell it is sourdough for sure but it isn’t like “Bam! I’m sour!” I’ll take that as a good thing. It’s delicious and really does remind me of the sourdough bread bowls full of chowder that I used to get on a particular California pier. A coworker had never eaten sourdough bread before and he loved the piece I shared with him. Basic first feeding: Spoon starter into a clean jar. Stir in 1/4 cup of unchlorinated room temperature water. Add 1/3 cup of unbleached white flour and stir to combine. Cover but not tightly so that pressure does not build up too much. Successive feedings: Once or twice a day, discard or use around half of your starter. Feed the remaining amount with equal weights of water and flour. That’s like the above or 2T water and 3T flour for a smaller quantity. Some people keep starter in the fridge if they don’t want to feed it as often but I think that makes it weaker and could impact flavor. The only thing negative I can say is the agreement with some other reviewers that there should be written instructions along with the package or even here on the product page. I had experience with baking sourdough from years ago and didn’t really need instructions but it would still be more reassuring and is simply faster for me to read than to watch a video. The video they have is pretty good though. There are tons of videos on YouTube about caring for your starter and baking with it if you want more tutorials like that. It is January and I live in Georgia so the weather was cold to mildly cool during shipment, probably ideal. I wouldn’t want to order this in the heat of summer or if I thought it would freeze at some point.

C'est une première pour moi. Je n'avais jamais fait de pain au levain auparavant. J'ai suivi la recette d'une personne qui a mis son avis sur ce levain. Et tadaaaa! Résultat incroyable! Un pain au bon goût de levain. Moelleux, léger, croustillant sur le dessus! J'ai suivi les instructions de la vidéo pour l'activation du levain. Super facile. Mon levain a doublé de volume comme prévu. J'ai utilisé une farine bio et de l'eau filtrée à température ambiante. Je recommande le produit!!

Starter arrived as promised, and was not over "stressed" and there were no issues. Worth the price if you don't have time to attempt to start your own. Highly recommend.

I didn’t expect it t come as a thick paste (honestly thought it was dehydrated) but getting it going was easy….got a BEAUTIFUL loaf, my hubby loves sourdough bread

Très bon produit

Makes great bread