Bread! Sourdough Bread!!

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Lastly, if you made it this far without falling asleep...how do you know the sourdough is ready to use?  How much do you use?  How do you use it?  How do you store it?  How often do you feed it when storing it?

All good questions.  I will be happy to cover all of them if you're still interested.  For now, I will end this post, but I will also make a reply which covers how to tell when your sourdough is really "sourdough" and not just a bunch of sticky goo in a jar.

Enjoy!

Here's how to tell if your sourdough is ready.

First, by about day #8 (up to #14) your sourdough should rise every day.  It will usually fall when stirred initially.  But as time rolls on and it starts becoming true "sourdough" it won't fall anymore when you mix it.  Pretty soon you'll start running out of jar.  This is usually a pretty good indicator you're close.  So, there's basically (3) tests to tell if your sourdough is really "sourdough".  That is, that your sourdough is "ready".

Before covering those three things, it's important to understand what sourdough even is and why people do it.  Fundamentally, sourdough replaces yeast.  So, in a normal bread recipe you have to mix flour, water, salt and some form of yeast (rapid rise, or active, etc).  With sourdough, you don't have to add yeast; the sourdough IS your yeast.  That's the whole point of sourdough (aside from the awesome flavor, which just has no equal!).

Okay, so what are the three things to tell if your sourdough is ready?  Here they are:

1.  It rises, but no longer falls, on a daily basis
   
2. It's sticky.  If you tilt your jar and pull some away from the side, it should stick to the sides and be gummy.
   
3. It "floats".  If you take a partial teaspoon full and put it in a glass of water, the mixture will float on the water.
   

If your mixture meets these (3) criteria, you are golden!  Boom!  You're done!

Now, you do have to maintain your sourdough, but it's not every day, and depending on how you do it, it can be weeks or months.  It will never actually "die"


Here's some fun sourdough trivia:

- Sourdough can last for centuries if kept isolated from other stuff eating it.  Literally centuries.  That's kinda' cool.

- A "Sourdough" was a reference to a person, often gold and silver miners along the western seaboard up into the Yukon territory of Canada and Alaska.  The reason they were called "sourdoughs" is because many of them carried a locket around their neck with a bit of the sourdough starter (just like the one you just created).  This sourdough was their only means to bake bread, biscuits and any other foods requiring a leavening agent, and thus was a precious commodity.  Sourdough is really cool stuff.  Amazing stuff actually.

- OMG...what happens if I use up the last bit of my sourdough???? 

Heh, well, this is one of the coolest things about sourdough.  Say you use every last drop of it (and you forgot to make more each time).  Don't panic; just grab a tiny bit of that bread or biscuit dough you're making, and throw it back in a jar, feed it (as noted above) and soon enough it will regenerate itself all over again.  And, any bread or other recipe can deal with having a teaspoon or so of the dough stolen to save and make another batch of sourdough.  It's like a crab which can grow a new claw.  As long as you have a bit of the original left, you can regenerate it again.

- This little factoid is really cool (IMO anyway).  There are some hardcore sourdough people, bakers who really get into everything sourdough.  I read an article recently where this one guy travels the world with his sourdough.  He's not bent on making sourdough everywhere he goes, but sourdough is created by natural yeasts which occur in the air.  When he travels to other locations he wants his sourdough strain to be exposed to the natural yeasts of that region, thus giving his sourdough a different flavor.  There are tens of billions of different types of yeasts, all depending on where you are.  If this guy travels to Europe, he creates a European strain of sourdough starter.  If he travels to Asia, he creates an Asian strain.  And the list goes on.  I think this is really cool...because after you get into sourdough you will realize that every one is different.  It's just like beer, or wine.  Your sourdough may taste one way, but your neighbor's sourdough just down the street may taste completely different.

- I used to go elk hunting with a homesteaded family in Wyoming (my home state).  This friend of mine's mother had a strain of sourdough which had been kept alive and going for over 150 years.  Every morning when we'd be up at 0200 in the morning she would send us off with a belly full of the best sourdough pancakes on this planet and a healthy dose of homemade blackberry syrup.  Best stuff I've probably ever eaten in my life!

- A lot of people 'name' their sourdough starters.  At first I couldn't wrap my head around this, but after you think about it...sourdough starter is a living thing.  It's not going to come, or sit, or rollover when you tell it to, like a dog will, but it's still a living thing, and every sourdough has its own "personality".  No two sourdoughs are alike; every single one is unique.  And every sourdough is based on a whole variety of factors like your location, your temperatures, what plants and critters you have around you...the list is endless, and so are the different strains of yeast.

Sourdough is some cool shit, man!  Really cool shit!!