How to Create Einkorn Sourdough Starter

It seems only natural to bake einkorn bread with the same techniques used thousands of years ago, and if you have a sensitivity to gluten, it makes even more sense. Baking bread with sourdough starter is a very forgiving process that offers many health benefits.

• Wild yeasts ferment dough without active dry yeast, creating a slower rise that enables enzymes to develop and digest starches and proteins.
• Some believe that the creation of commercial yeast, used to speed up the bread-baking process, may be a contributing factor in making bread harder to digest.
• Sourdough creates bread with a lower glycemic index.
• Bread baked with sourdough is more flavorful and the bread will stay fresher longer.
• A slow rise with sourdough is suited to the weak gluten in einkorn.

Creating your very own starter is the first step. It is not necessarily difficult, but the time it takes for the starter to become ready to use will vary from kitchen to kitchen. That’s the challenge, believing it will work and having the patience to see the process through to the end. Our process creates a firm starter, which is a bit trickier to get going, but longterm, it will reward you with a very stable starter that needs minimal maintenance and will live on for years to come.  

Here are a few terms to understand:

• Starter - Once mature, a small amount of your starter will be mixed into a bread dough, causing it to ferment and form bubbles or make the dough rise.
• Refresh - As your starter ferments, it needs fresh water and flour to consume in order to stay alive. Refreshing your starter means adding fresh water and flour to a piece of existing starter. At first, you will refresh many times to get your starter strong, discarding excess, then you will only refresh when your starter runs low.

Although we list cups and tablespoons in the recipe, we strongly recommend that you use a baking scale to measure all of the ingredients in grams, including the water. It will help make a mysterious process foolproof, especially with einkorn.

DAY 1

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons (45 g) warm water at 100˚F
• ½ cup Einkorn flour: (60 g) jovial All-Purpose Einkorn Flour or (48 g) jovial Whole Grain Einkorn Flour

Instructions

1. Mix flour and water in a small bowl to form a wet dough that is tacky to the touch.
2. Transfer the dough to a glass container tightly sealed with a lid or plastic wrap. Let rest at room temperature in a kitchen cabinet for 48 hours.

DAY 3

Ingredients

• All the starter from Day 1 (at least 10 g)
• 2 tablespoons (30 g) warm water at 100˚F
• ½ cup Einkorn flour: (60 g) jovial All-Purpose Einkorn Flour or (48 g) jovial Whole Grain Einkorn Flour

Instructions

1. If you see a greyish hue on the surface of the starter, push it to the side. Spoon out the creamy golden starter into a clean bowl.
2. Mix water into the starter until dissolved, then mix in the flour and form a wet dough.
3. Transfer this dough to a clean glass container sealed tightly with a lid or plastic wrap at room temperature in a kitchen cabinet for 24 hours.

Once your starter is ready and your bread is rising nicely, you can refrigerate the starter. When you want to bake bread, remove the quantity needed and use it cold from the refrigerator to mix up the bread recipe. Leave the remaining starter in the refrigerator, and when it becomes low, use the recipe from Day 5 to refresh and replenish the starter, always letting the starter rise after refreshing for 6 to 10 hours. For the first six months, you should refresh your starter once a week to keep it strong. After six months to a year has passed, you can leave it refrigerated for longer. As you keep baking bread, your starter will eventually become mature and will be strong enough to bubble up within 6 to 10 hours. In the photos below, you can see how Carla's starter bubbles up after refreshing.

Refreshed at 8:30 AM

10:30 AM (after 2 hours)

12:30 PM (after 4 hours)

2:30 PM (after 6 hours- it has expanded enough for refrigeration or baking)

4:30 PM (after 8 hours- it has expanded enough for refrigeration or baking)

8:30 AM (after 24 hours- if you forget your starter out at room temperature for up to a day, don't worry. Refrigerate the starter and refresh when low. )

Once your starter is established and you are regularly baking bread, you may want to make more than 2 to 3 loaves per week or you need more starter for straight sourdough recipes, like pizza dough. You can make a double batch using the following recipe. REFRESH FOR LARGER BATCH OF STARTER Ingredients

• 4 teaspoons (20 g) Einkorn Sourdough Starter
• ¼ cup (56 g) warm water, at 100°F
• ¾ cup plus 1 tablespoon (100 g) jovial all-purpose einkorn flour or ¾ cup plus 1 tablespoon (90 g) jovial whole grain einkorn flour

Instructions

1. Place the starter in a small bowl. Add warm water and mix until the starter is dissolved and the water is creamy. Add flour and mix with a fork until most of the flour is absorbed. Roll the starter between your hands until the flour is absorbed, rubbing the bowl with the starter to pick up remaining flour. Transfer the starter to a sealed glass container and let rest at room temperature for up to 24 hours.
2. Watch closely each day as the bubbles will increase and the activity of the starter will become more apparent. As it becomes more active, the amount and size of the bubbles in the starter will increase significantly and will change the appearance of the starter. It will spread out and the surface will seem pitted. When the starter rises up and doubles in size after 6 to 10 hours, you are ready to bake bread!

If you are having trouble, please contact us at info@jovialfoods.com. We would be happy to answer questions and help you through this process. Thousands of our customers have used this recipe to create their very own sourdough starter, and we have seen pictures of their beautiful loaves of bread. You can do this too! We wish you the very best of luck.