About sourdough

You don't need to be afraid of gluten, carbs or bread but still try to make different or better choices on food. You can partially or completely remove the need for added yeast in your bread by using your own sourdough. You'll still get bread to rise and get a really nice, sour flavor in the bread, using sourdough. It's not difficult, but it only takes time.

The two most common types of sourdough are made of wheat or rye. Both are really good, but you'll need to use (organic) wholegrain wheat or wholegrain rye flour for the sourdough. You'll get your own natural yeast growing and it requires food, so that's why we'll use wholegrain. The sourness comes from lactic acid and acetic acid which forms in the dough. Lactic acid is one of the reasons why sourdough can be beneficial to your health.

Your own sourdough

To get started, you'll need water and wholegrain flour in 1:1 ratio. I'm using weight units as they are accurate. You can always weight everything, instead of trying to get that 3/4dl right. One amount of getting you started is 200 grams of water and 200 grams of wholegrain flour. Mix them in a container which is at least triple the size, as you'll need a bit more room during the next few days. At this point, you can also add some shredded (organic) apple, shredded potato or honey to the mix. I prefer some honey, as it will help the sourdough be ready faster.

Close the container with a lid and leave it to a warm (25-30 Celsius is optimal) spot for tomorrow. You can mix the sourdough few times per day and the process should be faster.
The next day you can add another 200 grams of water and wholegrain flour. Mix them well and put the closed container back to warm spot.
Typically after 2-4 days sourdough should be ready. You can see the dough bubbling and the sourdough should have a nice, sour smell. If it smells bad, it might be best to throw it out and start again.

Newly fed sourdough in a messy bowl. It's not yet fully active.

Using the sourdough

Best place to store your sourdough is the fridge. It will stay good for a bit longer than a week, but you should feed it at least once per week. This way you can use the same sourdough for the rest of your life, maybe leave it to your children when you die.

Feeding the sourdough is simple. Remove most of the old sourdough, add new flour and water and then mix them well. In room temperature, sourdough should start bubble again in few hours, in fridge it will take longer. Store the newly fed sourdough in the fridge once again.

I typically bake once per week using the sourdough. I feed the dough same time. I take most of the sourdough for baking and feed it the same time. I don't need to throw away anything and sourdough stays alive one week longer. You can use the feeding trick to create big amount of sourdough for baking using only a little piece of the sourdough. Take few spoonfuls of sourdough to a bowl, mix it with water and flour and leave it to room temperature. In few hours (or overnight) your few spoonfuls have taken over the mix and you have a big sourdough to start baking with. This way you don't need to store huge amounts of sourdough and still have enough for good baking results.

One good basic recipe for sourdough wheat bread is having
500g wheat flour
400g sourdough
300g of water
10g of salt

Mix flour, sourdough and water in a bowl. I typically use a machine to mix, first 13 minutes on slower speed, then add the salt and 7 minutes on higher speed.

Let the dough rest and rise for 70 minutes. Cover the bowl.

Split the dough in two breads and bake them in any form you like.

Let them rise under a cloth for another 70 minutes.

Put the oven to 250 Celsius. When oven is ready, put the breads in and spray some water in the oven.

After 5 minutes, reduce the heat to 200 Celsius.

Have the bread in oven for 35-45 minutes more. The longer they are in oven, the thicker crust you will get. If you enjoy the crust, you can open the oven 2 times during the baking and you'll get a better crust.