Sourdough Starter—The Bread-making Process

• The Basic Levain Master Formula and Procedure.
• The Pain au Levain Master Formula and Procedure.
• The Formulas for more Sourdough Breads.

The Pain au Levain is explained with step-by-step techniques and photos. The other formulas all rely on the same procedures. Once you have made the Pain au Levain a few times, your confidence will pay off with the other breads.

Here’s the most frequently asked question I hear when baking with Sourdough—whether I’m working with new bakers or accomplished hotline chefs. Take a minute to read this and you’ll get a sense of how simple the process is, even though you’re working with a live organism like Yeast.

Don’t I Need a Scale to Weigh Ingredients?

A common mantra for baking and pastry work is that Bakers always use a scale. For creating the most consistent products, there is no denying that a scale is required.

But when you want to capture wild yeast and then feed it a routine diet of flour and water, your main concern is the vitality of the yeast colony. Not the exact amounts of flour and water.

During this first stage of starting a Sourdough Starter, it’s fine to use a measuring cup for both the flour and the water. If you don’t have a scale at hand, don’t let that stand in your way of starting your own Starter.

Just take advantage of a natural phenomenon. Capture some yeast, put it in a jar. Give it food and water, it grows. That’s part of the magic and mystery of a Sour Starter.

There is nothing especially critical in how you go about this. Yeast has been doing this on its own for thousands of years. There’s no need to be overly precise.

All the yeast needs is its house to be cleaned routinely, and then to be fed more food and water. It doesn’t really care about the measurements. In Sourdough Starter Basics, the amounts of flour and water are listed in cups, because it’s simpler.

If your Starter gets more flour one day, then it will be thicker. If it gets more Water the next day, then it will be thinner. The success of the first stage of your Starter depends on routine feeding, not exact measurements. Just like you, some days you’ll eat a lot for dinner, some days you’ll eat less. It’s no more complicated than that.

Once you reach Day 6, you’ll have a bubbling colony of yeast cells. Then, Yes! You do want to scale exact weights of water and flour. That’s how you establish consistency in your Starter. Consistent texture in your Starter equals consistent flavor in your Breads.

You can weigh your ingredients from the beginning, if you choose. Some bakers get a better feel for the ultimate texture of the Starter by using a scale from Day 1. Other bakers watch the magic before their eyes and are content with scooping flour and water with a measuring cup until the mixture has the correct texture. Either way, the wild yeast will take hold and reward you with a bubbling, flavorful mixture to bake breads.