• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

CooksInfo

  • Home
  • Recipes
  • Encyclopaedia
  • Kitchenware
  • Food Calendar
menu icon
go to homepage
search icon
Homepage link
  • Recipes
  • Encyclopaedia
  • Kitchenware
  • Food Calendar
×
You are here: Home / Leaveners / Starters for bread / Homemade bread starter

Homemade bread starter

Homemade bread starter

Homemade bread starter. © CooksInfo / 2020

A bread starter is a live yeast culture living in a paste of flour and water, or flour and milk. It is used for leavening bread.

There are two ways to get a starter. The first is to make one from scratch. You let a flour batter stand uncovered in your kitchen for several days, and wait for wild yeasts in the air to colonize the batter.

The other way is to get a some starter from someone else, and use it to start your own batch.

There are many recipes for making your own sourdough starter, though purists insist that true starter can only come from other starter, and cannot involve any commercial yeast. You can purchase sourdough starters through mail order.

You have to constantly care for a starter, using it and feeding it to keep it alive.

Cooking Tips

Never use a metal container or metal implements to store a starter in. Metal seems to inhibit its growth.

Equivalents

1 tablespoon active dry yeast = 2 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast = 3/4 ounce fresh yeast

Storage Hints

Freezing will kill starter, but you can dehydrate it. Use starter that has been fed the day before. Spread a very thin layer out on plastic wrap; let sit to dry for two days. Break into flakes, store indefinitely in a dry place. To use, make a paste from a tablespoon of flakes with a tablespoon of tepid water, then add in another cup of water, then a cup of flour. Put in a warm space and let ferment overnight. By the morning, if bubbles have formed, your starter has been successfully brought back to life.

This page first published: Sep 8, 2002 · Updated: Apr 12, 2020.

This web site generates income from affiliated links and ads at no cost to you to fund continued research · Information on this site is Copyright © 2021· Feel free to cite correctly, but copying whole pages for your website is content theft and will be DCMA'd.

Primary Sidebar

Search

Home canning resources

Vist our satellite site Healthy Canning for Home Food Preservation Advice

www.hotairfrying.com

Visit our Hot Air Frying Site

Random Quote

‘Brides, like ships, should be launched with Champagne.’ — Clementine Paddleford (American food writer. 27 September 1898 – 13 November 1967)

Food Calendar

food-calendar-icon
What happens when in the world of food.

NEWSLETTER

Subscribe for updates on new content added.

Footer

↑ back to top

About

  • About this site
  • Privacy Policy
  • Copyright enforced!
  • Terms & Conditions

Newsletter

  • Sign Up! for emails and updates

Site

  • Recipes
  • Encyclopaedia
  • Kitchenware
  • Food Calendar

This web site generates income from affiliated links and ads at no cost to you to fund continued research · The text on this site is © Copyright.