Sour dough starter

i have always been a frustrated baker and have always wanted to turn out a decent loaf but even though i have followed a number of recipes to the letter the yeast never seems to provide the end results of the picture in the cook book, so i have tried fresh yeast and a number of different dried yeast and still failures to get a big fluffy loaf.  For a while i had been thinking of making sour dough but baby came along and ate a lot of my time, but i managed to get a bit of time the other day and had a go at making my own wild yeast, i was a bit excited about doing this wondering if it would work and knowing that what i was making could last forever and be passed down to the girls if they were interested in that sort of thing.

Sourdough is basically a fermented batter, the bacteria that makes the wild yeast is everywhere in the air, in the flour in fruit etc and is the same bacteria that makes yogurt.

So here is my little diary of some simple flour a water making a massive change to our daily life, i now make all the family bread at home and am very happy to provide a daily staple at home and i have not bought a loaf since i started this and now have the house smelling of fresh baked bread

 




Day one 

1 cup of wholemeal flour and 1 cup of warm water whisked for 10 mins in my k mix to incorporate loads of air and give the mix a chance to grab any of the yeast bacteria that could be in the air or flour.

i then put this in a large plastic pot, i used plastic as this gave the gasses stretch space rather than explode with glass, however i did use a rather large tub i also put this in a warm place in the kitchen to help fermentation it now lives there permanently and has become my kitchen pet.

After 10 hours i found a few bubble but not many

Then next day 

things looked pretty similar and i wondered if it worked luckily the pot i used was clear and i saw hundreds of lines of mini bubbles trying to break their way to the top so i gave it a good stir and hey presto ITS ALIVE!!! sorry about the camera shadow it is hard taking pictures inside a tub.

Every day for 5 days only i fed the tub with 1 cup of flour and 1 cup of warm water and gave it a really big stir you can see it is well fermented and definitely alive.  i could not resist any longer and made my first loaf with out shop bought yeast and only used the wild yeast fermenting in this pot and WOW it worked and tasted great to

Love your sourdough
it really is simple to do and has been the missing ingredient to my bread baking i missed and i just love taking the lid off and sniffing the pot and the smell changes which can smell anything from fermenting apples to brandy and looking at the batter also changes you can see when it needs a stir. Just by looking and smelling you know instinctively what to do give it a good stir or add a bit more flour depending on how much liquid has formed. once a week i give it a mega stir with my stick blender oxygen.

For each recipe that i need my wild yeast i use 1 ladle full of starter mix every time i take some starter from the pot i feed the pot with 1 ladle of flour and 1 ladle of warm water and give it a good mix up.

vv