Rye Starter

ETA: I've taken the link to the rec.food.sourdough newsgroup out because I no longer believe it offers the type of quality information that it used to. I visited the google group after not having been there for a while and found it impossible to find any decent information. I had to sift through a lot of ridiculous messages that had nothing to do with sourdough and I don't feel comfortable sending a reader over there to waste their time. If I'm mistaken or the group has moved please feel free to contact me and I will glady look into restoring my link to them. At the time I needed them it was a good group, I'm sorry to see it may have disappeared.

The picture on the left is my Rye Starter during it's in-active stage. I took the picture last night thinking I'd write something later in the week about it. I wanted to try making a Sourdough Rye Bread this week, I thought it would go nicely with a cabbage stew of some kind. I had taken the starter out of the fridge earlier in the day to feed and re-activate it. At the time I took the picture, the starter was coming out of it's "active" stage. The picture on the right is what the starter was doing when I woke up this morning! The starter on the right is active, or as I like to un-scientifically say, it's doing "The Happy Yeastie Dance".

I find the whole subject of starters and sourdoughs somewhat fascinating. I started with some flour and some water and with a little TLC I got an active culture that I have been keeping alive since October. This is the "Mother" of my other starter- the one I've used to make pancakes and brownies out of, that's the starter that is no longer made up of rye flour that I wrote about. I know what you're thinking, you keep writing that Deb, but give us the frikkin' recipe already...sheesh. Alrighty then, without any further delay I'll give the recipe and try my best to explain some of my technique. There are many many methods of doing this and equally as many recipes to get a starter going, some folks use milk and sugar with the flour others use grapes to get going. I am giving you what worked for me, however, I don't make any claims that my way is the right way or the only way.

You will need:

• a clean glass jar or plastic container with a lid (if you don't have a lid it's okay, Plastic Cling Wrap rubber-banded to the top works really well too)
• ¼ cup Rye Flour, preferably organic
• ¼ cup Distilled water
• wooden spoon
• rubber spatula

Combine the rye flour and water in the container and mix with a wooden spoon (please! no metal...ever) scrape the sides with a rubber spatula, cover and place in a warm place where the temperature remains fairly constant. My apt. is normally like a sauna, so I keep mine on the kitchen counter, but I've read that some people keep their starters in an oven with the oven light on. Wait 12 hours, in which time your starter should start bubbling a little, don't be alarmed if it seems like it's not doing much for a while, I've noticed that my starter likes to do it's thing when I'm sleeping. After 12 hours feed it again with the same amount of Rye/Water and let rest another 12 hours. Repeat the next day. In a 48 hour period the starter should have risen and collapsed at least twice, if it has, then the starter is now ready to be used in a recipe. Just to note here, when you remove let's say a cup of starter for a recipe, you should be replenishing your base starter with a cup of flour and a cup of water to ensure that you keep it going. After 1 week of twice daily feedings I started to feed my starter only once a day because I was starting to have more than I could keep up with and I wanted to start slowing it's growth. After 1 week of once a day feedings *I removed a tablespoon of starter* and put the rest in the fridge to retard it's growth. I take this out twice a month and let it get to room temperature, feed it, let it go through an active stage then refridgerate again. That's pretty much what I did.

*The tablespoon of starter was used to start another batch, that I eventually switched flours on. Switching the flour should be done gradually, so as not to shock the little beasties. I chose to make 1 feeding a day use all-purpose flour-I did that for a week then made the twice daily feedings all-purpose flour and never used Rye flour for that batch again.

Written by Deb on January 8, 2003 10:26 AM