Easy Sourdough Starter: No feedings, no discards

Hi, I'm Anya here at the kitchen table in our Gables home and today I want to talk to you about

sourdough

starter

if you really don't like the idea of ​​having to take care of your

sourdough

with daily feeds and if this idea of ​​throwing away your sourdough every day creating these

discards

is something you don't like, this video is for you. I have an older video that I made a long time ago that isn't one of my proudest moments, so don't go looking. in which I taught you how to make your own sourdough now. Who am I talking to about sourdough?

Well, I basically grew up watching my mom make sourdough bread and my mom learned it from my grandmother and my grandmother learned it from her. great-grandmother and I don't know how many generations it goes back, but it does go back a long time and when my mom made sourdough bread, it was maybe once a week, no matter how quickly we went through sourdough and we never had daily bread . In

feedings

we never had culls, and if you've been following me, you might know that I grew up in Germany and when I came to this country and everyone was feeding, I had their sourdough

starter

on the counter and they were talking about culls. so I looked into it and there are a lot of reasons for that method and if you're someone who bakes with Sauter every day, that method may be great for you and it may be great, but if you're someone who bakes once a week or maybe a once every two weeks, what do you do with your salad or do you start in the middle?

This is my method that I learned for my family, that has been in my family for generations, and that produces a fabulous sourdough baked good. Now here you can see it. In fact, I have two starters and no, I haven't named them yet. I think if I did, I'd call one bubbles, but I haven't named my sourdough starter anyway. This is one I did in the video I made some time ago. I ask you not to look and this is my whole wheat sourdough starter and with it I make a very heavy dense European style German bread and this is the starter I made this same starter and then I have a You really can't tell from the jar here but I have them in two different drawers so I know which one is which I could label them but that would be too simple anyway and then I have this one which is a white sourdough starter that I might be my art the white style or a lighter sourdough bread, which my family likes a little more than the denser one.

I like European style bread so there is something for everyone so I have two sourdough starters and this is my method. It's very simple, once you have your starter and you're at the point where you would keep it on the counter, I basically leave maybe a golf ball sized starter in my jar or it could be a little bit more, it's not super Exactly and then I just add a large amount of flour. I just use a spoon or a fork and mash it all up until it's very dry and it doesn't matter if it has more flour than it needs because as you can see here, I actually have flour on it and I've done the same thing with my whole wheat starter.

You can see here that I'm using white flour for the whole wheat starter because I have it there and I grind my own. grains and I usually don't remember to save some whole wheat flour because I have to start making it, so once I do I just put the lid back on and put the starter in my refrigerator, how long can I keep it in there? I've kept it for up to six weeks with just a little time, but week to week it's absolutely perfect and I don't do daily shots. I don't do

discards

with this method, sometimes you know I use my sourdough. as a starter for something else, making pasta and then I change my method a little bit, but this is what really worked well, so now how do you continue from there if you really want to bake something?

Now we all know that sourdough is something you don't normally just do this is what baking powder or yeast does gives you the results. I'll be doing something that I need to plan over the top of my head, so with this method you plan a little ahead and if you want to bake bread. Let's say on Wednesday I just take out my salad or starter on Tuesday night, add a little bit of water and mix it because I have a lot of flour on top that basically feeds the sourdough and with the water on top we do it. more active again and I stir it to the point where it's probably lumpy but you can see it's incorporated and then I let it sit overnight and it's usually ready the next few days sometimes if I won my salad or started to be even more active. and more bubbly, I'll actually do what most people do and pour a little, create a discard, add a little flour and a little water in the same proportion and let it sit another day, then it's really super active and bubbly, but you don't have to do that and you like it.

I said for decades that I have never thrown anything away. I've never thrown anything away, so once you do, you just use your sourdough starter, often it's about a cup or so that's used for a recipe, you add it in there and you have a little bit left in the jar, again you use a little flour and thicken it until it's very dry, add a little extra flour on top, put the lid on it and put it back in the refrigerator if you don't have any left. You used all your sourdough, what you can also do is let the bread rise and before you put it in the loaf pan or in your dutch oven or whatever container you're baking your sourdough in or whatever you're making with your sourdough. just take some of it off because it's very active and put it in your jar again use the flour method put the flour on top mix it make it very dry and dense add a bunch of flour on the top lid and then put it in the refrigerator so you can see it's very

easy

it's super simple it's perfect if you don't want to do something with it every day or let's say you're traveling you have some other reason why you're not baking or using your salad or as a daily starter or let's say every other day so this is it perfect.

If you have any questions about this, please leave me in the comments below. I will be happy to answer it because this may be completely new to you and you may be wondering. well how to do this and how I do that so let me know what questions you have if you enjoyed this video give me a thumbs up if you're new here on my channel hit the subscribe button. I upload a new video every week. It also activates bail notifications. Thank you very much for watching and joining me at my kitchen table. See you next time.