Although there are lots of types of bread that can be made with out one, some breads need a starter. Once it is active and healthy, a sourdough starter is a mix of natural yeast, water, and flour that has a consistency like pancake batter. I spend a few days during my first week in my apartment here in Madrid trying to activate a powder sourdough starter mix that my mom bought for me in Alaska by mixing it with water and flour and trying to keep it as warm as possible. In theory the mix would have started bubbling within a day or two. Mine barely bubbled, so I was worried it might be dead or unhealthy (or just inactive because our apartment was a bit cold, and while working during the day, it was hard to make sure the starter was warm enough while I was gone.)
Like a pet or a child, starters need to be fed. Once a week, I use about a cup of my starter and replenish/feed it with a cup of warm water and flour. After leaving it in a warm place for 3 hours, it now bubbles nicely. This feeding process keeps the yeast healthy and keeps the starter ready for whatever baking I might want to do in the following weeks.
BEFORE PICTURE: Risen dough. It's ALIVE....
To date, I have made 4 loaves of sourdough bread and one batch of sourdough pancakes. The first loaf was dark on the outside, less than cooked on the inside, and fairly ugly. After flipping it over and baking for twice the recommended time it was finally cooked but even uglier than before.
Since then, each loaf has turned out better than the previous one. Whether it's because I'm getting better at making dough, because the starter is more well-fed, because I'm figuring out the trick to working with my apartment's horrible oven, or just plain luck is unclear. (More about my oven in a post in a few days...)
AFTER PICTURE: Second loaf of sourdough bread. Before being devoured by Kim, Omar, and I with chicken and avocado. Followed by salsa dancing at Azucar near Atocha.
After the second loaf (seen above), I brought my sheet of sourdough recipes and some starter to brunch at a friend's house to make sourdough pancakes. I don't know what happened to it, but I haven't seen it since even though I'm sure I put it in my bag before leaving.
My latest attempt was 2 loaves at once. Small loaves since the last 2 were enormous. Since I couldn't find my recipe sheet and was too stubborn to look up a recipe online, I made the dough by what little I could remember and "intuition." A spoonful of sugar, a pinch of salt, some yeast, a bit of water, starter, and lots of flour. I added flour and kneaded until it "felt" right (not something I expected to do successfully since I had only made bread twice before in my life...)
They turned out wonderfully and were both gone within 2 days. My roommates helped.
Especially good warm with a spinach/herb cream cheese/onion spread that I mixed up as an experiment.
Yet another good adventure while at home alone.
Take home lesson: In baking, as in many things, using a combination of intuition, a sense of adventure, and experience often works out better than following the technical, no questions asked, step-by-step approach of someone else's recipe.
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