3. General

In the last chapter we looked at getting and rearing a sourdough culture. Now it is time we make a “fully qualified” dough ready to bake from the starter culture. For that it is necessary feed the culture until we have enough to bake a bread.

But how much sourdough do we need after all?

We’ll differentiate three cases:

We want to bake a pure rye bread:

In this case it is especially easy. We need 30-50% of the total amount of rye flour leavened. 30% means: we will get a mild bread, 50% will make a sour bread.

If we assume that the sourdough is made frm half flour and half water and if we adapt this to the flour and sourdough amounts we will get:

• We will need at least as much sourdough as we will want to add flour to the dough to get a mild bread.
• We will need maximum double the amount of sourdough as we want to add flour to the dough to get a sour bread.

We want to bake a mixed loaf with rye: Here we only include the rye flour in the calculation, all other parts of flour are excluded.  We need 30-50% of the total amount of rye flour  leavened. 30% means we get get a mild bread, 50% means we get a sour bread.

If we assume that the sourdough is made from half flour and half water and we adapt this to the amounts of flour and sourdough we will get:

• We will need a least the same amount of sourdough as we want to add flour to the dough to get a mild bread.
• We will need a maximum of double the amount of sourdough as we want to add flour to the dough to get a sour bread.

We should take care that the amount of sourdough does not fall below 20% of the total amount of bread as the yeasts in the sourdough will not be sufficient to raise the loaf sufficiently.

We want to bake a pure wheat/spelt loaf: In this case it is simple again. We take 30-40% as a wheat sourdough. We only need the yeast action in the sourdough and choose a mild wheat sourdough.

We need for 500 gr. of flour in the recipe around 150-200 gr of sourdough.

So you thing this was hard?

So much calculation? No it’s quite simple. Just bear this in mind:

If you want to bake with rye (pure rye or mixed rye breads) you should to take for 500 gr. of rye flour in the recipe between 500 to 1000 gr.  of sourdough.

If you want to bake a wheat bread, you should to take for 500 gr. of lour in the recipe between 150-200 gr. of wheat sourdough.

It’s that simple! Now we know how much sourdough we need and can start to feed it up.