酸面团的极度冷却初学者指南

When I first got a sourdough starter, it was unclear if what I had acquired was a gift or an old-timey curse. Thestarter还活着，需要喂食，我知道。各种强烈的红色论坛和14页的食谱表明，烘焙酸面团更像是一种生活方式，而不是偶尔的烘焙项目，最好使用电子表格和温度计来完成，并可能始终获得保姆凸轮来观看起动器。

我是否需要将所有可支配收入花在高端定制面粉上？开胃菜是否需要像人类婴儿一样全天候护理？如果我忽略了它，我会因谋杀而受到审判吗？它会占领我的生命吗？天啊。

Something like a year later, I am here to tell you I have still not been thrown in jail for starter murder, and thatbaking sourdough不必那么严重。如果您是一个在水合水平上感到高兴并模糊的酵母菌菌株的人，那就太好了！本指南不适合您。但是，如果您像地球上的大多数人一样，只是想烤面包，吃面包，好吧，和我一起来。

Sourdough很酷，因为这基本上是每个人在商业酵母菌广泛使用之前制作面包的方式，而且这些人通常无法访问Google电子表格。你会没事的。现在，当我写这篇文章时，我们正处于许多人无法获得面包的时候，超市在超市中很少。一个sourdough starter—aka a natural leavener—solves all those problems. As long as you do some pretty minimal upkeep, youcan bake breadbasically forever using a starter, salt, flour, and water.

第一件事是第一件事：您需要一个入门者。如果您对一个有开胃菜的朋友提到面包，他们在法律上有义务为您提供一些。开玩笑！有点。

The care and maintenance of a sourdough starter requires discarding part of the starter when you feed it (we’ll get there), so it is pretty easy tonab some off a pal。If no one around you has any, all you need tomake your ownis time and patience—and also flour and water. But here’s areliable shortcut: You can also create a sourdough starter with the help of a bit of store-bought yeast.

If patience (or yeast) is in short supply,您也可以购买入门者从著名的在线资源（如King Arthur Bread）来源，我一般都推荐一个网站，因为它的音调和面粉知识柔和。如果您有当地的面包店，也可以要求他们卖给您一点。大量的sellers on Etsy offer sourdough starter， 也。甚至有建议制作无麸质的起动器, if you love bread but your body hates gluten.

Think of sourdough starter as a natural leavener, and, in many cases, a way to cultivate the wild yeast that exists naturally in flour and in the air and convert it to something that you can use to make bread (or whatever else) rise. Commercial yeast is more consistent, both in terms of results and flavor, but you can think about wild yeast versus the commercial variety as something like the difference between an heirloom tomato and the supermarket kind. What you sacrifice in consistency, you often gain in flavor. Plus, it’s kind of a weird, cool hobby to wrangle the wild, wild yeasts of your apartment, like an extremely un-intimidating bounty hunter. But, again,you can also use storebought yeast to make a starterif you want! It’ll work just as well.

Now that you have a starter, what do you do? First, consider your container. When you feed an active starter flour, it’ll bubble up pretty aggressively, so it’s good to keep it in a container that has some headroom to allow for that. I keep mine in a wide-mouth 24-ounce Mason jar, because that’s what I have around. The clear glass is nice because you can see the starter rise and fall, and easily check what it’s up to.

其次，考虑一下您的烤面包时间表。如果您想尽快使用酸面团起动器，最好的做法是将其放在厨房柜台上，或者有任何室温区域可用，并每天至少喂一次一次以使这些酵母快乐。如果您还没有准备好烘烤，请将容器贴在冰箱中。这会减慢酵母菌的速度，当您想再次喂食时，您几乎可以忽略它。

How do you喂酸味的起动器? Simple. You add roughly the same amount of flour and lukewarm water as you have starter, mix it around so there aren’t any clumps of dry flour, and let it chill out until things start bubbling up. Once that happens, usually two or three hours later, depending on how warm your kitchen is, the whole mixture has become more starter. (The warmer your kitchen, the faster it’ll ferment.)

The rule of thumb is to discard part of the starter when you feed it, because otherwise it’ll just keep growing and growing and eventually fill your apartment and/or eat Manhattan, which is not the result we’re going for. It’s helpful to have a scale to measure out the ratios of starter to flour and water here, but if you don’t have one, measuring cups or even just eyeballing will do in a pinch.

I keep one ounce of starter and feed it with one ounce of flour and one ounce of water, because I rarely need a massive amount of starter on hand, but various other sourdough luminaries advise different amounts. If you don’t have a scale, go for a fourth cup starter to half a cup of flour to a fourth cup water. (Flour weighs less per volume than the water or starter.) I’ve found that for maintenance, it’s fine to just have a small amount, and since starter is infinite, you can always feed it more if you need more starter. (The famous-among-bread-peopleTartine country loaf recipe, for instance, only needs one tablespoon of starter for the whole loaf.)

一点点起动器可以吃很多面粉和水。喂食后，请重新密封罐子，但请留出一定的空气途径 - 我将我的盖子留下了盖子，但不会紧紧拧紧。一些人用布覆盖它。什么对你有用。如果您经常烘烤，请每天喂一次或两次，然后将其放在室温下以保持活性。对于不太频繁的烘烤，每周只喂一次入门剂，然后将其放在冰箱中。

喂养的唯一真正坚实的规则是确保您不要喂食沸腾的热水，或者用大量不等的面粉或水压倒它。不冷不热或冷。沸腾是实际上可以谋杀您的入门者的几件事之一，因此避免这种情况并将您设定。如果将起动器放在冰箱中，则在喂食冰箱时，将其放在柜台上放松一两个小时，然后盖上盖子，然后将盖子拧紧并将其放回冰箱中。

Starter really likes whole wheat, whole grain, spelt, or rye flour, but I’ve always just used what I have on hand, which is usually bleached all purpose flour, and it works just fine. Don’t obsess over the flour unless you really want to! Just use what you have.

一个ctive sourdough starter should have bubbles in it and also smell fresh and fruity. If yours seems a little sluggish, just keep it out of the fridge and step up the feeding schedule. Once you feed it every day for a few days to a week, it should show signs of life again.

If you take your starter out of the fridge and there’s an ominous layer of dark liquid over it, don’t despair—that’s fine! It’s normal! That’s the yeast doing its thing and producing alcohol. It’s probably not delicious to drink alone, but it’s not harmful. You can stir it back in or pour it off the top.

起动器实际上是很难杀死,只要you don’t subject it to extreme temperatures. The only sign that you need to throw it out and start over is if you see pink or orange streaks in it. That means that your starter has attracted unfriendly bacteria or mold, and isn’t safe for you to eat, so throw it out. Similarly if it’s visibly fuzzy green. Yeah, that’s also bad. Dump it.

No! You can give away the discard to a friend, to perpetuate the pyramid scheme, I mean, cult of sourdough. Or you can use the sourdough starter you would have thrown away做一个项目，像华夫饼，煎饼一样pizza dough, or English muffins. The only reason that discarding the starter is part of the process is that an exponential growth curve for anything is unsustainable, and you probably don’t need gallons and gallons of starter and your fingertips. But maybe you do? I don’t know your life.

没有问题lem! You can dry out your starter by spreading it in a thin layer on a parchment or foil-lined sheet pan and leaving it out. Keep the dried starter in a container and rehydrate it when you want to use it again by dissolving the dried starter in warm water and feeding it at regular intervals like you would normally.人们have resuscitated starters从4500年前开始！就像我说的，很难杀死。

烤面包, of course! To bake with starter, you’ll want it to be active. When I want to bake, I usually take my starter out of the fridge the night before, feed it, and check on it in the morning. If it’s bubbling madly, I can use it to bake. If not, I feed it again and wait a couple hours. There areall kinds of sourdough recipes在那里，但是对于您的第一个面包，请尝试一些低矮的东西，这样免揉酵母面包。您不需要特殊设备。有帮助Dutch Oven, but if you don’t, I’ve also made loaves in stockpots and on super-hot baking sheets. Whatever gear you have will probably make bread! It might not be perfect bakery bread but who cares, as long as it’s delicious. Once you get in the habit, you’ll be makingbeautiful country boulesat your leisure. Maybe you’ll get super intofreshly milled flours! Who knows!

There are also several cookbooks I’ve found really helpful, chief among themTartine Bread,Flour Salt Water Yeast, andSullivan Street Bakery食谱。The main thing that sourdough takes is time, rather than effort or ingredients. But as long as you have some patience, you can coax bread out of your starter. Don’t be discouraged, and don’t be intimidated—酸面团适合所有人, not just fancy bakers.