Hi Pjaway,

I hand bake all our white, wholemeal, granary and similar breads with a sourdough leaven. I use dried active yeast only for speed and simplicity on things like Bara Brith and Stollen, where the recipe calls for milk as although it can be done with sourdough leaven, it is a bit more difficult.

I always have two leaven starters ready, one white, one rye, hibernating in the refrigerator. The rye one is where I begin, and then make the white from the rye when it is really going well. Try this method if you don't get on with DavidW's link.

In a large, clean non-metallic bowl, using a wooden or plastic spoon, mix together about 50 grams organic, whole rye flour and 50ml boiled and cooled water. Cover and leave to stand for 24 hours in a warm place. The next day take the cover off, add another 50 grams rye flour and 50 ml cooled boiled water, mix in thoroughly, cover and leave to stand for 24 hours. Keep doing the adding of rye flour and water, discarding any fluid which may gather on top of the mix overnight, for at least three or four more days. The mix in the bowl should now look spongy and smell of alcohol and yeast and you should have about 600 or 700 grams of it. What should have happened is that the natural yeasts and things like lactobacteria in the rye flour have used the starch in the flour and produced a fermenting mass. All you have to do now is to feed it to keep it alive by using half to make bread and adding the correct amount of rye flour and water to make up the mass again, leave it to ferment and then store in the refrigerator until needed again. (I use washed out 1kg spread tubs, like Flora or similar, to store mine.)

To use the leaven for white bread, you can make a white starter using a little of the rye starter to kick-start the fermentation. Take about 100 grams of rye leaven and in a clean non-metallic bowl add 50 grams of strong white bread flour and 50 ml of boiled and cooled water. Mix together thoroughly, cover and leave to stand for 24 hours. Remember to top up and feed the rye leaven with 50 grams of rye flour and 50 ml water, leaving to ferment before putting it back in the refrigerator to store. THe next day add another 50 grams of white flour and 50 ml of water to your half and half white/rye bowl, mix, cover and leave to stand. It should develop much more quickly than the original rye starter, as the yeasts and bacteria should be fully active and working before you started. After three or four days of adding 50 grams of white flour and 50 ml of water, you once more should have a spongy, even frothy, bowl of leaven, which you can store and use just like the rye leaven. The first time you use it to make a white loaf, there will be a little of the rye flour in the mix, but if you use half to make a loaf and then make up the leaven with white flour and water, after a few loaves there will be a negligible amount of rye left. You can always put a little clear honey or sugar in the mix to speed up the development, but remember too much will kill the yeasts.

You will need to modify your recipes slightly to use the starters instead of packet yeast. For a large white bloomer I have found the following works well:

1) - Make an overnight dough sponge with 200 grams strong white flour, 300 grams white starter leaven brought back to room temperature, 150 ml warm water with either one teaspoon of demerara sugar or two of runny honey dissolved in it, mixing all together in a non-metallic bowl, covering and leave to stand overnight. It should produce a bubbly sponge mass inside 24 hours. (Remember to feed the starter with white strong flour and water to make the same amount again and ferment and store ready for next time)
2) - Next day - To the overnight sponge add 300 grams of strong white flour, a level teaspoon of sea salt, 15 ml of vegetable oil or 25g melted butter and about 75ml of warm water with another spoonful of sugar or two of honey. (If you like you can add 1/4 teaspoon of vitamin C to the mix, which will improve the rise.) Mix thoroughly, adusting the water or flour amount slightly to get the consistency you prefer. Very importantly, leave the mix to stand for 15 to 20 minutes before you knead it, to let the fresh flour absorb water and the yeasts start to work.
3) - Knead for 10 minutes to get a nice smooth, elastic dough, which should have a silky sheen on its surface which you don't see usually with dried yeasts. Let it rise until doubled, which may take a bit longer than with packet yeasts, then knead again for 5 minutes to get an even bubble structure. Shape to a bloomer, tin(s) or rolls as required, cover and let rise to double again.
4) - Bake in an oven heated to 230C/Gas 7, turned down to 200C/Gas 6 as soon as you put the dough in, for 30-35 minutes for tins or bloomers, 15-20 minutes for rolls.

A similar method can be used for any other type of bread, adjusting the liquid amount in the final mix to allow for the water introduced with the starter. You can use the starters for things like Challah breads, where eggs are an ingredient, but will need to experiment with adjusting the liquid volumes to allow for the volume of the eggs.

PS - (edited to add information) - I was taught this method by my Grandmother when I stayed with her for the summer holidays in 1952, at the age of 7, to keep her company after my Grandfather died. I am still using it and baking all our bread at home, over 57 years later.

Last edited by Dafyddapcennydd (12-01-2010 13:42:36)

Perhaps 57+ years of making sourdough, admittedly only about 30 seriously in adult life, does give one the experience and allow one to perfect the technique. I am very glad you found it useful and thank you very much for your nice remarks.

I am not sure about this, but my current white starter has been "live" since October last year when I made a fresh batch of starters, rye first to get everything going, after a house move, and is producing excellent results. Perhaps "Bakingmad" could comment on the composition of Allinson's White Strong Bread Flour, which is what I use.

Sorry you didn't like the end result. Perhaps if you could enlarge on why, there may be something which could be done to improve the bread for your taste.

For anyone who is interested I have put some photographs of some of the sourdough breads I bake online:
Rich White Sourdough with Poppy Seeds
Light Wholemeal Sourdough
Sourdough Multiseed Bloomer with Poppy Seeds
Challah made with sourdough leaven

Dafyddapcennydd - nice pics of your sourdough breads.  I've just finished my 2nd batch of bread using white flour starter and the results look pretty similar to yours which gives me confidence that I'm doing something right.

I did have a wholemeal starter but chucked it out as the family found it a little too sour, they love the white though!

Mick

Hi

Please submit your recipe and we can add it to the member recipe section on the site, if you have a picture we can add it too your recipe too! By adding it to this section you can share you recipe with everyone who visits the site.

Great baking!

Baking Mad Kitchen

Hi Mick,

with great speed and efficiency the Baking Mad team have already uploaded the recipe for Grandmother's Apple, Sultana and Cinnamon Loaf I submitted last Friday. The basic recipe uses Dried Active or Easy Bake yeast, but I have put in the notes about using white leaven starter instead. It works really well any way you do it. If using starter leaven, only put the white flour into the overnight sponge mix, as the wholemeal flour can make it a bit too sour.

Dafydd ap Cennydd

Last edited by Dafyddapcennydd (01-03-2010 15:10:34)

Thank you, everyone, for your very nice comments on the sourdough method and pictures so far.

The trouble I have with submitting recipes is that I have to make notes as I bake, as except for the quantities of ingredients which are written down on scraps of paper, kept in a drawer in the kitchen,  the methods and other information are all held in my memory. I had to bake three different Grandmother's Apple, Sultana and Cinnamon loaves before I was sure I had all the ingredients and method correct for submission. Such hardship It is the same baking Dark Ale and Walnut Loaf, as the recipe calls for 225 ml ale, and there is 500 ml in a can or bottle so I have to drink the other 275 ml to stop it going to waste

I have sourdough recipes for most breads I bake, alongside Dried Active yeast versions. Would sourdough versions of things like Ciabbata, Challah, Granary, Light Wholemeal, Dark Rye Bread and similar be of interest?

Hi Frank1,

I just read again what you posted about the taste of sourdough bread and realised that the posts up above have missed the point somewhere.

The longer you leave the "Overnight sponge", the more sugars are consumed by the yeasts and Lacto-bacteria, and the more acidic the dough becomes. There are some breads where you want a sharp, tangy taste, such as some strong rye breads, but others where a milder, sweeter taste is preferred. If you want a white, granary, wholemeal or similar bread with a sweeter taste, stop the overnight sponge fermenting as soon as it has produced the first flush of frothy ferment, usually about 6 hours in, but this does vary with temperature, water content, starting sugar content and how lively your leaven is. Experiment to see what suits your taste and conditions.

Dafydd

Last edited by Dafyddapcennydd (13-03-2010 23:30:31)

Hi FloweryHans,

I have always used approximately 1:1 flour:water ratio for my starters and have never had any problems.

I was given a new book, "Wild Sourdough", by Yoke Mardewi, last Christmas, and she creates her basic rye starter from 100grams rye flour, 120ml boiled, cooled, filtered water, fermented at about 25-28C (77-82F) for two or three days, then adding more flour and water and maintaining a ratio of about 1:1 thereafter.

I have uploaded some pictures of my sourdough starters and a white "overnight" sponge fermenting:
Three basic starters
White flour starter
Overnight white flour sponge

I hope that helps.

Dafydd ap Cennydd

I have started the process of making a new rye leaven starter from scratch, photographing the bowl every day so I can upload the pictures of it developing to "Flickr" so you can see how it happens.

The first mix, 50g of Whole Rye Flour and 50ml water, gives a stiffish paste with the consistency of grainy, soft set honey or stiff clotted cream. As the fermentation develops and more flour and water are added the mixture becomes more fluid, and after a week or so, when it is ready to use in baking, it is a bubbly, spongy mass. This is because as the yeasts and bacteria develop, they convert solid sugars and starches to liquid and gas, alcohol and carbon dioxide, and the leaven consequently becomes more fluid.

I have test baked some more of my old recipes usng sourdough, ready for addition to the "Members' Recipes" section. I will have to submit them by email in the next few days, however, as the one I tried to submit via the website still gives a ".jpg" file error on trying to upload the photographs. I have a basic Rye Starter Leaven recipe, and a Sourdough "черный хлеб " (Russian Black Bread) recipe ready, with photographs. Interestingly, the web-site doesn't seem able to handle Unicode Cyrillic characters as it crashes my browser when "Preview post" is selected with Black Bread in Russian in the post.

Last edited by Dafyddapcennydd (22-03-2010 01:20:13)

As promised, I have made a photographic record of the whole process of making a rye starter. The sequence is:

Basic ingredients and equipment

Day 1 - a stiff first paste

Day 2 - still quite stiff and not looking active

Day 3 - starting to ferment with the first signs of activity

Day 4 - actively fermenting and looking more liquid

Day 5 - frothy fermenting mass about four hours after fifth addition

Day 6 - moved to a larger bowl as it froths and bubbles

Day 7 - fully developed leaven, ready to use. Main fermentation has ceased and it has fallen back a bit as the gas has escaped.

I hope this helps. It works every time for me, but it may require more experiment to perfect the technique for someone else to use in their kitchen.

Last edited by Dafyddapcennydd (09-04-2010 23:50:23)

The process of making a white flour starter from scratch is under way. Once again I will photograph each stage and upload to "Flickr" for everyone to see.

24th April is going to be a busy day, as it is our Church Spring Bazaar. I once made the mistake ( ) of taking some homemade bread to share after a mid-week service and now get asked to bake as much as possible for all the Church events, including plaited altar breads for festivals. I managed 5 loaves each of Sourdough Light Granary, Sourdough Crunchy Seed, Sourdough Challah and yeasted Bara Brith for the one before Christmas. The plan this time is to produce the same again, but also to add Russian Black Bread, Malted Granary with fruit and some Grandmother's apple sultana and cinnamon and Dark ale and walnut loaves as well, all made with sourdough starters. The preparation should start on 20th April, when I will begin to produce enough starter leavens to get all the overnight sponges fermenting by the evening of 22nd April. I will try to take notes and photographs as the bake progresses and upload and post, as it may be helpful for anyone else attempting a similar exercise.