Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Sour Dough Starter -the beginning

Meet festering Fern!

I've been waiting for the weather to warm to get a new sour dough starter going.
Here she is in the garden, under some flowering rocket to pick up the wild yeasts.


I've used 1 cup organic rye flour and 1 1/2 cups blood warm water (we have tank water). Mixed with a plastic or wooden spoon in a ceramic bowl. No metal! I have then sat it covered with a wet tea towel in the garden on a baking tray, I thought this might stop the snails that some times climb up!
Everything is sterilised with boiling water of course.

I will bring Fern in each night and pop her in a warm spot above the stove. Each day I'll give her a new sterilised bowl and a cup of flour and water. In 7 days she is done and will live in our refrigerator, then will be the mother to all our loaves :o) At this time she will only get a new bowl each month.

I'll let you know how Fern goes.

UPDATE: Fern is festering away beautifully. She is growing and smelling very nice. I have changed her bowl each day, boiled every thing, given her a clean tea towel. When I pour her into the new bowl the smell is a pleasant yeasty odor.

1st successful off spring!


This loaf is not as big as I thought it would be but the taste is amazing! It has a really hard crunchy, hold on to your fillings style crust and a soft but denser than I'd like middle.

I really like John Downes 'Natural Tucker Bread Book' for various bread types. Good recipes and excellent information. Off to investigate why it's not as fluffy as it should be ;o)

3 comments:

Aussiemade said...

Thanks for your recipe on how to begin a sour dough starter. I hear about them but was never really sure how to go about them.

Secret Hippie said...

My pleasure. I have had many failures in sour dough, while it is said to be easy, I'm not convinced. You need to keep every thing scrupulously clean or you get mould.

So far so good, it is smelling divine. It's like bubbly marshmallow under the slight skin that it gets each day.

Aussiemade said...

ooh I love the flavour and crust of sour dough..do you spray water into your oven during the cooking well at least in the first few minutes and than about 10 minutes after this, it creates the humidity that professional bakers ovens have. Gives a lovely crust.