Fermentation Atlas · Bread
Rye Sourdough Starter
- Intermediate
- 20 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with an earthy, grounding base, acid holding everything up to the light, with a lingering ferment tang.
Ingredients
- 500 g wholegrain rye flour, across the whole build
- 500 g water at 28C (82F), across the whole build
The skills inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Day 1: stir 50 g rye flour into 50 g water to a thick paste, scrape the sides down, cover loosely and hold at 24 to 26C (75 to 79F).
- Days 2 and 3: it balloons, smells sharp and cheesy, then collapses and goes silent. Do not restart it; stir it down and wait.
- From day 3, once daily, discard all but 25 g and feed 50 g flour with 50 g water. Once it is rising within 8 hours, move to two feeds a day. 480 min
- It is ready when it doubles in 4 to 6 hours at 25C (77F), domes at the top, and smells of yogurt and green apple rather than acetone. Expect day 7 to day 14. 360 min
- To hold it, feed and refrigerate; revive with two warm feeds 12 hours apart before you bake. 600 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Fermentation 53 recipes
- Held somewhere with a steady temperature it can actually work at, chosen on purpose rather than wherever there happened to be room.
- There is visible activity before it is called started: bubbles, rise, or movement in the liquid. A ferment showing nothing after its first hours is not slow, it is not going.
- It smells clean: sour, yeasty, or alcoholic, with nothing putrid, and with nothing fuzzy or coloured growing where air meets it.
- Everything is under the liquid or under a cover, as the method requires: nothing solid left sitting dry in the air to spoil while the rest works.
- Judged by taste and behaviour and then STOPPED: chilled, baked, or refrigerated at the point wanted, rather than left running because the stated hours had not elapsed.
Where it goes wrong It was run on the clock in a kitchen colder or warmer than the recipe assumed. Fermentation is a rate and not a duration, so the same number of hours gives an under-developed ferment in a cold room and a slack, over-soured one in a warm one, and only tasting it would have said which.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Grüner Veltliner
- Also Right
- Vermentino or dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Saison
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus & herbs
The vegetable whisperers: peppery, high-acid whites that flatter greens, roots, and grains without bullying them.
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