Simple Egyptian Sourdough Starter Recipe

Normally I like to introduce a regional starter with a recipe indigenous to the area it hails from, but what I think you guys need right now is just to have some bread. This is why I’ve bumped the krauts back a week; you probably need bread more than you need kraut. I’ve noticed that all y’all are about the Wharf right now, but you should be about the Egyptian. Especially if you’re a new baker (and especially especially if you’re one who’s only doing sourdough because you can’t find yeast in stores right now).

I started baking as a tot, around 3 or 4 years old, because my mother was a phenomenal baker. In somewhere around 40 years of baking, I have never seen a sourdough starter that perfectly meets the needs of the modern world before. My family is churning through a loaf per day on average now, and I get fussed at it there’s a lapse in the bread supply!

I have finished many loaves of bread with this starter in 8 hours, and that’s start to finish, not just the active time. It’s fast, and you can still tell you’re eating sourdough!

Let me tell you about the starter itself:

As much as I hate to use this word for anything related to bread, the starter is creamy. It has a creamy color, a creamy smell (how is that even a thing?), a creamy texture (even when you run it thin), and magically imparts that characteristic into the breads it ferments.

It’s sour. Not overwhelmingly sour, if you feed it daily, but still has some good tartness to let you know what’s what. I’d call it the mid-rare to medium of the sourdough world. Sometimes, though, even though it’s mean to do it, I like to starve it for a day or two. Then it gets wicked sour. Those loaves are sometimes proof of divinity. I find the starter does mellow back out after a feed or two of regular feeds, too. But no matter what schedule you’re using, it is always happy to see you, and it’s also brimming with nuance and subtleties you didn’t notice the time before.

It always starts bubbling before I’ve even finished stirring the flour in! Every. Single. Time. Even when it should be pouty and upset with me. But no, it’s just a joyful little guy no matter the circumstances. It’s all glass half full with this starter!

It acts like it’s trying to impress commercial yeast without losing its sourdough card or pride in who it is, to give you a sense of its personality. And for those of you who bake sourdough because you can spend as many days on a single loaf as you feel like, this starter might be harder for you until you get used to it. You’d want to cut the starter amounts back a lot to meet that schedule. I know, because I like to stretch out my bakes so I can come and go as I please. But when you wake up in the morning and know you need bread by dinner? This is your guy.

In terms of the loaves themselves, I’ve made really dense ones and really light ones and everything in between at this point, but the crusty, open crumb loaves are my favorite. You can pretty much do what you want with it. Pizza is yes. Waffles yes. Pancakes yes. I haven’t done biscuits or brownies or pflaumenkuchen (this is probably my favorite cake) yet, but they’ll all happen one day. If I had to pick a single “forever starter,” this would be the one I’d spent the rest of my life with.

It’s the best starter I’ve ever used, full stop. So much so, it’s starting to interfere with my work. As y’all know, we have a lot of sourdough starters, and I can’t really write or revise a product description for something I don’t know anything about. Because of this Egyptian starter, I am pretty much just ignoring the rest of them. As such, I had to take extreme measures and ground this starter to the fridge until I’ve finished all the other sourdoughs. This is my last loaf, and it is an honor to share it with you.

Here’s What You Need

454 grams (1 pound, 3 3/4 cups) all purpose flour

20 grams (.3 ounce) salt

150 grams (5.3 ounces) Egyptian sourdough starter

250mL (8 ounces, 1 cup) water

Let’s Make the Dough!

Mix together all of your ingredients, and then let it sit for about 15 minutes. Knead 5-10 times, then rise 2 hours.

Bake Time!

Shape your dough how you like it. I did a boule here. Let it rise 2 more hours, and then during the time you preheat your oven to 450F/230C/Gas mark 8. Once the oven is hot, slide that bad boy in there! Bake 25 minutes, turn, and then bake another 15-20 minutes.