Sourdough Starter

Preparation info
    • Difficulty

      Easy

Appears in
How to Bake

By Nick Malgieri

Published 1995

  • About

Using a sourdough starter is an ancient way of leavening bread that may have existed since the beginning of bread baking thousands of years ago. Yeast-leavened bread rises due to the action of an organism known as Saccromyces cerevisiae (yeast that is a byproduct of beer making). A sourdough starter has two organisms that live in a symbiotic (dependent on each other) state to survive. The yeast, inherent in wheat and flour, is Saccromyces exiguus, while the other organism(s) (