Barb at King Arthur

September 6, 2020 at 9:59am

In reply to by Mahwish Wazeer (not verified)

Hi Mahwish, well, the first step on the road to making sourdough bread is getting a healthy, mature starter established, which generally takes at least 10 days. It can be a bit more challenging in a very hot climate such as yours, so you'll need to be attentive to your starter and not let it sit neglected at room temperature for an extended time. Ultimately I think it will be easier for you to maintain your starter with unbleached all-purpose flour, but most starter recipes begin with a whole grain flour. Given your environment, I would encourage you to check out this alternative starter method which was developed by microbiologist and sourdough baker, Debra Wink. I like this method because it requires very little flour in the early days of starter development, and once this starter begins rising predictably you can gradually transition to feeding with unbleached All-Purpose flour and end up with a starter similar to our recipe

Once you've developed a mature starter you'll likely want to take advantage of refrigerating your starter when you're not planning to bake. It will be helpful to allow a day or two of room temperature "revival" feedings to get your starter nice and active in preparation for baking bread. Ideally, when maintaining your starter at room temperature, you'll want to replenish (feed) it when it's at its peak of rising, or just beginning to fall (which keeps yeast activity vigorous). Allowing the starter to collapse significantly between feedings can lead to sluggish yeast behavior. Since you live in such a warm climate, you may find that your starter peaks after only a few hours, so twice a day feedings may not allow you to feed at the peak. If this happens, you might consider offering your starter a relatively larger meal, which it will take longer to consume and ferment. For example, rather than feeding with our usual 1:1:1 ratio (starter:water:flour, by weight), you could try 1:4:4, which could look like: 28g starter + 113g water + 113g AP flour. The goal here is to line up your twice a day feedings closer to the peak. 

We have a wealth of sourdough bread recipes for you to try, but I would focus on developing a robust starter first. For more sourdough information, check out our Sourdough Baking Guide

I hope this helps! Let us know how it goes. 

Barb

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