My sourdough mother, that is. I finally got up the courage to try and make my own starter. After reading several sites on how to do this, including comparisons of flour, water and whether or not to add yeast to "help" it along, I decided to just do the most basic and least-additive version.
So I mixed some filtered water (since I have a water filter) with a mix of (the last of my) plain flour, bread flour, and wholemeal flour. I think my proportions were way off - it was super runny.
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| The date should be 25 May 2015 midnight (start of new day) |
24 hours later there were a few bubbles on the surface, but it still smelled like wet flour. And a layer of hooch had formed so I poured as much of it off as I could and added more wholemeal flour to thicken it up.
After another 12 hours, it looked more or less the same, but my son said the smell reminded him of Thosai, the Indian fermented rice flour pancake that we like to eat. Great chance to teach him that Thosai is made of fermented flour paste. I poured off more hooch that had formed and added more flour.
Another 12hrs later, it looked like this! Reminded me of no knead dough after rising. I added still more flour (it's still too runny compared with the pics I saw on the net).
This morning (12 hours later) it had gone nuts! The plastic wrap had been pushed up into a dome by the growing mass of dough. I forgot to take a pic of it because I was so excited at seeing it and immediately pulled the plastic wrap off, which deflated the thing.
So after feeding it a little more, I transferred it into a clean plastic jar and sent it into hibernation.
I've read that the starter should be at least be a week old before using it to bake, so in the meantime, it's recipe-hunting time! I intend to use this to make a rye loaf, which DH likes.
