Easy 2-Ingredient Buckwheat Sourdough Bread Without a Starter

My Simple Experiment Making Buckwheat Sourdough Bread with Two Ingredients and No Starter

You can make a simple buckwheat sourdough bread using only soaked buckwheat groats and home made active kombucha.  I tried it as an experiment and it fermented successfully without a traditional sourdough starter or commercial yeast.

Sometimes the best kitchen experiments start with a simple question.  I already had kombucha continuously brewing, a bag of buckwheat in the pantry, and I knew both kombucha and sourdough rely on live yeasts.  That got me wondering: could I make buckwheat sourdough bread using just those two ingredients?  There was only one way to find out.

In its simplest form, sourdough is a mix of yeasts that have partially digested some flour, and this mixture is baked to make bread.  

I then started thinking about the living cultures I keep that contain yeasts.  I make milk kefir, I have filmjölk, and I brew kombucha, two of which contain (among other things) many species of live yeasts.  While commercial baker’s yeast is typically a single species, sourdough cultures often contain a diverse mix of wild yeasts and bacteria. 

At this point in time I am not loving wheat.  While I have had enough of wheat for now, I am particularly fond of buckwheat.  I eat buckwheat for breakfast every day.  I began to think if I have many species of living yeasts, and I have buckwheat, why not try to make sourdough buckwheat bread.

I figured I could get some buckwheat, mix with kombucha, make it into a dough, let it ferment for a while, and bake it into a sourdough bread.  Sounds simple enough, surely nothing much could go wrong.  Worst case scenario it would taste bad, and I would feed it to the chickens.

I gave making buckwheat sourdough bread a try, and it worked well.  I was almost surprised at how simple the process was and how good the bread turned out. 

I Made Up My Own Recipe

After trying this I looked on the internet for sourdough buckwheat recipes.  In hind sight I should have looked for recipes first just in case this wasn’t just common sense.  

It didn’t matter too much in this case because it seems I was on the right track, there are a bunch of recipes on the internet that do pretty much what I tried.  

Sourdough certainly has its complexities, but for a simple loaf like this, common sense gets you surprisingly far.

Sourdough buckwheat bread – first attempt

My recipe did not make enough dough.  Given the size of my bread tin, it would have been better using 2 cups of buckwheat and 1 cup kombucha.  I also think had I left it to ferment longer it would have been fluffier.  Other than that, I could not be happier with this attempt.  

My super simple buckwheat sourdough recipe 

(next time I will double the ingredients).

Ingredients:

1 cup raw buckwheat groats 

1/2 cup kombucha liquid

Instructions:

1) Soak 1 cup raw buckwheat groats in water for 6 (or more) hours. 

2) Drain liquid, but do not rinse.

3) Put buckwheat through blender until it becomes liquidy.

4) Add 1/2 cup of kombucha liquid.  Blend until mixed together.

5) Put in something that is not metallic, cover to keep out insects but still lets in air.  Leave overnight to ferment.

6) Line a bread tin with baking paper.  Add the buckwheat / kombucha dough (this could be left to rise for fluffier bread).

7) Bake in oven around 180C for about an hour. 

Buckwheat kombucha slurry from step 5

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If you’d like to try this recipe yourself, you’ll need raw buckwheat groats.  I am based in Australia and usually buy raw buckwheat groats because they work well for breakfasts, sprouting, and experiments like this sourdough bread.  

For US and international readers, these are the raw buckwheat groats I would recommend.  

You will also need active kombucha.  I used homemade kombucha from my continuous brew system, but any active, unflavoured kombucha should work.  

For US and international readers, I can’t post to you so I recommend this kombucha SCOBY on Amazon, opt for the smaller size as they are more cost effective and grow very fast.  For a glass dispenser with tap, I would recommend a dispenser such as this one. 

Ready for baking – I could have let it rise first

It had some bubbles, but would have been fluffier had I left it longer

The End Result Was Good

The bread looked nice, smelled ok, and tasted good.  

The bread it made was a bit thin as I did not use enough ingredients for the size of the bread pan.  It may have been even nicer if it was fluffier.  

You can see some little holes, these are from the bubbles while it fermented.  Had I left it in the bread tin for a few hours it would ferment more and be more fluffy.

Buckwheat sourdough loaf

It was so thin that it ended up looking more like brownies than bread.  As it was so thin, and looked like a brownie, I sliced it into little pieces instead of traditional bread slices.  This seemed to work well.

I put some butter between each of these little pieces.  The loaf was warm when I added butter, and it melted the butter into the bread.  Most of the butter was soaked into the bread.  I imagine this type of bread would work well with honey comb. 

I put butter between these slices and let it melt in to the bread

I had a little bread left over that I ate the next morning.  It may be my imagination,  but it seemed fluffier.  I liked it more the second day. 

Other than wanting to double the recipe as the loaf produced was too small, the only down side I can see to this recipe is the price.  It’s too expensive to make this more than once in a while, especially if I use 2 cups of buckwheat. 

Buckwheat sourdough bread

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Final Thoughts

I thought it was good fun to make buckwheat sourdough bread.  Next time I will use milk kefir instead of kombucha, and see what that is like.  

I plan on making this again.  With a slightly larger batch and a longer second rise, I think it has the potential to become a really enjoyable homemade loaf.  Even if it never replaces everyday bread, it was a fun experiment and another reminder that fermentation often rewards curiosity.