Sour Dough Starter (Potato Flake Version)

1. Mix all of your sour dough starter ingredients in a glass canning jar and loosely cover for 2 days. After 2 days, you need to feed your starter and allow it to rest 8-12 hours before making your bread.

2. Your sour dough starter should look bubbly after 12 hours of feeding it. If it does, you can go ahead and make your bread OR you can put it in the refrigerator until you are ready to make bread.

3. In the cooler winter months, I often leave my starter on my counter all the time because I'm baking bread 1-2x a week. Every day I give it a quick stir to keep it active but otherwise I feed it the day before I want to start the bread making process. In the summer, you may need to keep it in the refrigerator between batches so the starter doesn't go bad.

Making the bread:

1. Place all of the ingredients except flour in either a large bowl or your stand mixer. I use my 6qt stand mixer so it can hold this larger loaf of bread.

2. Add 5 cups of flour and knead well. Slowly add the rest of the flour (add more if dough is still very sticky). Dough should be soft and well developed. Place in a well-greased bowl and cover with plastic wrap and leave in a warm place to rise. Allow to rise until double, that can be anywhere from 8-12+ hours, depending on how warm the environment is.

3. Once your bread has doubled, shape your bread into one large loaf (12"x4" pan) or 2 smaller loaves and place in greased loaf pans. Cover with greased plastic wrap and allow to rise until the dough is just cresting over the top of the loaf pans (4-12 hours)

4. When bread is ready to bake, preheat oven to 350°F. Remove plastic wrap and bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown and sounds hollow when tapped.

5. Allow to cool before slicing or freezing.