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sourdough barm2©️ Nel Brouwer-van den Bergh

Sourdough barm

Prep Time 6 days
Total Time 6 days
Course Staple ingredient
Cuisine German

Ingredients
  

Ingredients to make the initial seed culture

  • 1/2 cup whole rye flour you may mix in some very coarsely ground rye kernels
  • 2 cups unbleached bread flour
  • 1.37 cups water free of chlorine

Ingredients to make the barm

  • 1.75 cup unbleached bread flour
  • 1/2 cup of the end seed culture (see above)
  • 1 cup water free of chlorine

Ingredients to re-fresh the barm

  • oz barm
  • oz unbleached bread flour
  • oz water free of chlorine

Instructions
 

Making the seed culture

  • On day one, mix 1/2 cup whole rye flour with 3/8 cup of water (roughly 45% in weight more water than flour. Mix well. Place this dough in a glass or plastic beaker and cover. Place at ambient temperature on the counter out of direct sun light.
  • On day two, we mix 1/2 cup bread flour and a 1/4 cup water, separately until all is mixed well. We add this mixture to the day one mixture and cover again. The smell can be obnoxious, but please ignore that
  • On day three you may have noticed some fermentation. Regardless, discard half of the mixture of day 2 and mix it with a fresh mixture of 1/2 cup bread flour and 1/4 cup water. Cover again and let stand at room temperature
  • On day 4 you will have noticed fermentation. if the dough has not expanded double the size, wait for that to happen. Otherwise do as the previous day and discard half of the day 3 mixture and mix it again with 1/2 cup of bread flour and 1/4 cup of water. Wait until the dough has at the least doubled in size. This could be 4-24 h. At that moment your seed mixture is ready to make the barm from

Making the barm

  • Mix 1/2 cup of seed mixture with 1 cup of water and 1.75 cup of bread flour. This means the water and the newly added flour are in equal proportion by weight
  • Place it is a large enough container as the fermentation may be very lively. It may take 4-6 h before the fermentation has peaked (when it shows very bubbly)
  • At that point place it in the refrigerator overnight before using. This will impair some acidity to the barm. The next morning (day 6) your barm is ready and you can start baking bread

Refreshing the barm

  • Your barm will remain potent when stored in the fridge for 3 days. After that you need to refresh
  • You have a choice: either double the barm (at the least) or quadruple the barm. When doubling, the barm will remain more acidic, when quadrupling the barm will become less acidic. Also an older barm of 3 days will be more acidic then a one day old barm
  • To refresh the barm, add equal weight amounts of water and bread flour to the to-be-refreshed barm and let ferment at room temperature. Usually after 4-8 hr the volume hads tripled and the refreshed barm can be refrigerated and used again in a time span of 3 days.
Keyword barm, fermentation, natural yeast, sourdough starter