An update, we received the seed box yesterday, and hope to have it moving along by this weekend.
I was wondering: if I could add some of my backup heritage sour dough starter, it’s 239+ years and if sourdough starter could be landraced too?
As every sourdough starter will develop there own flavors in the final products that they create, and they utilize wild yeast in their environment and on the flour used when you feed it.
I also have the hopes of creating this new category in the seed box to turn my sourdough starter into a Frankenstein starter.
Heck, let’s make it a permanent category! That sounds awesome!
A permanent category for spores of tasty fungus species would be nifty, too. Dried spore prints and air-dried (not baked) mushroom caps can be used to share viable spores, right?
I’m currently adding wine cap mushroom spawn to my garden. If I get lots of delicious mushrooms from that (please please please! ), I’d be happy to share spores with other people later. Mushroom spawn has to be kept moist, but spores can be dried, right?
Speaking of which, what kind of flavor does your sourdough starter have right now, Alexis? I’m very interested in getting some, too.
It’s mild in flavor and not too strong or pungent, hasn’t developed any hootch yet and fed 10g-25g-25g with all-purpose flour. It always almost triples in size after I feed it every time. It bubbles and rises reliably at 70-74°, and still has a little bubbles as discard in the fridge. I bought it because I was not successful in making my own starter from scratch.
Oh, that sounds fantastic! I tried making a sourdough starter myself a few years ago, and it was very strong-flavored and made lots of hooch. I wound up discarding it because my kids didn’t like the bread it made. Yours sounds so much better.
Hubby and I love sourdough bread! My boys don’t really, but I’m working on them. If its in the box when I get the box, I’ll certainly try it! I bake bread regularly. I guess I should see about drying some of my starter so I have it to share.
Recently, I started a sourdough starter, bought it, fed it and mostly make muffins/pancakes and cookies with the discard. Its really mild, and I use only heritage whole wheat flour, sometimes rye flour too. Get diversity with flour mixes. I gottta watch a tutorial on dehydrating, haven’t tried that yet.
I’ve heard all you have to do to make dry sourdough starter is to spread a thin layer onto a plate or wax paper or something, then leave it dry, then you can store it that way. I imagine that is much easier to accomplish in a place that has low humidity (like my climate with zero humidity, ha ha ha). In a place with high humidity, would it work to put a thin layer of yeast starter into a dehydrator on a really low setting for awhile, like you would do to save seeds?
Hey, question, actually. Can I just use regular old store-bought dry yeast to make a starter, and keep that alive like I would a sourdough starter? Would that result in bread that doesn’t have a sour flavor at all, coming from my own starter that I can just keep alive, and not need to keep buying?
Im thinking yeast is diferent than the sourdough starter. All sourdough starters have different flavor, some are more sour than others. Just keep trying different starters until you find one you like.
It’s my understanding that the sourness comes from the wild yeasts that inhabit the air, and are thus inescapable. If you keep reusing a starter (for example, I have one made from the lees of wine and mead), eventually those wild yeasts will colonize your starter and introduce sourness. I can confirm that this does happen, eventually. I counter it by keeping some frozen culture on hand, and restarting the starter. The same can be done with dried. And yes, even when it does acquire sourness, it’s mild. Unfortunately those wild yeasts also change other factors.
Sourdough has been difficult for me to work with because it’s so dratted goopy. And I like to use a mix of grains in my flour. And I like to make sure the dough is cultured for a few days before eating it… yeah, my baking is pretty weird. Sourdough culture just doesn’t contribute the factors I need. Mead/wine yeasts do, at least till the wild stuff moves in. I have also heard of mixing storebought yeast with beer to make a starter, and using kombucha to make a starter. When I get my hands on some more lees, I will probably experiment with landracing my starter. Keep adding the species I like until they develop a resistance to wild sourdough yeasts. If it doesn’t work, I still wind up with a baked good. If it’s the texture of a brick, I chop/grind it up and make a casserole or bread pudding. I love experimenting that way, with results that are always useful, even if I don’t hit what I’m aiming for.
Oh, that’s an interesting idea. So could I freeze some starter of purchased bread yeast, and have that available to restart a culture once it starts turning sour?
Or could I dehydrate it, like I would sourdough starter?
It would be nice to have a culture of yeast I can keep on reusing that doesn’t cause sourness at all.
Same! That is what I was wondering and wanting to do as well. Maybe put a packet of dry yeast into a separate sourdough starter and then keep that one as our primary yeast source.
I made pizza dough from my sourdough starter and it isn’t the same as sourdough with added yeast, it just comes out fluffier, chewy, and slightly crunchy on the bottom.
Or I am just not making sourdough pizza dough without yeast right.
Yeah, you’ve really gotten me thinking about how much I’d like to have a yeast culture that doesn’t cause sourness at all that I can keep on propagating for myself. That would be perfect.
Sourdough starter is a wonderful thing. Thanks for the tips about drying it - that’s such a good idea, to have a backup. I find our sourdough bread very tasty (but then again, I’m biased…). Here’s a conversation on permies.com on starting and maintaining a sourdough starter How do I start a sourdough starter? (natural bread baking forum at permies) .
I love sourdough, but I have come to the conclusion that I don’t bake enough to keep a starter alive. I’ve killed a number of them, just from disuse.
I think I’m just going to create a yeast culture and then dry the whole thing. If I remember correctly the (boring) yeast we use for baking was initially isolated from either pumpkins or potatoes.
That’s my thinking, too. I originally thought, “I just won’t use it often enough to make it worth the bother of keeping it alive all year round.” But finding out that I could dry it and store it made me go, “Hmmm!” I tend to do things in spurts, so baking a whole bunch of bread in a week and freezing it all and then baking nothing more until those run out seems like more my style. If it would work for me to do a bunch of baking every few months, with long dirths in between, that seems reasonable!
), I’d be happy to share spores with other people later. Mushroom spawn has to be kept moist, but spores can be dried, right?
