Tips and Tricks

Things I've learned since I started my journey:

• You will get a LOT of advice. It will help until it doesn't because your house is not their house. Your starter is not their starter.
• You will not be patient enough for the first few loaves because it truly does need to be a virtue for sourdough.
• you need a scale! And you can use inexpensive flour! Trust me! It doesnt matter!
• Your starter has an attitude if you choose to turn the thermostat down by one degree to lower the gas bill. It is like an angry teenager who will choose to do NOTHING.
• when it's hungry you NEED to feed it. And when you do, you'll be told you overfed it. Or possibly underfed it. And you're nothing but confused by then.
• You really have NO idea what 1:1:1, 1:2:2 or 1:5:5 means until you find a video where someone lays it out like you're in kindergarten. Your recipe calls for 100g and you want to bake tomorrow and you only have 10g of starter. That's okay. 1:5:5 = 10g starter, 50g flour and 50g water. That's 110 g and yes, it will take longer for it to be ready but you're not going to have a ton of discard because you produced just enough. Best lesson I ever learned. Oh. And dough is just a GIANT feed. So use the starter as it's starting to fall because it's hungry again and will be super happy in the dough.
• If you do have discard once your starter is established…oh my gosh…Google discard recipes. You'll never buy bagels, English muffins, crackers or cookies again.
• it doesn't matter what you bake it in. Cast iron, old metal pans, glass pans. Sourdough doesn't care. It's just happy to be used. But I do recommend silicone sleeves. They change your life.
• Bulk fermentation is VERY important (and it's where that patience kicks in).
• Cold fermentation is NOT necessary. It helps enhance that sour flavor. You can stick the shaped dough in a freezer for about a half hour if you want to score it easy. Or…bake the bread and about 7 mins in, lift the lid and score it then. It works (most of the time).
• it's okay to put your starter in the fridge and let it hibernate and not feed it for weeks if it's hibernating. Bears sleep in the cold and don't eat and they don't die. Starter is a bear.

My point is. Read the advice. Try what you read until you figure out the personality of your starter. Then just pay attention to it. It's needy when it's on the counter. Heavier feeds require a little less attention because it needs time to eat. Kinda like giving a baby a full bottle at bed time so it sleeps through the night.

I use a glove. No matter what ratio I feed my starter. When she's waving to me, I know she has peaked and is getting ready to be hungry again.

I know there are a 1,000 comments already, but if I may add my tuppence worth as someone who's been baking sourdough regularly for over 2 years and started because I'm gluten intolerant and hate gluten free bread!! But LOVE toast with loads of butter…. Feeding my starter (named Sophie). I have "maintenance feeds" and "baking feeds". Maintenance feed = 20gms Sophie, 40gms water and 40gms flour. Baking feeds - I up the anti to about 40/80/80. It gives me 100gms starter for baking and the rest is NOT discarded - she goes straight into the fridge as "Sophie 2" ready for her next maintenance feed. When I'm getting her to rise/expand/grow - I put a kitchen paper with an elastic band over to let her breath naturally. When she's "resting" in the fridge, I have a sealed, airproof jar (WELK - great brand), so she can just calm down and hibernate until the next bake. I keep a diary with every bake - I list exactly what I used, the bulk fermentation times, the cold fermentation times, temperatures, quantities, flour used, then I bake and put "VERDICT" at the end of that particularly diary entry with comments like "Too drunk to stretch and fold before bed, so just threw her in the fridge overnight - it worked!". Myths - Fancy flour? I use a mix (350gms) supermarket white flour and 150gms Spelt flour. Nothing fancy - just make sure it's 11% or more Protein. Starter needs to float?? Nope - just make sure she's well fed, double in size and has a "stretchy, bubbly, honeycomb" texture. Special equipment needed? Nope - I tried the "dough whisk" - just got loads of dough stuck in it, a fork works fine - tried the metal bench scraper - just scratched my worktop - special Banneton Basket - yeah, nice, but just to give a nice pattern on the bread - my pyrex bowl also worked just fine. My favourite bit of equipment is my "third hand" - a small, cheap, supermarket, plastic, hand held spatula. I use it for all my stretch & folds. Special covers for proving? Nope - a transparent 1 franc shower hat works just fine. I find baking sourdough SO satisfying - like everything in life, when it works, it's DEVINE, when it doesn't - back to the drawing board….. Happy Baking!!

I made a post a few weeks ago that laid out some of the confusion since my journey. If you click my name it'll take you to things I've posted. It's gonna be chaos the first couple weeks with what people tell you. Biggest rule to remember. Do not let anyone tell you that what you're doing is "wrong" (unless you're not using a scale because I don't know how our ancestors survived without a scale). Second rule to remember - do not toss the discard down your drain. That sh*t is like cement! Starter acclimates to YOUR environment. Not someone else's. You can take what we tell you as "suggestions" to try in YOUR house. You'll get to read Gerthas personality quick enough. First two weeks are the easiest if you ask me. Feed a 1:1:1 ratio (s:f:w) (so if you keep 10g of starter, you'll give it 10g of flour and 10g of water. Before the next feeding you'll toss all but 10g away, and repeat. You really don't need to keep a ton. And the "discard to half" rule is nuts because you'll wind up with such a waste of flour. You CAN do this every 12 hours to help build strength. (Down to 10 and feed) once a day won't kill her. It'll keep her hungry to work hard and build herself up when it time to eat that dough (because dough is a giant feeding). Don't let Gertha fool you. She's gonna rise up in that jar soon. She's gonna tease you with those eyes and let you think she's ready. She's not! She will get over confident and needs a parental lesson that she's still a growin girl. By the end of the second week, my suggestion - (see what I did there?) - take those 10g and reward Gertha with a 1:3:3 (10g starter:30g flour:30g water) once a day for a few days. This is going to take longer for her to rise so don't get nervous. She's a toddler now and eating a bigger meal will make her super happy and when she does rise you'll start to notice her "muscle" building. She will rise. Then fall. Feed her when she falls. That's when she's hungry. She will be thicker. That's good! She's fine on the counter with a lid that's not too tight and her jar looks plenty big enough to allow for growth. If you're going to become a weekend baker like a lot of us…you'll be able to start letting her hibernate in the fridge because by day 18 or so she's gonna be so happy to get baked. (No the way people get baked)

Hibernation saves you a lot of flour and babysitting. She won't need to be fed til she comes back out. When you want to let her hibernate, you really don't need a huge amount. I keep 30g total. We've got some in the group that only keep 5g (this is nice the starter is aggressively established). And there's a simple math ratio to be able to take her out of the fridge and feed to only what you'll need for recipes with very little or no discard, but we can teach you that later. Welcome to the world Gertha! Your future looks bright!