Easy Sourdough Discard Waffles Recipe - Home Grown Happiness (2024)

FAQs

Can I start my sourdough starter with all purpose flour? ›

Tips For Making Sourdough Starter

Use all-purpose flour to keep a healthy starter. Place the starter in a container with a consistent room temperature of 70°F to 75°F.

One of the amazing benefits of sourdough discard is that you can use it to create new starters, which are known as levains. These off-shoots from the mother starter can be used to experiment with different types of flour or given as a gift – there's nothing quite like sharing an entire ecosystem with your loved ones.

It's an easy variable to manage using water temperature and a Proofer and/or a Sourdough Home. For less acidity: Use water around 80°F (27°C) and a fermentation temperature of 70-76°F (21-24°C) to favor the yeast and create milder flavors.

My starter is rising too fast

This is actually a good problem! It means your starter is mature and very active.

All-purpose Flour

It strikes a perfect balance of softness and structure, making it an ideal choice for various recipes. Due to its wide availability and affordability, all-purpose flour is often my top recommendation for creating and maintaining a sourdough starter.

Once your starter is established, you can transition to feeding it 100% bread flour or all-purpose flour. An established starter (e.g., 14-30 days after creation) has a robust microbial population, and the feedings from that point forward are primarily providing the food, not additional microbes.

It would be best if you discarded some portion of your starter each time you feed it unless you want to continue to let it grow. Eventually, you need to discard the used “food” (flour and water) that's been used to sustain your starter during the last fermentation period.

If you don't get rid of the excess, eventually you'll have more starter than your feedings can sustain. After a few days, your daily 1/4 cup flour and water won't be enough to sustain your entire jar of starter, and your starter will be slow and sluggish, not much better than discard itself.

How Do I Know If I Killed My Sourdough Starter? Sourdough starters are incredibly resilient. Unless there is visible mold in your jar or the starter has been exposed to extremely high temperatures, chances are your sourdough starter is alive.

Is this normal? Yes, this is a normal byproduct of the fermentation process. If your starter smells like acetone, it usually means that it has consumed all of the available food and it needs to be fed.

Why does my homemade sourdough not taste sour? ›

My sourdough bread is not sour. I want more sour flavor. What can I do? Keep the dough temperature higher: Lactic acid bacteria love the higher temperatures of 85-95 degrees F, so keeping the dough in that range will produce more bacteria resulting in a sour loaf.

Put 10g of your starter into a clean jar (you can discard the rest). Feed this 10g of starter with 25g of flour and 25g of water and stir in really well, remembering you want as much oxygen in the mix as possible. Cover loosely and leave for around 6 hours. By this stage you should see some bubbling starting to happen.

It may stay at peak for a little while as the yeast slow in their gas production. Once they've consumed all the sugars in the jar, the yeast and lactic acid bacteria will be starving. The bacteria will start to break down the gluten network, allowing the gas to escape. This is what causes your starter to fall.

A dead sourdough starter might have a particularly unpleasant smell, like rotten eggs or spoiled milk. If your starter smells like this and shows no signs of activity (no bubbles or rise), it might be dead.

So he was easily tripling in growth in less than 6 hours when fed at only a 1 to 2 times ratio. This is sort of the ideal baking strength that sourdough bakers aim for. You want to be able to take 20 or so grams of starter, feed it at 1 to 2 times ratio, and have it triple in size in under 6 hours.

Bread Flour Substitute

You can always substitute all-purpose flour for bread flour one for one in any recipe that calls for it. Your bread might not raise quite as high or have quite as much chew, if you are using all-purpose flour, but it will still be delicious and homemade and all the good things.

NOTE: A sourdough starter can be created with all-purpose flour alone but the addition of whole wheat flour will give the starter a boost in the fermentation process. Bottled water, filtered, and most tap water can be used in your starter.

Whole wheat and rye flours provide more nutrients for your starter and ferment more actively, but working with rye flour makes starter maintenance easier than whole wheat. Rye provides increased fiber and nutrients similar to whole wheat flour, but because of its lower gluten amount it's much easier to stir.

Do not attempt to use your starter to bake a loaf of bread until at least day 7. It just won't work! You might see a lot of activity within the first few days, but what you're observing is bad bacteria, good bacteria, and yeast all fighting over one food source, your flour.