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Hello,

Well, I can't make cheese for another 2-4 weeks so I decided to take my leftover whey and make a sourdough starter.

I read here that you make a starter with 2 cups of water mixed with 2 cups of flour and then let it sit 7-10 days?  And then I read here that you can use whey instead of water when making your bread.

So I made the leap...I did 2 cups of whey with 2 cups of flour.  Will this work?

Where's the best place to find bread recipes that assume you're using a starter instead of packets of yeast.  I've made bread before but only with yeast packets so I'm not sure how much starter to use when making the bread.

Thanks in advance!

Hi,
this forum is a great source of information:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/

The problem is that the mixture should sit out at room temp ( at least 60f) for the yeast to start. I'm pretty sure the whey will spoil at room temp for 2 weeks.

Although some purist are against the idea, an alternative is to seed your starter with either a little home beer or wine and let that yeast go wild. I've got a starter that I jump started with a tablespoon of home brew. It's one of the best sourdough cultures I've had in 10 years of doing this. Really good tasting sour and very lively

Hey Jess. I just posted the directions for starting your own sourdough starter. Have a look at it and tell me what you think. I've done starters where I left them on the kitchen counter for 7 days. The thing about those is that they develop so much acid in 7 days that all yeast, well most yeast, is killed and so you still need to use packets.

Quote from: Dgarner23 on January 19, 2011, 09:40:39 PM
Although some purist are against the idea, an alternative is to seed your starter with either a little home beer or wine and let that yeast go wild. I've got a starter that I jump started with a tablespoon of home brew. It's one of the best sourdough cultures I've had in 10 years of doing this. Really good tasting sour and very lively

Hi Dgarner23. I'm not sure if I'm a purist, but just wanted to say that a sourdough culture is a complex living organism. That contains bacteria, enzymes and yeast. Wheat has its own set of those, beer its own, wine its own, whey its own and so on and so forth
If you use beer in your starter one set will compete with the other for dominance. Since the environment is Wheat based, Wheat based flora will eventually outcompete the intruder. Same for wine, whey, grape juice and so on. So the best way to start a sourdough starter as I mentioned in my thread is with water.
Having said all that, the most important thing is if it works and you like it, then nothing else really matters. Just wanted to share what little I've learned about this wonderful world of bread baking.

I know we all have our own ideas, one is not better than the other if it works........there is a lot being learned about the chemistry and biology of baking all of the time.  I have schooled at American Institute of Baking Residential Program, been a bakery manager at 3 commercial bakeries, and made sours with one of America's leading experts.  He would have never used Beer , this I know.......but he did share with me that a large majority of the flavor comes from the strain on the yeast in the less than perfect conditions on yeast when making a sour.   The acids are a byproduct you will not find to a detectable degree when using a bread yeast ( a strain adapted to prescribed conditions ), fermented for a short period of time, and provided ample food and chemistry.  The reason for a "sour" is that you start with a limited number of yeast cells, extended period of time, and the fact that they end up living in their own waste .........You can achieve the same effect using beer ( sugar, alchohol, yeast ) which contains nothing foreign to breadmaking...........commercial yeast in very limitted quantities in less than perfect conditions for extended period of time......or any other number of ways.  Each will have slightly different results.   I'm simply saying that the beer  provides yeast that has already gone through it's prime so it is strained already, it has started to mutate or stray into a wilder form, it was not optimized for bread production ( neither are wild yeasts ) ....so it ends up producing the desired effects.  There is nothing any more foreign about this than the inherent or natural yeast traditionally used for sours.

Having said this, I do not claim to be a sourdough expert.  Commercial grain breads and rolls were my specialty so I am learning about sourdoughs all of the time.

Hello all.
Thefreshloaf.com is indeed the site to explore.
Starting a sourdough starter is quite easy, you don't need anything more than flour (whole, if possible) and water.
If you fancy a bit of a scientific reading, I strongly recommend this Debra Wink's article:
Part 1
Part 2
To sum it up, use pineapple or orange juice the first two days to keep acidity high and raise your success chances.

You need to refresh the starter every day,cutting it in half and doubling the volume with flour and water\whey.
If the whey is cultured (the lactic acid bacteria has not been cooked)
Its a sure bet to success.

If you leave it for two weeks it will not properly acidify and will spoile and grow mold so there is a specific method of doing it right.

You can leave your starter for months in the frig.  It will 'go to sleep' and produce what they
call hooch.  I started my own starter years ago in the SF Bay Area.  When I moved
about 8 months ago, I just left it alone in the frig for several months.  To get it going
again I just started feeding it several times a day.  It took several weeks, but it is alive
and beautifully active again.  Peter Reinhart has a very good method for making a new
starter.  It involves using pineapple.  He is 'THE' man and I'm sure you can find a recipe
for his starter on the web.   

If I'm not baking for a while (unusual) I feed my starters only weekly and and store
them at 50ish degrees..(They do very well in the cheese caves.)  They are happier if
you store them above about 42ish.  You should look at the Northwestern Sourdough
web site. Or somewhere in Reinhart's book (there are many that are good) to find out
at what temp starters start losing their 'flora'.

I usually bake on the weekends.  So after using my starters, I store them at 49ish
and leave them till mid week.  Then I feed them once or twice a day (they like to be
fed a lot) until the weekend. 

I also bulk my doughs for about 18 to 22 hours at 49.  It makes a great sour loaf.

annie

When storing for more then a few days at the fridge you can never expect a viable active starter,
You need to refresh it to get good leven so losing some "flora" during "fridge hibernation" is not critical anyhow unlike when using a mother culture for cheese where you need alot of viable cells which can multiply quickly.

Please read my last post again.  As I said, after storing for a few days, you must feed it once or
twice a day for several days (or longer depending on how long you left it unfed).   As for the
flora, very important if you want a flavorful loaf. 

annie

Let me add to that last post.  If you store at normal frig temps, i.e. below 40, you can refresh in a
day or two.  But you can't replace the flora that quickly.  That's why it takes months to get
a great tasting starter.

annie

Sorry I mis understood,
What I meant is to direct someone unknowlegable managing his sourdough for the first time.

A sourdough Is rather indestructable, I often get it overacidified since I only make bread once a week and skimp out on refreshing it properly. (throwing at least half and replacing)
I take just take a small portion of "dead" starter (50-80 grams) to make a 100% hydration starter
and throw in a few tbsp of four and enough water to get it to a stiff levin firmness and get it back into the fridge where it slowly over ripens and my breads are fantastic so there is not just one "right" way of doing things ,you can cut corners...