Yogurt Is The Sourdough Starter Substitute You Need For Tangy Bread - Tasting Table (2024)

FAQs

Yogurt Is The Sourdough Starter Substitute You Need For Tangy Bread - Tasting Table? ›

To make this swap, choose plain yogurt with live cultures, which are key to infusing your bread with tanginess. Most recipes will call for 1/3 or 1/2 cup of yogurt. Mix the yogurt with flour, water, and other bread ingredients. Give the dough extra time to ferment and develop flavor by letting it sit overnight.

Yogurt lacks the potent leavening power of a sourdough starter. So, in addition to the rise, the substituted bread might also lack sourdough's open crumb structure. The bread will still have a slight chewiness that you would expect from sourdough, but it will still be more tender than real sourdough.

Using yogurt as a substitute for sourdough starter can produce bread with a similar, yet delightfully different character.

A yogurt maker makes a great humid rising spot for a starter. Fill the yogurt maker with warm water and let the starter rise in there.

How much sourdough starter equals a packet of yeast? As a general rule, 100g of sourdough starter can be used to replace one packet of yeast (a packet usually contains 5-7g of commercial yeast).

Use fresh yogurt starter every 5 to 6 batches since the bacteria activity decreases over time. Yogurt starter can be frozen for future batches. Incubation temperature too high or too low. The temperature must be 108°F to 112°F for yogurt bacteria to grow properly.

Adding milk to bread dough makes it looser and softer while using sour cream, yogurt, or buttermilk makes the dough tighter. The tightening effect is caused by acidity. Fermented dairy products have a lower pH than milk or water.

After a few days, your daily 1/4 cup flour and water won't be enough to sustain your entire jar of starter, and your starter will be slow and sluggish, not much better than discard itself. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, depending on what you want to bake with it.

Sourdough starter and yeast are both leavening agents and both require a fermentation process. They are used to leaven breads, pizza, rolls, bagels etc. Other leavening agents can include baking soda, baking powder, eggs etc. These are more popular for quick breads like banana bread or pancakes.

If you growing a sourdough starter is causing you anxiety, then purchasing one might be a better option. If you're up for the challenge of creating something truly unique in your kitchen and have time to commit to it, then making a sourdough starter from scratch is for you.

Can I use store bought yogurt as a starter? ›

Whether homemade or from the store, yogurt itself makes a great yogurt starter. If you're using store-bought yogurt, check the label to make sure it contains live, active cultures—and doesn't have any additives like sweeteners, flavours or thickeners.

After 18-24 hours, starter should be about the consistency of yogurt - a curd forms and mixture doesn't flow readily when container is slightly tilted. (It may also form smaller curds suspended in clear liquid).

Because milk kefir has many of the components of sourdough, you can make a type of sourdough starter directly from milk kefir!

Milk Kefir. When I'm making milk kefir I like to utilize that as a sourdough starter. I don't necessarily find it quite as vigorous at leavening as a trusted sourdough starter but it works well with its colony of bacteria and yeast. You can find a full article on how to use milk kefir as sourdough on the main CFH site.

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.

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. Why do you need to use these two types of flour?

Whether homemade or from the store, yogurt itself makes a great yogurt starter. If you're using store-bought yogurt, check the label to make sure it contains live, active cultures—and doesn't have any additives like sweeteners, flavours or thickeners.

YOGURT WHEY (IF NOT MAKING FOR THE FIRST TIME) AS STARTER

The yellowish cloudy liquid you get from straining the Greek yogurt can be used as a starter (I know! I was thrilled to the max when someone told me they did that!).

2> If there's no homemade yogurt for starter, any good quality organic store bought plain yogurt will work well as long as it contains live culture (like S. THERMOPHILUS, L.