Sourdough Banana Bread Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to sourdough bread? ›

The secret to sourdough is simple: water. The more water you add to your dough will affect how open the crumb (bigger holes and softer texture) will be once it's baked.

And you guessed it..the more starter you use, the faster your dough will ferment - resulting in a less sour loaf. Using less starter in your recipe will help slow down the fermentation process.

Typical feeding ratios are 1:2:2 or 1:3:3 (old sourdough: fresh flour: water). However, even extreme ratios like 1:50:50 would still work. In that case, the freshly fed sourdough would just require more or much more time to grow and reach its peak, as judged by the maximum volume increase in the jar (at least doubled).

Keeping the lid on for the first part of baking allows steam to expand between the gluten fibers to rise the bread and create a fluffy loaf. Step 4: Remove the lid and bake for an additional 12-14 minutes or until the crust is crispy and golden brown. Once you take the lid off, the bread likely won't rise anymore.

The best flour blend for creating a new sourdough starter is 50% whole-meal flour (whole wheat or whole rye) and 50% bread flour or all-purpose flour. I recommend a 50/50 mix of whole wheat flour and bread flour.

So if you look solely at the ingredients, it is cheaper to make your own sourdough. But if you bring other factors into it - it might not be as cheap. This post aims to show you how you can bake a classic sourdough loaf with a little work and no fancy equipment.

With each sourdough starter feeding, you'll be discarding some to avoid it from becoming overly acidic. Most will compost or trash this discard, but you can save it and use it in other recipes!

It's the portion of the starter you remove before you feed your sourdough starter. What is this? You should toss the sourdough discard from your starter for at least the first 7 days. In this early period, the discard will contain bad bacteria which can potentially be unsafe for you to consume.

What happens if you let sourdough bread rise too long? ›

The loaf is also inclined to over spring resulting in a crumb with big, random, holes or channels running through the loaf. If you over-ferment the dough you run the risk of the gluten structure degrading and the loaf turning into a puddle of goo before your eyes, never to be retrieved and destined for the bin.

Yes, you can overfeed your sourdough starter. Audrey explains: “Every time you add more flour and water, you are depleting the existing population of natural bacteria and yeast.” If you keep adding more and more, eventually you'll dilute the starter so much that you'll just have flour and water.

Experts recommend feeding a starter twice daily. And at each feeding, you hold onto 1/2 cup of your original starter, discard the rest, and then add its same weight in water and flour. With this schedule, you'd discard almost a cup of sourdough starter every day.

As you can see (or smell!), a sourdough starter should have a sour, tangy, and yeasty aroma, with subtle undertones depending on the type of flour used. However, offensive or foul odours such as rancid, putrid, or mouldy smells are signs that something has gone wrong with the starter.

Keep the dough temperature lower: Lactic acid bacteria are most active in the higher temperatures of the mid 80s-90sºF. Keeping the dough in the 76-78º F range will still ferment and produce bacteria but will encourage lactic acid bacteria instead of acetic acid bacteria resulting in a more mild flavored loaf.

First, the production of lactic acid (as well as acetic acid) lowers the pH of your starter to around 3.5 (and as high as 5). This lowering of pH results in that characteristic sour flavor of sourdough. Second, a low pH eliminates unwanted pathogens like enterobacteria or Staphylococcus.

To increase the sour flavor of this sourdough bread, add more whole grains (both to your sourdough starter and the dough itself), keep the dough warm (78°F/25°C or warmer), and lengthen the total fermentation time by keeping the dough in the fridge to proof even longer than the 16 hours specified in the recipe—24 hours ...