Product Tutorials
Product Tutorials
Kombucha Starter Tea:
You have already purchased your 1 cup of starter tea that has a live scoby in it! Follow these instructions to brew your very own kombucha. If you care for the scoby properly, it will last you a lifetime!
You will need:
One small pot
One half gallon mason jar (or other container, preferably glass)
4 Black tea bags
7 cups of distilled water
1 cup of kombucha starter tea
1/2 cup of sugar
Instructions:
Measure 2 out of the 7 cups of water in your saucepan and bring to a boil. Dissolve the half cup of sugar and shut off. Add your 4 black tea bags and steep for 10 minutes minimum. While your tea is steeping, add the remaining 5 cups of water and 1 cup of starter tea to your half gallon jar or container. Reserve the scoby in the jar it came in. After your pot of tea and sugar has steeped on the stove, add this to the half gallon jug and combine. This is your kombucha! It is ready to drink. Add some of this new batch to your scoby (minimum of 1 cup, but you can always add more) and watch it grow! Give it about a week or more to ferment and you will be ready to make consective batches. Be sure to always make sure you add tea back to the starter jar. Once it grows, you can also add it to additional jars or bigger jars. Enjoy!
Note: you can also go online and find additional recipes for second fermentation, including how to carbonate your kombucha and play with additional flavors.
Sourdough Starter:
Congrats on purchasing your new starter! You are on your way to baking all of the goodies in no time! Sourdough is so much more than bread. You can use the discard for a plethora of fantastic recipes, from muffins to banana bread to brownies to English muffins and more!
So here are some things to keep in mind… first, the whole process should take you about a week, so make sure you aren’t going on any vacations or leaving the house for longer than about 24 hours, which is roughly how often you are going to want to feed the starter. You will also hear a lot about precise measurements and stressing over doing it to perfection… you won’t find that here. I found that once I let go of adhering to all of the strict parameters that it was actually much more managable and a lot less stress to get some starter going successfully. Lastly, when you are feeding, you will want to make sure you keep the consistency comparable to that of a thick pancake batter. If you feel that it is too runny or too thick, simply add a tad more flour or water to do the trick. Here is how you get started:
You will need:
one Quart sized mason jar with a ring (you don’t need the lid, just the ring)
one coffee filter
dry measuring cup
measuring spoons
distilled water
unbleached flour
dehydrated sourdough starter packet
one rubberband
Instructions:
Place your packet of dehydrated sourdough starter in your mason jar and add about 3 tablespoons of lukewarm distilled water. Let it sit for several minutes to combine, stirring occasionally. Next, you are going to add 2 tablespoonfuls of your unbleached flour. Stir it all to combine. Scrape the sides with a silicone baking spatula or a fork to keep the sides clean. Place the coffee filter over the top and close the band over it. This will keep unwanted dirt and things out and still allow the jar to breathe. Leave the jar to sit for about 24 hours.
Next, you are going to feed your starter. Add 1 tablespoon of flour and 2 tablespoons of water and mix well. Scrape sides, replace lid, and allow to sit for another 24 hours.
You will repeat the same process on the next day. You may even begin to see some activity in the form of bubbles come from the starter. You will now want to place the rubberband around the jar and make sure that it is level with the top of the starter. This is to see if your starter is growing. You will see growth if the starter is above the rubberband line.
The next time you feed, you will kick up your measurements a notch… this time, we will add 1/3 cup of flour and 1/4 cup of water. Don’t forget to adjust your rubberband. You should also start to notice the tell-tale sourdough smell coming from the starter, which is a great indicator that your starter is doing what it is supposed to be doing!
You should be seeing that your starter is doubling in size now several hours after feeding. If not, you may need to make some tweaks as far as consistency goes, adding more flour or water depending on if it is too runny or too thick. Remember: we want that consistency of thick pancake batter.
Once you have your starter active, you will feed it with 1 cup of flour and 1/2 cup of water at each feeding, taking care to discard a portion of it before doing so. You can use the discard in a variety of recipes. You can also keep your starter in the refrigerator if you don’t plan on using it often or don’t want to feed it every day. See below.
IMPORTANT NOTE: do not ever dump your discard down your kitchen sink! This can lead to hardened starter in your pipes and cause you plumbing issues. Either bake with your discard or dump it in the trash can. You can thank me later!
Storage and Care:
You will notice recipes call for either active starter or discard. Your active starter is going to be when it has reached its peak rise, or the time that it has doubled in size. Your discard is going to be when the starter has deflated back to its half size, or what it looks like just before you feed it.
Your starter should be kept on the counter at a temperature of at least 75 degrees. Cooler temps tend to retard the growth of your starter, so don’t be alarmed if this happens. You can always stuff it in a beanie or sock to keep it warm and I have also used a seedling mat or a heating pad in the wintertime, as my house can get down to the 30’s/40’s.
As I mentioned earlier, if you don’t want to have to feed and discard every day, you can keep your starter in the refrigerator and take it out to feed a couple of days before you plan to bake with it.
Finally, if you have a starter that ends up with a thick layer of dark liquid on the top, this is called “hooch” (your starter has basically started to make alcohol) and this is normal. You can either dump off the top of the liquid hooch layer and feed again or mix this into the starter and feed. This usually occurs when your starter is active and hungry and has nothing to feed on, typically from not being fed in awhile.
That about does it for the starter! Enjoy the process and the baking journey!