Starter
Juuretis, the jar that makes the bread
Every sourdough loaf on this site begins with a jar of sour, bubbling rye paste. Estonians call it juuretis. Making one takes about a week of a few minutes a day; keeping one takes almost nothing.
Starting from nothing
All you need is wholemeal rye flour, water, a clean jar of a litre or so, and a rubber band to mark the level after each feed. Rye is the easiest flour to start a culture with: the wild yeasts and bacteria are already on the grain, and they like it.
Mix 50 g wholemeal rye flour with 50 g lukewarm water in a clean jar. Cover it loosely and keep it somewhere warm, ideally 22–26 °C.
A thick grey-brown paste that smells of wet flour.
Stir it. Add 50 g flour and 50 g water and stir again.
Perhaps a few bubbles, perhaps nothing at all. Both are fine.
Throw away all but about 50 g. Feed it 50 g flour and 50 g water.
Often a sudden burst of bubbles and a strange smell, cheesy or sharp, sometimes like nail varnish. It passes.
The same again, once a day: keep 50 g, feed 50 g flour and 50 g water.
A quiet day or two after the first burst is common. Keep feeding. The smell turns cleaner and sourer.
Keep going until it passes the test below.
It rises and falls on a schedule, smells of yoghurt and rye, and is full of small bubbles.
It is ready when it at least doubles within 6–12 hours of a feed, two days in a row, and smells pleasantly sour. In a cool kitchen this can take two weeks. That is normal; warmth helps more than anything else.
Keeping it
The way I was taught: before the dough goes into the tin, take out two heaped spoonfuls and put them in a clean jar. Leave it on the counter for an hour or two, then put it in the fridge. That is your starter for the next bake, and it needs nothing else for a week or two.
The evening before baking, take it straight from the fridge and stir it into the sponge. If a fortnight goes by without bread, feed it anyway: keep a spoonful, stir in two or three spoonfuls each of flour and water, leave it out for a few hours and put it back.
When something looks wrong
- Grey or brown liquid on top
- It is hungry. Pour the liquid off or stir it back in, then feed it.
- A smell of nail varnish
- Also hunger, usually. Feed it more often for a few days.
- Pink or orange streaks, or fuzzy mould
- Throw the whole thing away, wash the jar with hot water and start again. It is not worth the risk.
- No rise after a week
- Find a warmer spot, make sure the flour is wholemeal, and give it more time.
- The bread is too sour
- Shorten the sponge by a couple of hours, or keep the sponge a little warmer so it ripens faster and milder.
A dry backup
Smear a spoonful of active starter thinly on baking paper and leave it to dry for a day or two. Crumble the flakes into a small jar or an envelope. They keep for months.
To wake them up, soak a spoonful of flakes in a little warm water, stir in flour and feed daily for two or three days.
The old way
In farmhouses the starter often lived in the leivaküna, the wooden trough the dough was mixed in. The trough was scraped rather than scrubbed between bakes, and what was left in the grain of the wood started the next batch.
My grandmother pressed a cross into the top of every loaf before it went into the oven. I still do, without quite knowing why.