I had been wanting to create some sourdough starter from wild yeasts for some time now, but a lot of descriptions make it seem difficult, finicky, or tedious. I am sure that it can be, but I think I managed to stumble upon a particularly simple and pain-free process for getting a starter going.

When planning to start my own wild yeast sourdough starter, I read a number of recipes that called for rye flour, particularly fresh organic rye flour. Apparently, wild yeasts grow on the surface of a number of grains and fruits, perhaps most famously rye and grapes (you know that dusty white coating on grapes straight from the vine? It's yeast, and it makes the origins of wine a little less mysterious.) When freshly ground, rye flour still contains a lot of living yeast.

At my local health food store, I easily found whole organic rye berries, but the store was not equipped to mill them, and neither was I. I could have whipped out my coffee-grinder at this point, but I realized... if the yeast is on the surface, did I really need to grind them at all?

I created a mix of all-purpose flour, water, and about a quarter-cup of whole rye berries, and followed the The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion's feeding instructions: half a cup of warm water and a cup of flour once in the morning and once in the evening. This creates an awful lot of throw-away starter, (which I saved for things like fry-bread and pizza crust - more on those later), but it also creates a happily bubbling little starter in about a week. Over the course of the feedings, the rye berries worked their way out in batches of discarded starter, and now there are no more. They make such a tasty addition to bread, however, that you might want to add them back in!

The starter can be used for no-knead bread, as well as the more traditional (and time consuming) pain au levain and other sourdough breads. You can leave it in the fridge and skip feeding it any time you aren't planning on using it for a while, although it will eventually languish away and your fridge will start to look like my mothers: a ten-year-old unused sourdough starter in one corner, a bag of fifteen-year-old undeveloped film (my childhood!) in the crisper, and a three year old jug of vinegar that used to be mead a friend gave you taking up half the bottom shelf. (j/k, Mom, I know you threw out that mead! ; )