Making a Natural Starter

Making a natural starter, which can be more or less sour, allows you to extract more flavor from the flour than any other method of making breads. Natural (and hence sourdough) starter is made in 2 stages: the first, most time-consuming stage is making the basic culture from wild yeasts, while the second stage “expands” the basic culture by combining it with a significant amount of flour and water. The first stage takes several days, but once you have the starter on hand, it will keep indefinitely at room temperature provided you feed it every day. It will keep in the refrigerator as long as you feed it 3 times a week, and for up to 2 weeks in the freezer, although freezing will weaken it somewhat. Only 2 ingredients are used to make sourdough starter, flour and water; it contains no commercial yeast.