Starter for rye sourdough

Ingredients for 1 servings:

• 50 g wholemeal rye flour
• 50 ml water, approx. 40 °C warm

Instructions

Working time approx. 2 minutes; Rest period approx. 6 days; Total time approx. 6 days 2 minutes

You’ll need a 500ml pickle jar, thoroughly cleaned without detergent. It’s okay to leave a few lactic or acetic acid bacteria left over to kick-start the sourdough and give it its own unique flavor. The amounts of flour and water are based on one dough. The first sourdough starter takes several days and requires only a few minutes per day. Afterward, you’ll have a starter that you can use for life with little effort per week in the refrigerator. On the first day, pour 50g of flour and 50ml of water (at tap temperature, so you don’t burn yourself) into the jar and mix well with a spoon. Close the jar, cover, and place it on the radiator. At first, not much will happen, then bubbles will form, the dough will rise, and then collapse again. On the second to fifth day, add 50g of flour and 50ml of water each day for the next four days and store it in the same container. Feed at roughly the same time every day. Ideally, you should feed the dough in the evening, as the room temperature remains relatively stable after that, as doors and windows are opened less frequently. As long as no mold has formed, it’s okay if it smells a bit more strongly sour. On the sixth day, if the dough has survived this far, take about 10 g of it and feed it again with about 50 g of flour and 50 ml of water. This time, place it on the heater for only 2-3 hours and then refrigerate it. From now on, the dough is called “starter” and only needs to be fed in the refrigerator every 7-10 days to ensure it can be used for several years. The rest of the starter can be used straight away for your first whole-grain rye sourdough loaf. Since you now always have about 100 g of starter in the refrigerator, you should be able to bake smaller loaves with the existing (leftover) amount during feeding. If you want to bake a larger loaf, use 1 kg of flour. Take a small amount of the starter and use it to make a new sourdough starter, which can mature overnight, provided you use no less than 20% of the new flour mass. Otherwise, you can proceed in several stages, first producing a smaller amount of starter and then growing a larger amount from it until you reach the desired amount. You can find my recipe for sourdough bread in my profile.