Bread

[quote="Chef #825331"]I didn't know you could keep the starter in the refrigerator. Back over 15 years ago I used sourdough regularly (I don't bake so regularly anymore) I kept it on the back of the stove where it was warm. Even then you only have to use it once a week, so a refrigerated one should last longer, shouldn't it?

Anyway, I made my starter without yeast but it was in a kitchen where bread was baked regularly.

That's the reason for using a package of yeast as the starter. If you bake yeast bread regularly than you will have plently of wild yeast in your air and won't need the "tame" yeast as starter. If you don't bake regularly then you don't know what the wild yeast in your air tastes like--some will tastes good, others. . .well not so good. So, if you don't bake regularly, start with store brought "tame" yeast. If you do bake regularly, then just the flour and water mixture will do fine.[/quote]

We must have some pretty wicked wild yeast then!

I did a sourdough starter a couple months ago and it went so rancid and so awful in just two days I had to dump it down the sink then pour bleach down the drain to "kill" it and get rid of the smell. I used fresh ground wheat and water and it was nasty!! Lol!!

I may try it again now that the weather has cooled off but even when I did it the first time we had the A/C cranking so it wasn't all that hot in the house. Just another reason to test out your "preps" and see what works and what doesn't I suppose.

Also, I've read starters can not only be refrigerated but frozen. If I ever get a good starter going I plan on freezing it for a while then giving it a test run on some bread.

Actually a sourdough does not come from wild yeast flying around in the surrounding air but from yeasts and bacteria which naturally are sitting on the grain. That's why there are grains which are ot at all suitable for making sourdough - because their yeasts and bacteria would not be suitable for fermentation. Wheat usually can be used like rye but is a bit more tricky. If it turns bad like yours did, there are two possibilities what happened: The wheat has been treated in a way which killed the natural yeasts and bacteria on it. It was "dead" wheat, so it only could rot or get moldy. Or if it still had its natural "symbionts", it might have gotten contaminated with yeasts or bacteria which actually DO fly around but are not suitable for fermentation, so it overwhelmed the other organisms and brought the whole thing to a rot instead of fermentation...

Hi Mia - I keep my bulk yeast in the freezer and I'm afraid to even tell you how old it is. At least 6-7 years old and still good.

Hi Nona,

actually I know that it keeps well in the freezer - as well as sourdough starter. Only my thought at the beginning of this thread was that if there is a real case of emergeny where there is no power so that you cannot use the freezer, you are fine with sourdough which does neither require a fridge nor a freezer. The thing is that I don't use the usual dry yeast but organic dry yeast which doesn't contain any additions - and I suppose that's the reason why you cannot store it indefinitely outside a fridge or freezer.