Rye Flour

[nsenada]

Does anyone know if there is a place that carries rye flour within walking distance of the financial district? I just got some starter from a friend, and I need to feed it to keep it alive.

[MC Slim JB]

Not walking distance, but the Silver Line will get you to Foodie's in the South End and back pretty quickly (Union Park stop), which carries the excellent Bob's Red Mill line of flours; I'd call first, but I'm pretty sure that includes their rye flour.

http://mcslimjb.blogspot.com/

[StriperGuy]

A starter will stay alive in the fridge for weeks.

[tdaaa]

Or in the freezer indefinitely

[nsenada]

Thanks

[nsenada]

Thanks - I'm new to the whole sourdough starter thing, but I wanted to grow the colony to share it (so that if I inadvertently kill it, I have it "backed up" somewhere).

Can it be frozen, in case this gets beyond my attention span?

[tdaaa]

Welcome to sourdough. I played a lot with sourdough last year - eventually got tired of taking care of it and killed it off. There is lots and lots of fancy advice about taking care of your starter, and you can easily go crazy trying to keep up. I found as long as I fed my starter occasionally (with regular old all-purpose flour and tap water) it bubbled away happily. If I wasn't going to use it for a while, I would keep it in the fridge and feed once a week. If I needed it to grow, I would keep it on top of the fridge and fed/stirred it daily. I froze a few tablespoons as an emergency backup, just in case.

[nsenada]

Ah, another food-related obsession... When you feed the starter weekly, how much water and flour would you include.

[tdaaa]

To some degree it depends on the volume of the starter. When it is small, I would add 1/4 cup of each (for a relatively liquid starter) or twice as much flour for a stiffer, dough like starter. As it grows you can increase to 1/2 cup of each. You must eventually either use the starter, or discard some of it.

Most baking books recommend daily feedings for 2-3 days before using the starter. I did not find that to be necessary. I tend to do longer, cooler rise cycles because it fits my schedule better - mix up the dough at night, let it rise for 24 hours in the fridge, shape the dough the second night, let it rise over the next 24 hours, then bake it off on the third night. It only takes 15 minutes or so of active time each night. The longer rise periods are also supposed to help the sourdough flavor develop.

More recently I have been making sandwich breads - I mix up the dough with commercial yeast just after dinner, do a fst rise in a 100-120 degree oven for 30-40 minutes, shape into loaves, re-rise for 45 minutes, heat up the oven and bake the bread just after I put the kids into bed. It takes about 3 hours total, with 20-30 minutes active time, and the results are great.

[nsenada]

I'll have to try that - I've not really ventured beyond the no-knead basic recipe, but that sounds like a good quick method.

[galleygirl]

Well, Whole Foods at Charles Circle....

[nsenada]

Thanks - forgot about that.