You Start Me Up

Making sourdough bread requires a starter – fermented flour and water essentially – and the periodic feeding of said the starter will keep it going indefinately. I made mine originally with some grapes but the upkeep only requires flour and water.

The starter after a number of days since the last feed. If I was baking more often I would feed it every day, as it is I tend to do it 2 or 3 times a week.

First job is to discard 2 thirds of it. If there is a black film on the surface then get rid of that otherwise just spoon it out from anywhere.

Add 25g of wholewheat flour.

Add 100g of strong bread flour.

Makes sure the temperature of the water is between 28 and 33 C.

Add 100g of the warm water.

Mix the ingredients, put the lid back on and leave it to feed.It should be at its most active after about 6 hours but it might be that if you have left it too long between feeds you need to repeat the process 24 hours later before you use it to make the bread.

As this photo and the one below show, the starter is now very active and ready to use. I plan to mix a loaf on Friday for a Saturday bake so I will detail the process in a separate post then.

As you can see it is quite deep but the important thing is the bubbles in the mix, these show that fermentation is taking place.