Best 2 Wild Yeast Sourdough Starter Recipes

WILD YEAST SOURDOUGH STARTER

Steps:

• I bought whole wheat berries at the health food store and ground my own flour in a coffee grinder from them because I wanted the yeast on the flour to be really fresh, but this probably isn't really necessary. The pre-ground flour at the health food store is probably quite fresh, also, and you can buy very small quantities in bulk.
• DAY ONE: Mix 2 Tablespoons whole grain flour and 2 Tablespoons pineapple juice. Stir well, cover and let sit for 24 hours at room temperature.
• DAY TWO: Add 2 Tablespoons whole grain flour and 2 Tablespoons pineapple juice. Stir well, cover and let sit another 24 hours at room temperature. You may, or may not start to see small bubbles at this point.
• DAY THREE: Add 2 Tablespoons whole grain flour and 2 Tablespoons pineapple juice. Stir well and let sit 24 hours at room temperature.
• DAY FOUR: Stir mixture and measure out 1/4 cup--discard the rest. To the 1/4 cup, stir in 1/4 cup unbleached AP flour and 1/4 cup water. Let sit 24 hours at room temperature.
• REPEAT Day Four until mixture expands to double its size and smells yeasty. Mixture may start to bubble after a couple of days and then go flat and look totally dead for a couple more days. If this happens, at about Day 6 add the 1/4 teaspoons vinegar with your daily feeding. This will lower the PH and wake up the yeast, which will then start to grow.
• Once the yeast starts growing, starter should be fed equal parts of flour and water in a quantity sufficient to make enough starter for your recipe. Store the starter in the refrigerator when you are not using it. It needs to be fed equal parts flour and water once a week to keep it alive. Either use or discard at least half of it when feeding--THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT to maintian a healthy starter! If you forget to feed it for a few weeks, it probably will be fine but may take several feedings to get it back up to par.

SIMPLER SOURDOUGH STARTER--WILD YEAST

Steps:

• Using scrupulously clean equipment, mix the warm water with the rye flour. It will be wet and sticky. Let sit a few minutes, then transfer to a clean jar, such as a canning jar, and secure a piece of plastic lightly over it with a ring, as Magic Dave suggests. Put in a warm place, about 25 C or in the 70s F, for a few days, stirring once daily and observing if it is getting bubbly and pleasantly, tartly sour-smelling. You can use a clean spoon to take a small test sample. It should be an edible-sour, like sauerkraut or yogurt, and a dull grey-brown. If it's grown anything colourful, don't eat it but throw it out and start over. The day before you want to bake, feed the starter by mixing in another batch of one-cup-water and one-cup-rye-flour mixed together just as you did the first time. The starter will sour and incorporate the new "food" you just gave it. On baking day, you will take one cup or so of the now doubled starter, as per your bread recipe, feed the starter again with another mixture of one cup each of flour and water, just as before, and you can then store the starter in a cooler place like the fridge if you won't need it for, say, a week. Just stir it and let it warm up and get active again the day before you plan to bake, and feed it every time you remove a portion to bake with.