Making sourdough starter from scratch
Jan 21st, 2008 by Jill
I’ve been making sourdough starter from scratch using Nancy Silverton’s Breads from the La Brea Bakery recipe. It’s a two-week process. You start with flour, water and organic grapes, you monitor the room temperature, you’re careful about the temperature of the water that you add, you feed it on a rigid schedule, you don’t let it touch stainless steel, and if all goes well you end up with something you can make bread from. My first batch died, but this second one is bubbling along happily. I’m two days away from being able to bake my first loaf of bread.
I’m keeping track of the feeding schedule on that splattered index card over to the right.
Oooh I bet it is really tasty
Wow! I’ve never made it from scratch. It looks wonderful and I want to get some of it when we visit.
Impressive!! I’m eager to know how the first batch of bread turns out!
I just notice the Mark Bittman book in the sidebar and was reminded of an NPR story I heard recently about a new book of his on vegetarianism. Have you heard anything about it?
I think so — It’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, right? I have it, and it’s good. So far it seems to be a lot of the same material that’s in How to Cook Everything, but all vegetarian. We don’t eat meat every night here, but we do eat it. I’m a backslid vegetarian now. Or a fantasy vegetarian. Or an aspirational vegetarian. Or an omnivore.
I’ve not ever seen a recipe for sourdough starter that uses grapes. Hope your bread turns out great!
I wanna see the bread!!!!! I want a mouthwatering picture….. please
You got it! It’s really good. And each time I make it again, it gets better. It’s really time consuming, though! But fun. And good exercise.
Oh! that is a great idea… I went through a phase where I reeeeeallly wanted this pioneer era sourdough starter I saw on boinboing (here it is, I found the link: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/02/09/free-live-pioneerera.html), but never got around to it… maybe this will motivate me to make my own!