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and we will send you a small sample of the starter to revive. A first class stamp is required. Full instructions are here: http://www.carlsfriends.net/source.html

Military Address?

Yes, we can. We have sent starters to military addresses before. They only require 1st class US postage just as you would to any address in the US. As far as we know, the military post office handles the starters without any problem.

Overseas?

No, we do not have any overseas keepers. We send out a few overseas starters all over the world most weeks and it appears to be successful. Instructions for how to get the starter are here: http://carlsfriends.net/source.html under "Other Countries." We ask for overseas starts to pay for the postage ($1.50 US stamp required for all out of US addresses).

Also, do not put non-US stamps on your envelope. We can only use US postage.

Alternatively, you can send us the overseas postage cost in US dollars and your postal address via PayPal at sourdough@carlsfriends.net and we can make up an envelope to send it to you that way if you can't find a US dollar or prefer that method. $2 US dollars covers the cost of the overseas postage and paypal fees. Note that the paypal costs us about 30% of the amount in their fees.

Donation?

What most people do is include it in their SASE request to our PO box and that is easiest for us too. Please do not send checks because our banks make it hard to deposit them. An alternative is paypal sent to sourdough@carlsfriends.net. Good luck and thank you. Donations allow us to continue this service and keep the starter available.

Why did you replace my SASE?

The most frequent reason is that your envelope was received already sealed or you sent a small or very large envelope. They get sealed most often from humid places. Occasionally, we get a torn one that the post office mangled but your address is still on the part we received. We get 20-80 requests a week and sometimes more and need to have the envelopes uniform to efficiently fill and mail.

Where is my starter?

Our process is not super fast. Usually once a week, the mailbox keeper gets all the requests from the post office box and spends the weekend logging them and ensuring they are ready to efficiently fill. They are then mailed to the sourdough grower. The grower gets an email with that week’s count so she can be ready to fill them. The grower makes up enough fresh sourdough starter, dries it, crumbles it, revives it to ensure it is still good, prints out the baggie label, puts a label on each baggie, fills each baggie with about 1 teaspoon of starter. When the requests are received, the grower inserts one baggie per envelope, seals the envelope, then mails that batch.

Sometimes the process gets delayed by life problems or vacation time. We are unpaid volunteers. It is a fair amount of work so we divide the chores between the mailbox keeper and the grower.

Sometimes the delay is not our fault because the US post office has been having some periodic severe delays for unannounced reasons. We have seen 2 month delays that seem to have been letters sitting in a box for 2-3 months, then they finally get around to processing them with a current postmark and they get on their way. Since these are untracked letters (tracking would cost a lot more), there is no way for us to know what happened to them.

Why don’t you include instructions?

Almost everyone finds us on the internet and we include full instructions on our website and ask people to go there. Our baggie label on the start also includes the address for our revival instructions. Most people are able to get them there. Since we want to be able to give away this starter, we need to keep our costs low so if people get the documentation from our website, it helps us keep this starter available. The same goes for the brochure. We literally save thousands of dollars with this policy. However, if a person really needs printed instructions and the brochure, then we will include those if the requester asks. For example, we had a lot of requests from Amish people who got our address from a magazine. Once I understood, I printed out the revival instructions for them, knowing they wouldn’t have access to a computer.

Revive the Starter

Instructions?

Container?

The starter is acidic so you want a non-reactive container; that is glass, food grade plastic or ceramic with a lead free glaze. Charles used an old plastic peanut butter jar for the storage starter here, but a glass canning jar is used by many people. There are sourdough crocks available on the Web, but I have not seen them in person and can not comment on their suitability. A stainless steel spoon is OK for stirring it.

Clean anything with flour in it with cold water at first. Warm water tends to turn flour into glue.

How Long In Storage And Will It Still Revive?

It varies wildly. We've seen the starter revive after years and sometimes it won't revive after just a month or 2. A lot depends on the environment it is in and whether it has been exposed to something killing like high heat or chlorinated water or radiation. Time might make it die off a little at a time. We have seen the best luck when it is stored in a cool, dry place like a refrigerator or freezer.

I suggest you try to revive it. If it doesn't get bubbly within a day, give it some more flour and water daily for a week in about 70-85F or 21-29C before giving up. You risk nothing but a little flour in trying it. If it fails, then just ask for another start when you can give it a try.

http://www.carlsfriends.net/revive.html

My Starter Won’t Revive

We test each batch before it goes out to be sure it is ok when it leaves us. We have no control over what the post office does but usually, it goes through fine.

1. Not feeding it enough times to get it going. Sometimes it is slow to get going and feeding it more water and flour a few times (at least once a day for up to a week) usually gets it revived.

3. Chlorinated water. Some water systems use a form of chlorination that won't dissipate and/or is at a level that kills the organisms in the starter.

>>Look here for the modern starter revival instructions on the Web site: http://www.carlsfriends.net/revive.html

You may have to allow up to 24 hours before seeing much activity. If you do not see activity in 24 hours, just go on to the next step anyway. Be sure it is between 70F and 85F or 21C to 29C.

After the second feeding after the initial mixing, you can change the ratio of flour to water and make the culture a little thicker. If you have a scale, use equal parts by weight. If you do not have a scale, use 3 parts water to 4 parts flour by volume.

When the starter bubbles up after the second feeding after the initial mix, you can store the starter in the refrigerator. When you are first getting the culture going, leave the starter on your counter at the room temperature. Once it is going well, after the second or more feedings, you should store the starter culture in the refrigerator except when getting it ready to use.

You will find additional information and links to even more on our Web site here:
http://www.carlsfriends.net

What Kind of Potato Do I Need? Sugar or Milk?

You don’t need any potato or sugar or milk to revive or feed the starter. White flour and water is all you need and it is all we use. Carl apparently used to use those sometimes but they are not needed. Adding some potato to bread dough makes the crumb soft. Any kind of potato, dried or mashed or even potato water from boiling potatoes will work for this purpose.

Using the Starter

Feeding the Starter

With regard to the "mother" or storage starter, it helps to regard that as seed, not as a culture to be used for baking. You take a small bit of the stored starter and build it up to a usable quantity just as you did when building a culture from the dry start we sent you. You do not have to store much. The limits on how little you can get by with depend on how small a container that you are comfortable using. You need glass or hard plastic with a tight lid to prevent the stuff from drying out.

Most keep a ½ to a cup of starter in the refrigerator. It should be fed every week or two regardless of whether you use it or not. (Excess starter can be composted or poured down the drain with plenty of water. It is actually beneficial to septic systems.) Think of it as a pet that needs regular feeding.

Take the starter out of the refrigerator the night before you plan to use it. Add 1 Cup of water and 1 ½ cup of white flour to it in a container big enough for this amount to double in size. Mix but don’t worry about lumps. Cover with a clean dish towel or plastic wrap that you poked some holes into and let sit overnight. A healthy starter should be smooth and bubbly in the morning. Reserve some in your storage container and put it back in the fridge. Use the rest in your recipe and the amount used in recipes does not have to be exact. It is best to store starter that is at peak activity and I like to add a tablespoon of flour to it to ensure it has a little food in case it grows a little bit in the refrigerator.

Keeping On The Counter

At room temperature, the starter continues to grow until it runs out of food. In eating, eventually it produces ethanol as metabolic by products (called hooch) which is seen as liquid on top, often brown in color. If left too long, it will probably start dying. Keeping the starter in the fridge slows down the eating a whole lot so you can go longer between feedings.

If the starter is left out at room temperature, it should be fed at a maximum of every 2 days but every day would be better as it will keep growing. This is what people did in the old days before refrigeration. They also tended to make something out of it every day.

One technique some use for storage is to add extra flour to the starter so it is a thick batter or even a dough, let it rise a bit but not fully, then refrigerate it. The thought is that the starter will have more food for its rest period if it has a thicker batter.

A loose top or cloth is needed when the starter is actively growing so the metabolic gasses can escape. You want it to have air while it is growing. When it is dormant in the fridge, it is best to tightly cover it so it doesn't dry out in a glass jar of some sort with twice as much room as the starter in case of growth.

Hooch?

Hooch is that liquid that can form on top of a starter and it smells winey. It is often brown in color.

NO, your starter is not dead. When it stops bubbling it just means that it has used up most of the available food (starch). If it hasn’t been months, you could probably just go ahead and use the starter. Otherwise feed again and discard the excess. You have to remember that it only takes 4 to 6 hours at warm temperatures for a starter to use up most of its food. You can stir the hooch into the starter as you feed it.

When the starter separates, it just means that it is not fermenting fast enough to keep the flour particles in suspension. Often that is caused by the culture running out of food or, if kept in the refrigerator it has slowed due to cold. The cure, usually, is just to feed it.

If you are going to let it sit for a second overnight period, you should definitely feed the culture and discard the excess.

Do I Need to Add Yeast?

No. A healthy sourdough starter, especially Carl's starter, has plenty of strength to raise bread by itself. It may take longer than commercial yeast but the flavor will be better. In several recipes in Carl’s historic brochure, yeast is an ingredient. The recipes work better without the yeast if your starter is healthy and the yeast should be omitted.

Favorite recipes? (Charles)

In case you are not familiar with it, I can recommend a book by Dan Lepard, "The Hand Made Loaf", as a good source of ideas. He is a London based author so the ingredients and sources mentioned are UK based. Dan also has a weekly baking column in the Guardian.

% Hydration?

Of course you would have to weigh the ingredients to be precise, but often equal volumes of flour and water is referred to as 166% hydration. This is a very good consistency to revive the starter and is often used in traditional recipes. More common today, it seems, is equal parts water and flour by weight or 100% hydration. One reason is that thicker cultures can go longer between feedings.

There is a process to extend the proof period called retard the dough. Usually if you have mixed the dough and want to hold it for more than the time it takes to rise, then you would hold the dough (retard) in a cool place or refrigerator.

It isn’t Sour

Different things can affect sourness of the starter. Generally the longer the ferment, the more sour it becomes. It is a bit of a dance between extending the ferment and over-fermenting it so it bakes flat.

Adding a little rye flour can sour the bread. Whole wheat flour can increase sourness too. You have to be careful with it though because it can also introduce some bitter and unpleasant flavors. We recommend keeping some of the starter fed just on white flour and using other jars with other flours to experiment with.

The sharp tang of the San Francisco commercial sourdough bread is done with vinegar. Natural sourdough has complex flavors that require the fermentation to develop.

Bread Machine?

Compared to commercial yeast, sourdough is considerably slower and has a greater variability in response to its environment and its own beginning state of readiness. It is not at all suited for bread machines by itself. Some bread machines can be programmed for different timing, but I don't know of any where you can tell it to rest at 78° F until the dough doubles.

The reason for commercial yeast in sourdough recipes for bread machines is an attempt to capture the flavor of sourdough with the predictability of commercial yeast. The yeast is necessary to allow the use of the machine with it's fixed time cycles. However commercial yeast can change the bread flavor.

If you do not want to use commercial yeast and still want to make use of a bread machine, you can mix and bulk ferment (first ferment) in the machine, then pan or shape the bread by hand and bake in a normal oven.

With sourdough you need to watch the dough and not the clock. The bread machine has a clock, but no eyes.

Exact Measurement?

Generally, sourdough and bread making does not require exact measurements. You learn the texture you need and go by that. The starter likes to grow in a thick pancake batter consistency where it forms a rounded lump on the spoon but falls off it as a thick liquid. When it is at its peak activity, it is smooth, bubbly, and elastic but still forms a loose trail of the starter when you scoop up a spoonful. It will be about twice its original volume at peak activity. The smoothness and elasticity is from the starter developing the gluten itself and that is why you don’t need to worry about lumps.

Bread dough, especially French bread dough, needs a fairly wet dough that is hard to knead by hand because it is sticky. You only add enough flour to make it a dough consistency which is less flour than most people think and is about 70% hydration. But as the gluten develops, it gets satiny, smooth, and not sticky. It is easiest kneaded by a machine like a Kitchenaid mixer. The first proof should fully develop the gluten so it isn’t hard to handle after that. Forming the loaves requires only a little flour and you should try not to incorporate much more flour into it. The wet dough is what allows the lovely chewyness and holes to develop. Too much flour makes it dense. If you add too much flour, you can always add more water to get the right texture into the dough and mix or knead it back in. With practice, this gets very easy.

Flour

Wheat flour is usually what people mean. Wheat flour comes in hard or bread flour, all-purpose, and soft or cake flour and they are from different varieties of wheat. Hard or bread flour has the highest gluten content and works best for bread making a chewy crumb. Soft or cake flour has the least gluten and highest starch content and is usually poor for making bread and best for cakes because the lower gluten makes a tender crumb. All-purpose flour is in between and has moderate gluten. It will make acceptable bread or cakes but isn’t the best for either. When making cakes with it, you have to be careful not to beat it too much or the batter will start developing the gluten and the cake will be chewy instead of tender. Any of the white flour types is fine to feed the starter.

Rye flour has less gluten than all-purpose wheat but can be used to make bread. Pure rye bread tends to be denser than wheat bread because of the lower gluten. Rye flour contributes to sourness in sourdough and can be a nice addition to wheat bread.

Other flours such as corn, oat, or rice don’t have any or have a different type of gluten and contribute flavors but may depress the ability of the sourdough to raise bread. You can try it but it will take some experimentation.

Whole Wheat? Soft Wheat?

Whole grain is heavier than white flour as it includes the bran and germ. Your fresh milled grain may well have its own organisms on it that can compete and interfere with the sourdough growth and health. The bran and germ often make the starter too sour or bitter and changes its flavor which you may or may not like. The bran has a bitter flavor. For all these reasons, we recommend that you keep the starter fed with unchlorinated water and unbleached white flour.

That doesn't stop you from using it to raise whole wheat bread. You can feed your starter as normal, then add it to the bread using whole wheat. You could also add a tablespoon of the active starter and grow it on whole wheat separately from your main storage starter, then continue on with your bread recipe.

White whole wheat is still whole wheat flour and behaves the same. It has just been bred to have fewer of the bitter compounds and have a lighter color. It is not white flour that is somehow whole wheat.

In general, getting whole wheat flour to behave close to white flour is tricky. You need a high gluten flour. Usually, when wheat is called soft, it means it is a low gluten (gluten is protein), high starch flour - often prescribed for cakes and biscuits - but not the best for bread. It is the gluten that makes the dough elastic and able to hold air bubbles so when it rises and is baked, you get the lovely crumb with lots of holes in it and the chewy texture. Cakes and biscuits don't want this texture.

A lot of whole wheat bakers will add gluten to the dough to make up for the lack of gluten in the flour. If you don't spike the dough with additional gluten, it is a tricky balance of kneading enough but not so much you over-knead and it will still be a soft crumb with less rise. Using the sponge method where you let the very wet batter consistency dough ferment at cool temps for a long time to help develop the gluten before making up the rest of the dough into the bread consistency can help. Sourdough is very good at doing this slow fermentation gluten development on its own.

Often people make the dough too dry (too much flour). A wet dough (60-70% water) will have a better consistency and rise better but you have to learn how to handle it's stickiness until the kneading and fermentation transforms the gluten into that lovely silken elastic feel. A good bread mixer can help a lot with this. Whole wheat flour especially needs this extra time and hydration. It takes a while for all the components of the flour to absorb water so it is especially easy to make it too dry.

Bottom line is that it is a lot trickier to get good bread with whole wheat flour but it can be done.

Gluten Free?

By definition, the starter is NOT gluten free as it is grown on wheat flour. However, we have heard of a micro bakery in Wales who has maintained a sourdough starter for some time with brown rice flour. So, it appears that a sourdough starter can be maintained on gluten free flour. One could take our starter and grow it on a gluten free flour and with many refreshments, there would be very little if any gluten left in it, but we cannot guarantee that is true. None of us has any experience in doing this, so this is all theoretical and hearsay. If you are a true celiac where any amount of gluten is poison to your system, we do not recommend the starter. If you are just sensitive or want to avoid it, it might work for you.

Do I Need to Add Commercial Yeast to my Sourdough Bread?

No. A healthy sourdough starter works better without commercial yeast. Some recipes add the commercial yeast because they don’t understand how to bake with natural sourdough or have a poor starter. It is hard to get a good starter going from the environment and often those are too weak to raise bread so they add commercial yeast. Carl’s starter is strong enough to raise bread well on its own.

Miscellaneous

History Of The Starter?

In the mid 1800's the Oregon Trail was the main route west for settlers, farmers, lumbermen and prospectors. The Trail started in the state of Missouri in about the center of the continental US and meandered WNW for about 2000 miles to the Oregon Territory. Other trails branched off of the main trail, SW to Santa Fe and west to California and elsewhere.

The Starter came West in 1847 with one of Carl's ancestors who traveled the Oregon Trail to Oregon by wagon train. There is a paragraph about the history of the starter in the historical brochure by Carl that is on our Web site.

The Oregon Trail Interpretive Center has a lot of information on the Oregon Trail. It is east of Baker City, Oregon fairly near where Carl’s ancestors settled near Burns, OR. They likely passed the site before turning south towards Burns.

Come on! How can this starter really be the same as it was in 1847?

We make every effort to keep this starter “pure.” Our growers and keepers only have Carl’s starter in their home so we don’t get microorganisms from other starters accidentally mixed in. They use sanitary (but not sterile procedures) to keep it healthy. This is a lot cleaner than Carl’s ancestors could possibly have been in 1847 when they took it on the Oregon Trail migration. Our processes are fully documented on this website.

Could local environmental organisms change the starter? Possibly. Some microbiologists did a study on how stable established strong and healthy starters are and they found that essentially, a strong starter out-competes other organisms in the environment and keeps its characteristics. This is what we have found with our starter. It continues with its characteristics since we have been providing it.

We started with samples provided by Carl himself in the 1990s before his death. Carl’s family had kept the starter going from at least 1847 in Burns, Oregon. It could well be older than that but he didn’t have any information about it prior to the Oregon Trail trek. Carl moved to Washington state as an adult while keeping the starter going and that is where he last lived. From what Carl wrote in the brochure, they used potatoes, milk and sugar sporadically in the starter. We have found that the starter is plenty strong enough without these additions. Does that mean that the starter changed during Carl’s family’s care of it? Who knows? We continue to do the best we can to maintain this starter as it was when Carl gave it away.

I Want To Be A Volunteer

There are not too many rules. The hardest rule for me is that I am allowed to keep only Carl's starter so there is no chance of cross-contamination and my natural impulse is to experiment.

Our usual suggestion is that you get the culture and use it for a year to gain some experience with our particular strain of sourdough. After a year or so, if you still have a desire to participate we can talk about what type of role you would be comfortable doing.

The main activity is to keep a starter going in case we need to get it again.

How To Dry Starter

May stir partially dried start to facilitate drying and a fan may help speed the drying

When brittle, grind gently in blender using the pulse to keep friction heat to a minimum (I like to

refrigerate the dried chunks 1st to keep the starter from heating too much in the blender from friction)

Why Does My Home Grown Starter Not Work Well?

Don't feel bad if you haven't been able to capture a really good sourdough starter from the wild. It is a matter of luck whether you can successfully do so. The reason established starters are valued is because it is tricky to capture one that has a good flavor, is strong to raise bread, and stays stable. In the old days, bakers captured starters from the wheat or rye flour or used the berm from brewing beer and ale. But when they got one, they would keep the really good starters going.

1. Modern flour is close to sterile due to the high heat of grinding it. In the old days, wheat and rye were ground slowly by mills and didn't heat up like the big mills today. That allowed the natural environmental yeasts that are everywhere to stay alive on the flour so bakers could grow them from flour.

2. Modern agriculture often uses weed killers on the mature wheat grasses to kill the wheat and dry it on a schedule instead of relying on the natural maturing and drying that used to be done. This allows them to time the harvest and not risk rains to ruin the wheat berries. But it may interfere with natural yeasts in the wild. Organic flours do not use this process.

3. We are just a whole lot cleaner than people used to be. That makes capturing the wild yeasts and Lactobacillus organisms hard because they are cleaned away. One experiment could only find the Lactobacillus in starters in the wild on baker's teeth. People just weren't that clean and that meant microorganisms could be captured easily.

4. Some places naturally had much better wild yeasts than other places so those places got really good starters and they have been prized for that reason.

Oh No! I Have Mold in my Starter

Mold can ruin a starter and make it taste terrible. If you get mold growing in your starter, you might be able to salvage it. Do not stir your moldy starter as that will get the mold well distributed in the container and ruin all of it.

First, sterilize a container or bowl and a couple of stirring spoons with boiling water.

Carefully use one of the spoons to take out the layer of visible mold from the top of your starter. Do not stir the starter and try to not disturb the lower parts of the starter in the container.

Then use a fresh sterilized but cool spoon and get some of the bottom of the starter out of the container and put into the sterilized but cool container or bowl. You only need a teaspoon or so of it. Be careful not to touch the sides of the old container when getting the bottom starter out.

Now, feed the saved starter with equal amounts of fresh flour and water as the amount of saved starter. Let grow covered loosely at 70F to 85F or 21-29C until bubbly, then feed again and again, discarding all but a little of the starter with each feeding. After several feedings, you may have a good starter again. If you use the same storage container, sterilize it before putting the salvaged starter back into it.

Prevention: The best way to prevent mold is to feed your starter regularly and keep it very healthy. I like to stir in a tablespoon or so of flour into the portion I'm saving after feeding it and it is at peak bubbly so that while it is in the refrigerator, it still has a little food and won't starve.

If you have recurring mold problems, you may have to do the sterilization step with your storage container, bowls, and stirring utensils every time you use or feed the starter.