Prep time: 2 minutes a day for a week

Yield: one sourdough starter (mother)

I’ve wanted to grow my own bread starter for a while. After a fair amount of reading and talking with others who have done it before, I decided I was ready. I have opted to use rye flour as it will lend flavour of it’s own and I am using organic flour as it should naturally contain more wild yeast. I’ve held back on publishing this until I had really put it to the test and achieved proper bread. Mission accomplished so here we go.

You will need:

Each day the following:

Flour 50g
Water 50g (60g if using rye flour)
Patience

Making it:

Take a large, sterilised kilner jar (or similar) and add the flour and water. Mix them together until smooth. Shut the lid and stick in a cupboard until tomorrow. Name your newest housemate.

Each day add the flour and water and stir into the mix.  After a few days there should be signs of life. Along with starting to bubble your new bread baby should start to smell yeasty.

Congratulations your starter is doing it’s thing. Keep up with the daily feeds.  After a 5-7 days you should have a useful starter.
As your starter matures you might get tired of daily feeds. Simply pop the jar in the fridge after feeding it and you should be fine to feed it once every 3 weeks. You can also freeze your starter (an ice cube tray works well) this can work as a good precaution against forgetting to feed an established starter.
Obviously with daily feeds you can end up with an abundance of starter especially if you aren’t baking everyday.
My sourdough crumpet recipe is a great way to use up excess starter and make a great breakfast at the same time.
Pizza dough and sourdough loaf recipes will appear as soon as I am happy with them.