Roel Wyman <roel.wyman@gmail.com> wrote:
>To those for whom it matters, King Arthur's French Sourdough Starter
>contains traces of beef. It's not explained why.
Yuck! :-/
I've never had any difficulty making an active sourdough starter
using just organic rye flour and filtered water. Filtering or boiling
the water is important because the wild yeasts don't like chlorine.
Here's what I do.
Mix 1 tablespoon of rye flour & 1 tablespoon of water in a bowl,
cover with cling film (plastic wrap) and leave at room temperature
for 24 hours.
Add another tablespoon each of rye flour and water, mix thoroughly,
and leave for another 24 hours.
Continue by doubling the quantities and mixing thoroughly every 12
hours, so you add 2 tablespoons each of rye flour and water, then 4,
then 8, then 16. (By this stage, it's easier to weigh it if you have
an accurate scale that weighs in grams. A tablespoon of water is 15g,
a tablespoon of flour is 10g.
After another 12 hours, you should have a very lively, bubbly
starter. Keep it in a jar in the fridge and you can take a
tablespoonful to start off a new batch of bread whenever you want to.
You can use this rye starter to raise wheat bread as well as rye, I
just stick to rye for the "mother" starter. When the jar is starting
to run out, just feed it a couple of times.
- guy