It's no secret that I am a big fan of sourdough bread, both the process of mixing, rising and baking - and then eating!
One of the key stages in making sourdough bread is getting hold of the starter yeast (by gift or starting from scratch) and then keeping the starter in a condition such that it's able to ferment for subsequent loaves.
I keep four jars of starter yeast in the refrigerator and rotate the sample of starter I use - oldest first. I do this so that, should a jar of starter become contaminated with an unwanted organism and be unusable, I have more available. Rotating the starter in this way means that on average my starter is left in the refrigerator untouched for anything between about 2 and 4 weeks.
The perceived wisdom is that, if the starter isn't reused within a few days, then it must be fed with more flour and water, restarted, divided......and so on and on until it's used for bread making. I feel that messages like this may well put people off of trying to make this type of bread since it seems fiddly and time consuming.
I felt that it was definitely time for an experiment. Could I leave starter yeast in the refrigerator for more than 4 weeks untouched and still get good sourdough bread ?
So back on 14 June I set aside a jar of starter and have left it untouched in the refrigerator until making a sourdough loaf with it on 28th August. That's a time interval of about 11 weeks.
The resulting sourdough loaf (with added pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and golden linseed) is to my mind as tasty and attractive as ever:
So in my view there's no need to fuss over sourdough starter yeast. Just keep it untouched in the refrigerator and use when it suits you.
Colin
