No yeast at the store? Make a sourdough starter!

When I looked online for my favorite yeast this week, it was sold out! No TP, no pasta, and now, no yeast! Well, people made leavened bread for thousands of years before yeast was commercially available, and we can too! Amazingly, yeast is a member of the fungi kingdom and is naturally present in the air. If you have whole wheat or whole rye flour, you have all you need to get a sourdough starter going (all-purpose flour can work, but will take longer to get going). Here is a picture of the starter that my daughter and I stirred up 3 days ago. The bubbles are an indication that yeast is present and producing carbon dioxide!

Day 1 we stirred together 1 cup of whole wheat flour and 1/2 cup warm water.

Day 2 we discarded 1/2 of the mixture and added another cup of whole wheat flour and 1/2 cup warm water.

Day 3 we discarded 1/2 of the mixture and added a scant cup of all-purpose flour and 1/2 cup warm water. Now every 12 hours or so we're keeping a heaping 1/2 cup (113g) of the starter (discard the rest) and feeding it a scant 1 cup of all-purpose flour (113g) and 1/2 cup (113g) water. If you have a scale, 113g (or 4 oz) is the magic number.

When the starter produces lots of bubbles and doubles in size within 8 hours of feeding, you know your starter is ready to bake with. I'll let you know how many days that takes for our starter in our cold house (67 degrees). If you have a warm place to set the starter it will be happier!