Our Sourdough Starter

We finally did it. We started a sourdough starter. I didn't even know what a sourdough starter was a few weeks ago and now we have one in the house! My kids have done a lot of baking over the last several weeks during stay-at-home orders that continue. We've had no problem finding bread in the stores, but my oldest daughter has enjoyed trying out new bread recipes and she certainly has the time to do more cooking. Although most ingredients have been easy to find in stores, yeast hasn't. Yeast is sold out everywhere. And I mean everywhere! This means the typical bread recipe is not possible because yeast is needed for the bread to rise. What is one to do without yeast?

My daughter found a bagel recipe that used Greek yogurt instead of yeast and the bagels turned out very well! But most bread requires yeast. So we started a sourdough starter to create our own yeast! The process is very simple, in theory. There are several recipes, some of which use fruit. We decided to use the simplest recipe possible: flour and water. Take equal parts flour and water (start with a quarter to a half-cup each) and thoroughly mix. Place a towel over the bowl and let sit at room temperature. Each day, both morning and night, add another tablespoon or two of flour and an equal amount of water and stir. This feeds the yeast. After five days, you have a yeast mixture that you can use in baking. Here is our starter on day one.

Now we wait 5 days! After 5 days the recipe said we can store it in the fridge, covered, and add a bit of flour and equal water once a week to keep feeding it. I'll let you know when it's done and we make some bread with it! I'm told it is really hard to screw this up, but that doesn't mean I'm not worried we found some way to mess it up!