Three Waves Later: Happy Birthday to My Sourdough Starter

Today is the birthday of my sourdough starter, Melbert. What kind of name is that? I'm not sure.

Around this time a year ago (probably a bit earlier, as I tend to be late to the party) most of my bubble of the internet seemed to be obsessed with baking bread. I quite like the idea of creating something so awesome from so little. But finding flour was a struggle, and yeast was basically nonexistent. Naturally, the solution is to make your own yeast. And so begins the life of Melbert.

Melbert had a lot of trouble getting going at the beginning. If I remember correctly, it took around two weeks before I saw my starter behaving properly (doubling in volume some hours after feeding). This was a tough time! I thought about starting over again many times. Maybe I should have? The main takeaway from this phase of Melbert's life is that bleached flour sucks. I didn't really see much progress until miraculously finding a small bag of whole wheat organic flour at Walmart. I can't really say that it was the persistence that paid off, it's entirely possible that Melbert would never have started going if I had never switched to whole wheat flour.

Finding the right recipe for me really made a huge difference. I didn't have bread flour (and couldn't really find it easily at the time). I used recipes that called for bread flour and subbed regular flour. This did not go well. I now use the following two recipes to great success:

• Artisan Sourdough with All Purpose Flour. The ratios in flour to water make a huge difference!
• Sourdough Bread: A Beginner's Guide. The addition of olive oil is nice :). This recipe calls for bread flour.

I forgot what the recipe I originally used was, but I now use the above recipes to fairly decent success. I still don't follow the process exactly though (e.g. number of stretch and folds, autolysing, resting time, etc). I somehow manage to make it work alright.

Also, having some key equipment can be really helpful. I did not have a dutch oven when I started, so I made do with a sketchy setup involving a pan of boiling water underneath a aluminum skillet covered by an oversized pot. It made the process really annoying, but it sort of works? The dutch oven is definitely awesome though, for more than just bread.

I baked a loaf today in celebration of Melbert's first birthday. Happy birthday! Maybe I'll do another one of these in 4 years for his 5th birthday.

Here is a picture of what the sketchy setup looked like. Moving that big pot around without somehow burning yourself was a big pain in the butt. The water would sometimes not last for as long as it needed to, depending on the initial temperature of the water and the volume. I experimented with throwing big ice cubes in the beginning, but not enough steam was released before it just turned into a hot non-steamy puddle (pan lost too much thermal mass). For some reason, I refused to buy a little spray bottle of water. That probably would have been way better than the sketchy pot.

It makes a decent looking loaf, though.

Now I have full confidence in my sourdough starter. It's actually pretty easy to do! Unless you don't have a dutch oven, in which case it is a huge pain in the ass.