Sourdough is a natural starter for making dough for pizza, breads and variety of dishes that required active yeast. You can skip ready-made yeasts and use this starter to experience the whole new flavors which packets can’t produce ever.
Sourdough starter
Prep Time 5 days
Equipment
- 2 Glass Jars of 2 liters
- Weighing scale
- Large spoon
- Rubber band
Ingredients
- 500 grams Maida or all purpose flour
- 500 ml Warm water about 25°C to 30°C – everyday you need 100ml water for 5 days
Step by step instructions
- Day 1Measure 100 grams of flour with 100ml warm water and mix them in the glass jar using a spoon. Mix until it becomes an even and thick batter, remove the coat on sides of jar and loosely cover the jar with a towel. you can use a rubberband to hold the towel in place. If you want to cover the jar with a lid, you can do so, but need to leave it loose, in order to let the jar exchange the air.
- Leave the jar in the kitchen or some place where the temperature remains consistent throughout. Don't keep in air-conditioned rooms. As it needs temperature around 25°-30° to ferment properly.
- Day 2After 24 hours you will notice few bubbles in the jar. This means that the yeast and bacteria in the mix have started to eat the sugar present in maida and are producing gas. You can feel the smell, which should be near fresh yet. Now add another 100 grams maida and 100ml warm water in the jar and mix well, clean the sides of jar with spoon and cover like yesterday and rest for another 24 hours. It will spur the fermentation process.
- Day 3, day 4 and day 5Now take out 200 grams of mixture in a new jar and discard the remaining mix. Add 100 grams maida and 100ml warm water in the new jar and mix well. Cover and rest the same way for 24 hours.After every 24 hours, take out 200grams of mixture in a clean jar and add 100 grams of maida and 100ml warm water and discard the rest, for next 2 days.
- After this 5 day process, you should see enough bubbles in the jar and it should smell yeasty and strongly sour. In cold areas this process could be slower and can take a couple more days, so don't worry if you notice that its not perfect yet, and continue for 1-2 days more. Eventually you will get the right starter.
How to keep your starter always active
- Now once you have your sourdough starter ready, you can keep it active by feeding it everyday. You can use this starter for making pizza, breads, croissants etc. You can use about half of the starter everyday and feed equal amount of maida and warm water to keep it active forever.Even if you are not using it everyday, you can simply discard half and feed it everyday to keep it active. If you forget doing it someday, you can feed the starter next day. This will keep your starter ready to go, whenever you want to make mouth watering pizza.
- If you are going away for few days, you should keep the jar in fridge. It will stay in dormant condition for up to 2 weeks in the cold temperature of fridge. Whenever you comeback, bring out the jar from fridge, leave for one day and start feeding from next day as usual.
Important
This sourdough starter or culture is the key to making great pizza, muffins and breads. It is traditionally used to make dough for pizza.
The same starter can be used in any recipe which requires to use active dry yeast or instant yeast to make dough.
You can also use this starter to make dough for Bhature. The bhature prepared with dough using this starter will make them extremely soft and fluffy, with deep flavors.
If you can get some starter from a friend, you can reduce the five day process to 1 day, and can start feeding the starter right away. The rest of process remains same. 100 grams maida with 100ml warm water to be mixed properly every 24 hours.
Have fun making your pizzas.
