The Dos and Don'ts of Sourdough Quiz

Answer: Chlorinated hot water

Sourdough starter is made using "wild" yeast and bacteria from the flour and environment in your kitchen. If you use hot, chlorinated water, you will probably kill the yeast and bacteria. Any of the other ingredients are fine and have been used to make starter. You will also need patience. There are many accounts online of how the first attempts to make starter fail.

Answer: Self rising flour

Any good flour that is not self-rising will be fine when feeding your starter. While some web sites swear by rye flour, whole-wheat or bread flour, these are not always available and are not inexpensive. While unbleached flour is probably better than bleached, you should use what you can.

The only rule is that the flour should not be self-rising. Everyone can keep and make sourdough!

Answer: Place it in a closed jar in the refrigerator

In general, the most common method of storing starter is to place it in a clean, closed jar in the refrigerator. The cold temperature means that it doesn't grow as quickly and can be stored for a longer time without feeding. Storing it in an open jar will probably lead to contamination.

It will probably die if stored at the higher temperatures of the kitchen counter and not fed. For longer storage, dehydrating the starter and freezing it (in a non-self-defrosting freezer) works well.

Answer: At least a year

Okay; you don't want to do this all the time. For one thing, storing starter for a long time means that the starter is more likely to get contaminated. But part of my family's sourdough panic (see below) was that I had starter that I had ignored in my refrigerator for over a year -- and it came back! In general, however, the advice is to at least look at your starter every couple of weeks and if possible feed it every couple of weeks or at least once a month. On the other hand, if you forget and your starter is not contaminated, it might come back. Try it!

Answer: Irish soda bread

While sourdough baguettes may be the most popular type of bread made with sourdough, any bread that can be made with domesticated yeast can be made with sourdough alone. Irish soda bread, on the other hand, is not a yeast bread and therefore cannot be a sourdough bread. You also should not use self-rising flour to make yeast (including sourdough) breads. Let me know if you figure out a way to break this rule (I'm all for breaking rules).

Answer: Taking a shortcut while following the recipe

You have a perfectly good recipe. Follow the recipe. Once you have more experience, then you can take shortcuts or even come up with a recipe of your own. While sourdough often rises more slowly than domestic yeast, it often doesn't and even a great recipe cannot tell you how long it will take your bread to rise to the minute (Although if you have a good recipe, it will explain about rising and proofing times and how they may vary). Most bread recipes have you preheat your oven and this allows the bread to bake more evenly.

Many recipes will have you mix and feed more starter than you need for the recipe, so you may have leftover starter. It's better to have too much than too little and this also gives you plenty to store until the next batch of bread.

Answer: An oven with the light or pilot light on

In general, a freezer is too cold for rising (although there are recipes which call for letting your bread rise in the fridge). Garages, decks and sunrooms often have fluctuating temperatures that will make it difficult to judge how long it might take your bread to rise. An oven with a pilot light or with its light on is commonly a great place to let bread rise (but don't forget and turn it on!).

A breadmaking machine or yogurt maker also works and hot water heaters if they aren't in a drafty place and are clean are also good.

Answer: Placed his starter in the oven and then preheated the oven

If you read the last question carefully, you should get this one right. Sourdough failures like this are the reason for dehydrating and freezing some starter. As for the other answers. Sourdough is commonly stored in the fridge. Premixing your flour with salt and warm water and allowing it to sit before adding the starter is called autolysing and is a common bread making technique (you should look into it). Feeding starter only once a month probably will not harm it, but it might grow more slowly than normal (which means that your bread will rise more slowly than normal). I had someone ask why not just make new starter? The answer to that is because making new starter takes time and patience and may fail. Also, many people have starters that they received from friends or family and have kept going for a long time and a new starter will not replicate the old.

Answer: Used all of the starter in the bread, reserving none

Yes. All the starter was placed in the bread. Generally the starter should be fed and then some of it should be placed back in its cleaned jar and put into the fridge for storage. That didn't happen this time. As this starter was one that we had gotten 50 years ago from friends who had brought it West with them, we wanted to keep this starter.

This was how I learned that you can resuscitate year old (or older) sourdough. Bread (dough) commonly is allowed to rise more than once. Preheating the oven to 500 degrees F. is not uncommon when baking bread. Using a dutch oven to bake bread is a great method for getting a nice crust.

Answer: Let it cool on the counter

Generally you are supposed to place your loaf (loaves) on the counter and allow them to cool. This ensures that your crust develops nicely and that the interior does not dry out. If you think you can eat an entire loaf by yourself -- go ahead and slice and eat.

There's nothing better than hot, fresh bread with butter (if you like such things)! Putting bread into the refrigerator tends to dry it out and the process probably gets accelerated if it is cooling. Putting it into a plastic bag directly from the oven leads to soggy bread. You can place it in a paper bag to maintain the nice crust. If you must cut a slice or two immediately (and I often must), one good method is to cut slices off one end and then place the bread on the cutting board sitting on that end.

This keeps it from drying out.