Organic San Francisco Sourdough Starter--With Unconditional Replacement, and Free Help

Greetings to you all. I got the starter in the mail and started coaxing it into life which took about a week. I refuse to discard anything though and kept the "leftovers" in a somewhat larger container called "overflow". I don't use this to make bread but instead I make biscuits, waffles and other quick breads and they are wonderful! I refresh my main starter at least once a month and put the excess in "overflow". This is the best starter I have ever had and I have tried a fair number, including one from Alaska that wwas so sour it was unusable. The bread tasted like it had been made with lemon juice. Linda's starter has a strong consistent rise and a really rich flavor, but you must evoke that flavor by taking your time. First of all, it took my starter a good three months before it had a really good and consistent tart flavor although it had a rich yeasty flavor within a couple of weeks. So keep working with it, give it time to fully mature and ripen with use. Linda's starter also develops quickly too. If you keep getting hooch, you are letting it overproof. Learn to catch it at its peak rather than over the hill. Let your bread have THREE rather than TWO risings if you want it to have a nice tangy flavor and a rich yeasty savoriness. One resource I read on sourdough said that most of the flavor develops in the third rising only and I have certainly found this true for Linda's starter as well. I just punch the dough down after the first rising and round the dough well before covering it for its second rising in the bowl. Then just follow Linda's directions and let it have the third rising in a pan or basket. it is ESSENTIAL that you give it enough time to properly rise! You should expect it to have a total of 12 to 16 hours rising time between the kneading and the time for putting it in the oven. This is the big reason why sourdough produces a flavor that is so much richer than commercial yeast, which is designed to rise in as big a hurry as possible. Making souurdough bread is a leisurely task that is calming and meditative, Never be in a hurry! If you ARE in a hurry, then go ahead and use the commercial yeast and forget about using sourdough. Commercial yeast has been bred for fast results, but not flavor.The key to controlling rsing time is to control temperature. Ideally, your bread should rise at between 50 to 60 degrees F. If you let it rise at a faster temperature, the action will be dominated by the yeast and it will rise faster but the lactobacteria will not develop well andyour bread will not taste sour. You MUST have the lower temperature and longer rising time to get a nice tart flavor. In the summer, let part of the rising, say an hour or two for each of the risings, take place in the refrigerator. This will keep the dough cool enough. Don't let it stay continuously in the fridge or it will get too cold and stop rising after a couple of hours. This comes in handy though, if you are running late and want to put off finishing the bread until the next day. Just take it out of the ice box and let it finish rising after you get up. At any rate, at each stage let the final part of each rise take place on the counter at room temperature. In the winter, you can probably find some part of your house (like the garage) that is at the correct temperature. Remember the bread will rise quicker at higher temperatures but it just won't have the same flavor. With Linda's starter you should get three strong rises and a good oven spring. Sourdough produces a stronger (but much slower) rise than commercial yeast. The lactobacteria make more of the flour available to the wild yeast so you get about twice as much rise as with regular yeast. Bread flour usually has some malted barley flour added to help with this too. Try to keep your dough cool but not ice cold.My routine starts the night before. Just before I go to bed, I mix 1/4 cup starter with 4 cups water and 4 cups flour. Being sparing with starter like this slows things down and also helps it to develop flavor. By the time I get up in the morning, the starter sponge is at it's peak and ready to go after letting it stay on the counter at room temperature all night. At this point I mix one tablespoon salt with three cups of flour and work it into the sponge thoroughly. Then I let it autolyse for the full hour and a half and it is ready for kneading. Please understand that the use of the right flour is CRITICAL for good bread! It must be UNBLEACHED BREAD fLOUR made from hard wheat only. I like King Arthur Unbleached White Bread Flour. I have heard that Gold Medal Unbleached Better For Bread flour works really well too. If you are not using unbleached bread flour to bake your bread, please don't blame Linda if you get inconsistent results! Try experimenting with different brands until you find one that works well for you.I set aside one day a week to make bread for the household. I make two big heavy loaves using bread pans just like Linda's. I stop the final rising a little short of max to have a denser texture to the bread. It is not at all a lot of trouble, most of the time the bread is just rising. Only occasionally from time to time do you have to do anything to it. But take your time. Baking sourdough bread is a slow, leisurely task that unfolds gradually at its own gentle pace. I find it restful and relaxing. I use natural stone slate tiles for my baking stones and they give a beautiful browning effect and excellent texture. I prefer my bread lightly toasted which brings out its wonderfully rich yeasty flavor. My partner likes it raw which brings out its tartness. Toasted with butter and maybe honey it is an exquisite gourmet treat. If you make a sandwich with it, the bread will be as tasty as the meat and the cheese. We have stopped buying sourdough loaves from our local artesanal bakery as my home version is better. linda's starter gives highly consistent and excellent results ifit is properly handled. Just remember it will get better with time and use good flour and lots of patience. never be in a hurry!bon Appetite!Jerry Bear

good product

Unless you are already familiar with working with sourdough and know what you are doing (which I didn't), you need to be very patient and experiment with this product. I have now been working with the starter for about a month and I am still trying to get a loaf of sourdough bread similar to an 'artisian bread' from the market. I have tried a variety of receipies; those provide and from the internet. The sourdough flavor varies greatly with the receipe. The flavor has developed and the starter become more active the longer I have worked with it. This morning I found my overnight rise spilling over into the (cool) oven where I had it rising. I had no idea how long it took to make a loaf of sourdough bread; almost 16 hour using the provided receipe. It did produce an excellent batch of sourdough pancakes, but still a long process. Keep trying!The product says free shipping, but for some reason I paid more for shipping ($4.49) than I did for the starter ($2.99). The product arrived in a standard business envelope with about two ounces of dry starter. I used about half (as per instructions) to create my starter. The instructions are primative and poorly formatted for use in the kicthen. The ad says you get a 12 page booklet, I got 3 - 8.5 X 11 single sided pages. And the instructions do not provide an email address for the "free unlimited tech support." I found the same basic bread receipe on epicurious.com which is much easier to read and follow. You can also find receipies for starter on the internet. However, I am hoping that this one will produce something more like the authentic San Franciso sourdough as advertised.So 3 Stars. It would be 4 but for the shipping cost and instructions, and perhaps 5 when I figure out what I am doing.

With all of the warnings on the internet on how things can go wrong with getting started with sourdough, I anticipated I would probably screw this up pretty thoroughly. Luckily, my fears were unfounded. The instructions included were detailed and were supplemented by a large amount of information on their website. I had a question through the second day and they responded immediately with an answer (I was afraid I might have inadvertently made yogurt instead of bread, but the smell was normal) . By the third day, the starter was developing just the way it should (probably because I didn't have to worry about maintaining temperature in Florida). By the fourth day, I had bread. Keep in mind, you are dealing with living organisms, so it's not like buying a TV. It's more like buying Sea Monkeys that you can eat (just don't picture those adorable cartoon monkeys when you make a sandwich or it could impact your bread devouring experience).Some reviewers have complained about the shipping vs. product costs, but the seller explains that this is due to Amazon's policies rather than an inflated shipping costs (it used to be $9.99 with free shipping, now it's $3,99 plus $7.00, so the price remains the same).I really can't say enough good things about the product and seller. I have no doubt that if there's a problem with the product or the order, they'll take care of it and make it good. The customer service is really some of the best I've ever dealt with. These are good people.

I've been baking sourdough bread with several different yeasts for 8 or 10 years and this yeast , or starter, makes good bread but it is not sour. I thought it was me until my third batch when I had to concede it was the yeast. I consistently make great sourdough bread except with this starter. It makes tasty white bread but it isn't sour. I poured it down the drain so it wouldn't cross contaminate my other stareter.( which are very sour ). Disappointed to say the least. All yeasts are slightly different, I expected that, but this is not sourdough starter.