How to "preserve" leavenHow to revive canned starter cultureA source:
🔗How to preserve bread leaven for those who bake infrequently, when daily feeding is not convenient and not justified, and you do not want to store it in the refrigerator, because it harms the leaven itself? There is a way, even two, and both are simple and convenient. In one case, the leaven can be stored for up to five years, in the second - up to a month.
As you know, sourdough became known to man much earlier than pure baking yeast; historians say that the first leavened bread was baked by the ancient Egyptians about 8 thousand years ago. You, of course, understand that the climate there, as it is now, as well as thousands of years ago, has never been temperate, it was always hot there. Nevertheless, people managed to bake bread and somehow preserve their leaven and
without refrigerator... It turns out that if the baker had to go away for a long time or take a break from baking so that his leaven did not die, he simply dried it. It is known that
in dry form, the starter retains all its wonderful bacteria, which simply "fall asleep" in the dehydrated starter culture. The dried sourdough can be stored for a very long time - up to five years, and it can be restored at any time to start baking bread again. Moreover, this will be the same leaven with the same properties that you had before you dried it. To wake up dry sourdough from sleep, just add the same amount of flour and water to it and leave it for 24 hours.
I've never dried starter before, and I never wanted to dry it - there was no need. But not so long ago there was a situation when I was almost left without my favorite rye sourdough and I would have to withdraw it from scratch, and this, although not difficult, is still not convenient, knocks out of the schedule and breaks plans. Nothing out of the ordinary happened: the husband accidentally broke a jar of sourdough, wrapped it in a bag and threw it away. How did he know that at least a gram had to be saved, but my entire refrigerator is filled with all sorts of cans with sour dough! One less, one more ... I discovered the loss the next evening when it was time to feed the leaven. In five minutes, I went through all the stages of accepting the inevitable: at first I denied and could not believe (I searched the entire cabinet where the jar of leaven should have been), I was angry and sad, then I was almost let go, when suddenly I remembered that the bag with the splinters jars and just ripe and ready-to-feed sourdough, should lie somewhere in the depths of the trash can. There are times when unmade garbage causes such delight and relief of mental suffering!))) Of course, I dug out this bag and took from it a little fragrant sourdough - without a single splinter, but more is not needed!
For such
idiotic situations or, for example, when you need to leave for a long time, there is a great way to spread the straws and "canning" the leaven - dry it,
so that later at any time you can restore it and start baking... You don't need anything special for this:
1) Sourdough at its best, at its peak or almost at its peak;
2) parchment or silicone sheet.
3) In my case, also a dehydrator.
Before drying the starter culture, I switched it to active feeding and fed it not once a day, but twice. I’m warm at home now, so if you feed once, by the end of the day she starts to smell like fruit, which means she’s very hungry. And I wanted to "capture" the leaven at the dawn of strength, when there is an abundance of yeast and lactic acid bacteria. Therefore, the first day I fed her twice (morning and evening)
in proportions 3 gr. starter + 30 gr. water + 30 gr.whole grain rye flour (milled on Hawos Queen 1).
On the second day, I decided to increase its amount to 200 grams. (in order to stock up more, of course, otherwise suddenly it won't be enough!) and fed
in proportions of 7-10 gr. starter + 100 gr. water + 100 gr. whole grain rye flour.
Before drying, the leaven was very active and bubbled all over. I stirred it to get rid of air bubbles.
I laid it out on silicone sheets for my dryer and spread it thinly with a spatula (fit just two sheets).
There is a mode in my dryer where it can simply blow without heating the air, so I used it.
If your dehydrator also has such a mode, feel free to dry it, but if it heats in any modes, then it's better not. You cannot dry the leaven in the oven, in any case it will heat above 30 degrees, and anything above 30 degrees is destructive for the leaven. Therefore, as an option, the leaven can be dried at room temperature by spreading a thin layer over parchment. Only take parchment that is tested and of high quality, otherwise the leaven can strongly stick to it and then all the work will be in vain.
When my starter was a little dry, I took it off the silicone sheets and spread it out in pieces on the dehydrator trays. In total, my 200 gr. the leaven was dried for about 15 hours, moreover, it was not very thinly spread. And while she was drying, the kitchen smelled of rye bread
I put the dry starter in a blender and ground it. The result is a mixture of powder and flakes.
From 200 gr. sourdough moisture 100% I got 82 grams. dry.
Well, that's it, now I will keep it for a long time and I will always have a backup copy of my favorite starter under any circumstances. By the way, this is the one that I brought out in just three feeding and it is very successful, hardworking and beautiful in every way. Wheat bread on it turns out lush and non-sour, and the dough is quick. By the way, another way to slowly make stocks of sourdough is to scrape off the dried dough remnants from the bowl in which it was fermented.
In the same way, you can dry absolutely any sourdough, both rye and wheat, from white or whole grain flour, with or without fruit additives. This method is especially attractive to me because it allows you to preserve all the properties and microflora of the starter culture and is much more efficient than storage in the refrigerator. As you know, some leavening bacteria die at temperatures below 10 degrees and do not recover even with warming, so I keep my leaven at room temperature both in winter and in summer and feed it 1-2 times a day. But I also bake often - 3-4 times a week. And those who bake less often can just take this method of conservation into service, so as not to waste their "pet". Or try another simple way.
If you do not need to preserve the leaven for months or even years, this "preservation" option is quite suitable for you, which
allows you to store the starter culture for about a month without loss. A small amount of sourdough must be mixed with a lot of flour to turn the sourdough into flour crumbs.
With this method, dehydration of the starter also occurs, when the fermentation processes are greatly slowed down, but do not stop completely. The sourdough has at hand fresh nutritious material - flour, with which it was ground, so let it wander half asleep to your health. In this state, it can be stored for about 1 month in the refrigerator. To start using it again, you need to take it out of the refrigerator, let it warm up and add about the same amount of warm water to make a dough with the consistency of pancakes. This leaven also takes time to restore its activity, but it will still happen much faster than removing the leaven from scratch and, of course, more convenient than feeding it every day.
Next time I'll show you how to restore both versions of the sourdough and try to bake some simple rye and wheat bread on it.
By the way, friends, you can send your dry starter culture by mail and share it with like-minded people, it's very cool!
Good luck with your bread and good leaven!
How to revive canned starter culture 
