Greetings from SFO!
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wrote on 5 Mar 2025, 20:08 last edited by wtg 3 May 2025, 20:27
Yesterday I fed a bit of my starter some rye flour as an experiment. Holy cow! @Jodi was right...
The jar was half full and it spent the night in the frig. It's almost up to the top and I'll have to find a bigger jar!
Will let it develop for a while and try it in my next loaf of bread in a few days.
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wrote on 5 Mar 2025, 22:07 last edited by
lol, I sometimes add about a 1/4 cup of rye to my sandwich bread, it’s nice. Rye
doesn’t have much gluten so 100% rye bread is trickier to make.
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wrote on 5 Mar 2025, 22:07 last edited by
Think you need to use about 40% of your regular flour along with the rye.
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wrote on 5 Mar 2025, 22:27 last edited by wtg 3 May 2025, 22:30
The rye bread recipe that I use is 2 parts of regular flour to one part dark rye (I use Bob's Red Mill). Definitely a lot stickier than an all-bread flour loaf, but worth the extra work.
I've looked at Lithuanian rye bread recipes but haven't tackled any yet. Mostly rye and very dense.
https://theryebaker.com/black-rye-breadjuoda-rugine-duona-lithuania/
What I grew up on. Wonder Bread was a shock the first time I had it...
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Yesterday I fed a bit of my starter some rye flour as an experiment. Holy cow! @Jodi was right...
The jar was half full and it spent the night in the frig. It's almost up to the top and I'll have to find a bigger jar!
Will let it develop for a while and try it in my next loaf of bread in a few days.
wrote on 8 Mar 2025, 00:20 last edited by@wtg said in Greetings from SFO!:
Yesterday I fed a bit of my starter some rye flour as an experiment. Holy cow! @Jodi was right...
The jar was half full and it spent the night in the frig. It's almost up to the top and I'll have to find a bigger jar!
Will let it develop for a while and try it in my next loaf of bread in a few days.
I put it in a jar that is twice as big and it's up to the top already and way more bubbly than I've ever seen starter. Nice sour smell. Will probably throw together a loaf on Sunday and will bake on Monday. Can't wait.
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wrote on 9 Mar 2025, 00:44 last edited by
Sandwich loaf. This time I managed to catch it before it stuck to the top bread pan. I make them smaller, so they don’t rise that much over the top. Put 1/3 cup rye flour in with the rest. And proofed it more slowly today on the counter, in our fairly cool kitchen (67 degrees) instead of in the oven - made it at 8:30 am, and baked at 5pm.
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wrote on 9 Mar 2025, 01:00 last edited by
Looks delish!!
I used my rye-fed starter today. I used my usual recipe (I weigh everything) and the dough is extremely sticky. I finally gave up and kneaded in some additional bread flour and got it to something I could at least handle. It's rising again. I'll see how it looks in a couple of hours. If it's risen reasonably, I'll form the loaf and put the proofing basket in the frig overnight and then bake tomorrow morning.
I tried a little of the dough and it is SOUR. Can't wait to see how it bakes up. I made corned beef today so it could chill overnight for easier slicing and hoping upon hope that I have a successful loaf so we can have corned beef sandwiches tomorrow for lunch.
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wrote on 9 Mar 2025, 03:57 last edited by
Do you guys put salt in your starter?
I’ve read that it makes the starter more sturdy - they call it “training the starter”.
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wrote on 9 Mar 2025, 04:11 last edited by
I have not salted the starter. I don’t recall any of the blogs I’ve looked at mentioning it. Will check it out!
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wrote on 9 Mar 2025, 04:57 last edited by
No. No salt in my starter. I warm the water up a little and dissolve the salt in it. I mix part of my flour with the salty water first, they put the starter in.
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wrote on 9 Mar 2025, 16:23 last edited by
Thinking about this more - don’t know what the point is. Why make life harder for your starter? It’s not like you kill it off when you mix your bread recipe together.
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wrote on 9 Mar 2025, 16:30 last edited by
The theory is that if your starter is raised with salt in it then being combined with the salt in the dough won’t slow it down.
It’s one of many questionable assertions I’ve found bouncing around YouTube and Reddit.
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wrote on 9 Mar 2025, 17:09 last edited by wtg 3 Sept 2025, 18:19
Like @Jodi I don't put the salt directly on the starter when I'm putting together the ingredients to make a loaf of bread. I start with the starter (!), then put water on that, dump in the flour and sprinkle the salt on top of the flour. Stir everything together.
I do remember making a loaf of bread when I was a kid. The bread came out looking very nice, but much puffier and larger than usual. I cut a slice and buttered it and it became obvious why the loaf looked so different than usual. I forgot to put in the salt.
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The theory is that if your starter is raised with salt in it then being combined with the salt in the dough won’t slow it down.
It’s one of many questionable assertions I’ve found bouncing around YouTube and Reddit.
wrote on 9 Mar 2025, 20:55 last edited by@Steve-Miller said in Greetings from SFO!:
The theory is that if your starter is raised with salt in it then being combined with the salt in the dough won’t slow it down.
It’s one of many questionable assertions I’ve found bouncing around YouTube and Reddit.
Lots of things people do that make this more way more complicated than it needs to be! Temperature is one of the biggest factors in how fast it rises. I let the bread I made yesterday rise on the counter, it took a couple hours longer than it does in the oven with the light on. But since it didn’t matter when I baked it, it didn’t matter how long it took. And I could have just stuck it in the fridge and let it proof overnight and baked it this morning. Sourdough is something you just have to be willing to be flexible with, depending on your conditions/environment at the time.
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wrote on 10 Mar 2025, 16:45 last edited by
She’s dead, Captain. The starter sleeps with the fishes.
It never really did much, got a bit lighter but never changed size. One or two bubbles. Today was the end of it - crusted over and smelled bad.
I may have done too many things. Different flours, sometimes discard, sometimes not. This time I’ll pick one method and stick with it.
Onward - In to the fog!
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wrote on 10 Mar 2025, 20:07 last edited by
Use 100% rye flour, bobs red mill. Don’t add any other kind of flour until it’s going. It took mine a couple of weeks at least. Water needs to have no chlorine. Make sure your spoons are clean.
https://www.weekendbakery.com/posts/rye-sourdough-starter-in-easy-steps/
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wrote on 10 Mar 2025, 20:18 last edited by
I’ve now made 2. One traditional with Rye flour, one using dehydrated starter from England that Sharon got me for Christmas. That one used unbleached bread flour.
Kitchen temp 69 degrees - I think putting in the oven even with just the light on may have baked it. Water temp used was 90F. Flour temp 69F. Distilled water.
Early results are encouraging - I’m getting bubbles!
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wrote on 10 Mar 2025, 20:21 last edited by
Yay!!
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wrote on 10 Mar 2025, 20:48 last edited by
I read somewhere that distilled water isn't the best idea.
Of course I've also read that you shouldn't use chlorinated water, and all I've ever used is water directly out of the tap and have had no issues.
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wrote on 10 Mar 2025, 20:58 last edited by Steve Miller 3 Oct 2025, 21:03
Maybe bottled drinking water?
Maybe I’ll take some of the discard and feed it with tap water and see what happens. I have lots of jars and the tap water doesn’t smell like chlorine so…
