ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT SOURDOUGH: STARTER; SPONGE - AND LOAF

Sourdough May 2013

Sourdough Starter:

Mix 100g of warm water and 100g of flour* in a jar with a loose lid. Keep, covered, on your worktop.

*My grandchildren and I have proved to my satisfaction that a starter can be made from pretty much any flour. However, organic wholemeal is my preference - and the inclusion of rye flour is always good.

Feed the Starter (every 24 or 48 hours): 

First feeding - simply add 100g each, flour and water and mix in. 
Second and subsequent feedings - remove half (known as the discard)* and then add another 100g of flour and water. Within three or four days (it can take longer, a week or more, and it can happen more quickly) you should start getting lots of bubbles throughout, and a pleasant sour or beery smell. The starter may start to puff up, too. This is good. Here's the gist: When your starter develops a bubbly froth, it is done. You have succeeded. If this sounds brain-dead simple, that's because it is. 

*What to do with the 'discard'.

Refrigerate the Starter:

Keep the starter in your fridge, with a lid on it. Allow a little breathing space in the lid. 

Once the starter is chilled, it needs to be fed only once a week. 

Hooch.  Aside from weekly feeding, the only other thing you need to worry about is hooch. Hooch is a layer of watery liquid (often dark) that contains alchohol. It smells a bit like beer, because it is a bit like beer - but don't drink it! Hooch builds up in your starter, especially in the fridge. Just stir it back in. It doesn't hurt anything. 

(The following has been contributed by my friend Dennis, who's really taken to the sourdough method. Thanks, Dennis!)

The sponge and loaf:
The following recipe I’ve tweaked from Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Every Day.  We want fresh bread at lunch time, so this is what I do most days.

1.  First thing in the morning refresh starter, leave on side.

2.  After a couple of hours - mix 100gs active starter, 250gs of bread flour (white, brown, whatever) and 275gs water.  Cover, leave on the side.

3. At some time in the evening, add about 1 tbs of oil, olive, rapeseed, whatever, stir in, add 300g bread flour and about 5g of fine salt and mix together.

4.  Turn the dough out onto an oiled surface, knead with oiled hands, form into a ball.  Place in a lightly oiled bowl ensuring dough has oil all over it.  If you cover with a plastic bag it shouldn’t stick, leave on the side overnight..

5.  First thing the following morning, knock back, fold and shape.  Prove in a proving basket or oiled loaf tin, cover, let it rise for 1.5 to 3 hours.  Mine usually takes about 2 hours.

6.  Heat oven to 250C if possible.  Preheat a baking tray if you have one, dust it with flour, place loaf on it - bake for 15 minutes, turn oven down to 200C for about 30 minutes but do check, some ovens run hotter.

Notes.

‘Precision’ is not my middle name.  If, pouring the 100gms starter into the bowl, 120gms goes in, I just carry on, once it was 150.  I adopt the same approach to everything else.

At 4 above, you can tip dough onto oiled surface, tidy it into a mound and place an upturned bowl over it.  Leave for 30 to 60 minutes (depending what I’m watching) then knead as long as you can/want with oiled hands.

Also, at 5 above when I tip out, I do a baker’s fold - Paul will explain - cover with bowl upside down and leave for ten minutes, carry on with shaping etc.

We want bread for sandwiches so most of the time I make a tin loaf.  In that case the dough is shaped in an oiled and floured tin, which goes into the hot oven.  That makes it easy.

To shape in a basket, put the dough in with the fold on top in order to tip out onto a floured hot baking tray and into the oven.

You can change the timings to suit yourself; make the sponge one evening, in the morning turn into dough, cover, leave on the side all day, shape later and bake.

The process for sourdough is starter; sponge; dough; baked bread.  Once I refreshed a starter around 4pm, made sponge around 6pm and into a dough about 9pm and baked the following morning.  The experts wouldn’t approve but it made edible bread.

Unfortunately you can’t rush the final prove.

I use basic sunflower oil for lining bowl, tins and kneading. For the dough mix I tend to use a better olive oil.

A no knead method works - after the dough stage, roughly tidy it up to put in a tin and leave overnight, covered in the fridge.  Following morning, heat oven and when up to temperature put tin in the oven.

Recently I was away for three weeks and my fridge starter refreshed as normal.

Any bread left over is sliced and put in the freezer though sourdough keeps better than yeast breads, I think.

Above all, enjoy yourselves.  Dennis 

Here's one of my forays into sourdough.

WHOLEMEAL SOURDOUGH

Monday 8th July 2013
Made another batch of sourdough tonight - this didn't work so well!

Here's the story as I posted on The Fresh Loaf, looking for advice:

"I've made several loaves from my 2 month old starter, and followed the same procedure this time:

Evening of Saturday 6th July - Refreshed the starter (1:1) 

Sunday afternoon - Sponge: 300g starter, 300g wholemeal flour, 300g water 

(I did intend to bake on Sunday evening - but events conspired against me!)

Sunday evening I added the rest of the flour - 250g wholemeal, 9g salt, 50g olive oil

Monday - shaping the dough:

On opening up the food-storer in which I'd kept the dough, I was confronted with a sticky mess - totally unlike any sourdough I'd worked with in the past. There was no cohesion to it - trying to stretch it, it just broke. There was no way to knead it at this stage - even using oil to stop it sticking.

So I added more flour to get a workable dough. In the end I added a further 150g, which threw my planned 65% hydration right out of the window. It ended up more like 53% - and it was still a very soft dough.

I put it to prove (shaped into rolls) around 1.00pm - and checked it every hour for the next nine hours. There was not a great deal of movement - some, but not a lot. Eventually, at 10pm I switched the oven on and began giving the bread (covered with a stainless steel roasting tray) occasional short bursts of heat over the next 45-60 minutes. By this time the rolls had at least joined together, so there was something happening - I put the bread in the oven hoping for some oven spring, but not really expecting any - and I wasn't disappointed!

The rolls turned out a lot smaller than I'm used to - the crumb is very tight, with the occasional large(er) hole. I've just had a taste, and the sourness is very pronounced, in contrast to previous loaves from this starter, the sourdough flavour of which was very mild.

Some pics:

Shaped and put to prove

After several hours

After nine hours

Baked

The crumb

In conclusion, they're OK - not the best sourdough I've ever made (probably the worst!) - but they're edible enough. And certainly better than any bread I can find in the supermarket. 

I just don't want to make them again! :(

As luck would have it, I'm off to a coffee morning with a sourdough-making friend of mine - so I'll inflict a taste of these rolls on the gathering and wait for the feedback!

There is a lot of info on The Fresh Loaf thread for me to read through, but one opinion is that it might be better to begin with a new starter. I'll see what my mate says - I can always get some starter from him, since it was me who started him off. In fact, 

I gave him his starter 12 months or so ago!

Wednesday 29th May 2013

My daughter is off home tomorrow - and I want her to take a loaf with her, so I needed to make another loaf. Since she'll be going in the morning, I need to make the loaf today.

10.30am - refreshed starter with 100g each white flour and water

1.30pm - sponge, 300g starter + 300g wholemeal flour and 300g water.

(My usual bread is made up of 550g wholemeal and 150g white - so adding 300g of starter means that all the white flour has been added and I only need to add more wholemeal.)

7.30pm - the sponge is very active and I added the remaining 250g of wholemeal, plus 8g of salt, 50g of toasted sesame and sunflower seeds.

9.30pm - the dough has risen sufficiently, I think:

And 40 minutes later the bread is done:

Tried to make the cuts a little deeper - and I still don't think I left it to prove long enough. 

The crumb was very similar to the first loaf I made, below, and the bread was very tasty. So much so that my 11 year old granddaughter chose to have this for her lunch (today, Friday) rather than the commercial white sliced she usually opted for. Result!

Still don't think I've got the loaf exactly as I want it, for it does feel a little heavy - but, practice makes perfect and all that!

Monday 27th May 2013

The finished loaf and the crumb - with a background of our (my 3 grandchildren and I) sourdough starter experiment

One of the reasons I haven't persevered with sourdough in the past is that, using a flavoursome wholemeal (Doves Organic), I haven't had the increase in flavour that comes with making sourdough using white flour. However, I thought I'd have another go, now that I'm more confident with this new starter of mine.

I need some bread for lunch tomorrow - so, later than I wished, at 9.30 tonight, I refreshed the starter with 100g each white flour and water, and left it out on the worktop.

My sourdough-loving friend, Dennis, recommends Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's method for making sourdough - and I also consulted Andrew Whitley ('Bread Matters'), and Dan Lepard (The Hand-made Loaf) on the subject.

All agreed on refreshing the starter, and on making a 'sponge' (sort of a half-way house between the starter and the dough) the day before baking the loaf. However, I decided to do my own thing after discarding HFW's method for producing a loaf with a hydration of 56% (when I aim for about 70%) and also AW's and DL's instructions for being too unbelievably complex!

I'm looking to make a loaf using 700g of flour - with 70% hydration, that requires 490g water. Since the above bakers all include all the remaining liquid in their sponges, I thought I'd follow suit - except that I decided to hold back 40g of water since I wasn't sure just exactly how wet my sourdough would be.

Sponge ingredients:
200g starter (100g white flour and 100g water)
300g flour (50g white and 250g wholemeal)
350g water

This was mixed in my food storer and left, with a lid on, on the worktop. Time 0.40am on Tuesday.

At half past nine in the morning, with two willing grandchildren to help me, I added the remaining 300g of flour and mixed into a dough. I only added a teaspoon - 5g - of water just to bring the crumbs of flour together in the bowl. 

The consistency of the dough was pretty much just as I wanted - soft and squishy, but not too sticky. We all had a good knead - out of pleasure as much as anything, then I shaped the dough into a boule, covered it and left it. I was hoping to have bread for lunch, but, as I've just realised, I'm fasting today, I'm not too bothered for myself. However, my daughter would appreciate some for her lunch!

Final calculation:
700g flour to 455g water = 65% hydration.

My granddaughter took loads of pics, so I'll post them when I get a chance. 

Full recipe:
Sponge ingredients:
200g starter (100g flour and 100g water)
300g flour (50g white and 250g wholemeal)
350g water

To which was added:
300g wholemeal
8g salt
5g water

Unfortunately, when my grandchildren  were making their lunch, the rising loaf took a knock and I decided to abort that attempt. Since I had to go out, I simply put the dough back into the food storer to keep until I could get around to it.

In the evening, after dinner, I shaped the loaf again, and placed it in a large, round stainless steel dish. 

I'd noticed on the earlier attempt that the loaf was spreading out a fair way, so I thought this would keep it under control.

 2 hours later, when I thought it was ready, I slashed the loaf and put it in the oven - for 45 minutes at 220C.

Couldn't decide which  

...was the best photo...

...so I included all three!

The loaf feels a little heavy - and the crumb has a very close texture, so I'm thinking I could have left it to prove for another half hour or so. However, I'm not a fan of large holes in my bread, so I'm very happy with this.

Despite the fact that I'm fasting, I did eat that slice of bread - 46g and 100 calories. I'm delighted to report that, although there is very little sourdough smell to the loaf, the flavour is distinctly - pleasingly - sour!

I think I may - finally - have cracked it!

SOURDOUGH - AGAIN!

Saturday 11th May 2013

The students on my 2013 Hornblotton course all decided they'd like to make a sourdough loaf on the 2nd session (of two) - so, not being as expert as I would like to be, I've been studying the subject all week.

I posted a request for help and support on two forums that I frequent, and got some good advice. I also turned to a former student of mine who has really gone to town with sourdough over the past year or so - he was also very helpful.

I gave my students the basic method of putting together a sourdough starter, but thought, as a backup, I'd better make enough starter for everyone - just in case!

I began on the Monday evening, mixing 25g each Doves Malthouse flour (sieved to remove the wheat berries) and Rye flour, plus 50g Doves Organic Wholemeal flour with 200g of boiled water. I placed this in a 500g Kilner jar (without the rubber seal so that it's not airtight)

Starter:
25g Doves Malthouse flour (sieved) 
25g rye flour
50g Doves wholemeal
200g boiled water, cooled

1.3kg of starter almost fills the 2.8L food storer

I posted this on "The Fresh Loaf" and "The Food Board", two of the  forums I use:


"...I began making my starter on Monday, by Tuesday evening it was active, and I've been dividing and feeding it ever since.

ATM I've got 1.3ltrs of active starter - which I could easily double by Sunday. I'm not sure, as I write, how many students will turn up with their own starter on Sunday, so mine may have to suffice for all.
My gut feeling is that I should refresh the starter on Saturday evening, then, on the Sunday we should go for a small loaf for each student, comprising 50% starter.

1.32kg of starter (2:1 water to flour), refreshed with 440g of flour and no liquid, would give me 1760g of starter, at a ratio of 1:1, wouldn't you agree?

This amount divided by 10 students = 170g of starter. To make a loaf with a 62.5% hydration (normal 1lb flour to 10fl oz water), we'd need to add 115g flour and 40g water.

It's only a small loaf, I know, but I've only got 1 domestic oven and 5 small (size of a microwave) ovens to work with.

I figure if we make up the sourdough first thing on Sunday morn, then leave it through the day, it may well be ready to bake sometime in the afternoon. If it's not, then the students would have to take it home to bake it.

One further question - between now and Saturday, would you recommend me refreshing the starter (and discarding half?)

What do you guys think?"

And received a lot of good advice!

This morning I added 440g of flour to the starter and left it for three hours. Then I took out 100g of starter and added 150g of white flour and 75g water, plus a quarter of a teaspoon of salt and 25g of olive oil.

This was a little more moist than I wanted, so I added a dessertspoon of flour, and kneaded it for a minute or two. I shaped it into a small oval, then placed it on some baking parchment and covered it with the scale pan.

This was then left for four hours while I went for a swim and did some supermarket shopping.

About 6 in the evening, with the oven on for dinner, I placed the loaf in the oven and baked it for 25 or so minutes at 220C.

It's very nearly got the 'flying saucer' look about it, but I think I've just got away with it!

And here's the crumb. Judging by this, another hour or so's proving would have perhaps been better - but, I'm pretty pleased with it even so. I wait to hear what my supportive (both internet and real life) friends have to say about it.

On the day everything went very well - better than I could have expected, in that each student made 2 sourdough loaves, one with my starter and one the students had made.

We had enormous fun with it - and with the rest of the breads we made.

The next day, encouraged by my success, and having a large supply of starter on hand I decided to make a couple of batches of sourdough - a chocolate and beetroot loaf, which I'd made before, and some Chelsea buns.

Chocolate and beetroot - put to prove

Risen and ready to bake

I found a jar of mincemeat in the fridge which needed using up, so I spread the dough with the mincemeat before rolling up - lovely!

Only 40 minutes in the oven - for a 1.3kg loaf I don't think that was long enough. Difficult to tell this loaf by colour!

The crumb

[I need to put my recipe for the loaf on here - I wrote it down somewhere, but can't find it ATM. However, I'll get a recipe up here eventually. Ditto the Chelseas]

Sourdough

(19th May - making a white sourdough loaf. Scroll down to Latest attempt!).

My sourdough recipe. 

(The rest of this post comprises of sourdough ramblings - here's the complete recipe.)

Ingredients:

600g wholemeal flour

6g salt

300g starter (comprising 200g water and 100g white flour)

300g water

50g extra virgin olive oil

(Including the flour and water from the starter this gives totals of 700g of flour to 500g of water, my usual mix)

Method:

24/36 hours before baking, pour 300g of starter into a mixing bowl. Refresh the starter with 200g of water and 100g white flour.

Add the flour, salt, water and olive oil and mix into a sticky dough.

This is now kneaded for about 20 seconds, several times at intervals of 10 minutes or more. To enable you to work the dough easily, pour oil over the top of the dough. Knead until the oil disappears. Wash your hands in a little flour before washing them in the sink.

Repeat this until the dough becomes easy to handle without adding oil.

Cover with the mixing bowl and leave until you're ready - overnight if need be.

When you are ready for the final phase, shape the dough into a loaf. First of all place it on the worktop smoothest side down. Lift the sides of the dough up and bring them to the middle. Wherever there is a corner poking out, lift it over to the middle and push down. By doing this you're smoothing the underneath of the dough. Now turn it over and place it on a baking sheet lined with baking parchment.

Leave it on the worktop, covered with a tea towel, for between 1 and 4 hours. 

Because this is your first time, you won't know how long it takes to rise. Once you've made this several times you'll be able to time it much better.

When you judge it is ready to bake, turn the oven on to 220C and, with a serrated bread knife, make three shallow cuts in the top of the loaf.

When the oven is up to temperature, place the loaf in the oven and set the timer for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes turn the loaf around and leave for another 10-15 minutes.

The loaf is ready when there is a good colour across the bottom of the loaf.

Make notes of what you've just done so you can replicate it next time. 

Latest attempt! 19th May.
Preparing the ferment:
Around 6 this evening I took the starter from the fridge and added 200g water and 100g white flour, mixed it together and left it on the worktop.

Preparing the dough:
6 hours later it was bubbling nicely, so I poured 450g of starter into a bowl. This comprised of:

150g white flour
300g water

To this I added:
350g white flour
5g salt
50g water

I mixed it together roughly, covered it, and left it overnight.

The following morning I came down to this:

So far, so good

I tipped the - very wet and sticky - dough out onto the worktop:

Decided to shape it using oil - stretched it and folded it a few times, refreshing the oil once or twice

And a little flour. 

[More to come, including my conclusions!]



Previous ramblings:
(Not sure to which this refers!)

In the event I didn’t bake on Tuesday night – so on Wednesday morning I took the starter, poured it into a mixing bowl and added 200g Doves organic wholemeal and 200g water. I mixed this and left it, covered with a dry tea towel, all day.

About 7 in the evening, in the scale pan I mixed another 400g wholemeal, 60g of ground flax seeds and a teaspoon of salt which I mixed and added to the bowl. I made a well in the middle of the flour and added 5g of fresh yeast and 125-135g of lukewarm water. I paddled the yeast and water around for about 20 or so seconds, then added 50g of EVOO.

I mixed this together, turned it onto the worktop and gave it about 20 seconds quick kneading (using a dough scraper – this was quite a sticky dough), placed the bowl over the dough and left it for about 10 minutes.

I repeated the quick kneading and resting periods about 3 times, by which time the dough had lost its stickyness and was a handleable dough.

I left it for a further 2 hours, shaped it into 12 rolls, which I placed on a baking sheet and covered with a roasting tray. After an hour or so, the bread had risen and it was baked for about 35 minutes (first 20 minutes covered, the rest uncovered).

Saturday 12th  May.
Overnight I soaked a handful of sultanas in the discard. For breakfast I made about half of the discard into 8 pikelets, five of which I had for breakfast, with orange and ginger marmalade.

I've turned over a couple to show the colour underneath

The starter, bubbling up nicely. It'll go in the fridge from now on.

Friday 11th May.
Good head on top of the starter tonight, so we're off and running.

Removed 300g of starter and refreshed with 50g wholemeal flour and 100g of water.

I've always been a great advocate of using the discard - I hate throwing good food away! - so tomorrow I shall make some sourdough pikelets for breakfast.

Thursday 10th May.
Added 50g wholemeal flour plus 100g water.

Wednesday 9th May 2012.
Began my umpteenth go at sourdough tonight:

20g of organic spelt
80g Dove's organic wholemeal
200g water

Put all the ingredients in a Kilner jar, stirred together  and left on the worktop.

I'm going to try once again to make a sourdough wholemeal bread that tastes better than my current wholemeal. We'll see.


Sunday 10th July.
Here's my latest sourdough after spending a couple of days in the company of some real experts.

I began last Monday morning by putting 300g of starter (made up of 200g water and 100g white flour) into a jug along with 300g of flour and all the water I was using in the recipe:

The basic amounts of flour to water I use are 70g of water to 100g of flour (known in the jargon as 70% hydration) - so, wishing to make a loaf with 600g of flour I needed 420g of water. Subtracting the amounts used in the starter I still needed 500g of flour and 220g of water. Given that I'd added all the water and 300g of flour

[To be continued shortly]

Friday 1st April.
For general info on sourdough and how I began my latest foray into the subject, read on:

I say in my daily bread thread I'm not really a fan. It's too unpredictable in my experience - I like to know that when I've shaped some bread it'll be ready to go into the oven within the hour or so; and, since I already make bread that satisfies me flavourwise - using wholemeal, I'm not convinced there's much of an increase in taste.

However, there's one other way of using a sourdough starter I'd like to try out - one which is used by many European bakeries - adding some leaven to each batch of home-made bread.

This is exactly the procedure adopted by a large plant bakery I visited in Pecs, southern Hungary about ten years ago.

I was shown a large room, with big vats containing ferments lining the walls. Above each vat was a blackboard with details of when each vat was 'fed', which batches it was to be used for, how much was to be used, etc.

Every batch of bread that went out of that bakery, from huge rye and wheat flour loaves through fruit breads to doughnuts contained some of this ferment.

With S. John Ross' instructions for making sourdough (no longer available - boo hoo!) - which are about the simplest, clearest I've come across - to hand, on Sunday morning I began.

I took some Dove's malted grain flour, which contains some rye flour, and sieved out 100g (to remove the wheatberries, which would add nothing to this exercise, IMO). I placed this in a 500ml Kilner jar (which I'd scalded) and added 200ml (or grams - same thing) of water. I  mixed this thoroughly and left it to one side on the worktop. I left the lid open, but after scaring away a fruit-fly (I presume) in the afternoon I covered it with a damp dishcloth.

(I fixed on the ratio of 2:1 - 100g water to 50g flour - so that it's easy to subtract those amounts from the ingredients when I come to make a batch of bread. Won't be for several days, since there's plenty in the freezer ATM.)

I saw some faint stirrings on Monday evening - and on Tuesday morning, the fermentation was in full flow:

This took exactly 48 hours 

Later that day I weighed out exactly half - 150g - pouring it into a measuring  jug.

I then added 50g of white flour and another 100g of water to the starter, mixed it thoroughly, and placed it in the fridge. At this stage I removed the rubber seal and just let the glass lid sit on the container. I'm a bit wary about pressure building up in the Kilner jar. (I should say the smell from the starter at this stage is very mild and pleasant, not sour at all.)

I then mixed similar amounts of flour and water in with the discard, mixed it and left it in the fridge for pikelets for Wednesday's breakfast.

This morning I stirred in another dessertspoon of flour - to thicken the batter - and added a handful of sultanas.

This made a total of 16 pikelets:

One dessertspoon of batter for each pikelet

Half of these I had for breakfast, spread with homemade ginger marmalade. Made a very pleasant change from my usual fruit naan. The other half are in a plastic bag ready for tomorrow's breakfast.

If I continue refreshing my start every 2 days for a week, that'll be my breakfasts sorted for a while! Must remember to add sultanas to the discard - they plump up very nicely when soaked overnight!

Thursday, day 4.
Divided and refreshed again.

It's important to say that at this stage the starter separates into two components - all the flour sinks to the bottom, and there is a clear dark liquid on top - 'hooch'. Some say that this can be discarded, but if you do that the flour:liquid balance goes out of the window - which only matters if need to know exactly how much flour and water your starter contains. It's perfectly safe just to stir this in before using.

I added the same amount of flour and water to the discard, plus a dessertspoon of flour to thicken it to the right consistency for pikelets. Added 100g of sultanas (probably too many) and made 8 pikelets for Friday's breakfast (won't have time to cook in the morning).

Friday evening. Just looked at the batter for tomorrow's pikelets and it's almost solid! The fruit must have sucked up most of the water from the batter - so tomorrow I'll need to add a lot more water.

Won't refresh the starter again until Sunday evening, as I won't be needing any more pikelets until Monday. (Sunday breakfast is always porridge for me!)

Sunday, day 7.
Divided and refreshed the starter. To the discard I added 25g water and 50g flour ready to make pikelets on the Monday. I also put 50g sultanas to soak - keeping the fruit and batter separate, this time.

Tuesday, day 9.

Now I thought the starter was ready, so  made some bread with my sourdough tonight for the first time - having refreshed it 3 times.

To a dough made with 700g of flour, 60g of flaxseeds, etc, I added 150g of starter - then refreshed the rest and replaced it in the fridge.

I suppose if I'd have thought about it, yesterday I could have increased the size of the starter - say an extra 150g - then I could have added 300g of starter to the mix. Might do that next time if I remember.

My initial reaction is that the bread is very tasty - but whether the sourdough has made any difference it's difficult to say. I'd have to compare the two batches side by side, which is not easy since I've only got one roll left of the old batch - and I've had that out of the freezer and in the breadbin since last night.

Monday 28^th Feb, day 15 in the life!

I intended baking on Tuesday evening, so, 24 hours before this, I took the starter from the fridge and poured it into a jug. I doubled it up, so that it was now 600g (400g water and 200g white flour). I poured half of this back into the Kilner jar (after giving it a good wash) and replaced it in the fridge.

So now I had 300g of starter to make by bread with – comprising 200g water and 100g white flour, which I left in the fridge overnight.

In the event I didn’t bake on Tuesday night – so on Wednesday morning I took the starter, poured it into a mixing bowl and added 200g Doves organic wholemeal and 200g water. I mixed this and left it, covered with a dry tea towel, all day.

After about 8 hours on my worktop this was how it looked.

About 7 in the evening, in the scale pan I mixed another 400g wholemeal, 60g of ground flax seeds and a teaspoon of salt which I mixed and added to the bowl. I made a well in the middle of the flour and added 5g of fresh yeast and 125-135g of lukewarm water. I paddled the yeast and water around for about 20 or so seconds, then added 50g of EVOO.

I mixed this together, turned it onto the worktop and gave it about 20 seconds quick kneading (using a dough scraper – this was quite a sticky dough), placed the bowl over the dough and left it for about 10 minutes.

I repeated the quick kneading and resting periods about 3 times, by which time the dough had lost its stickyness and was a handleable dough.

I left it for a further 2 hours, shaped it into 12 rolls, which I placed on a baking sheet and covered with a roasting tray. After an hour or so, the bread had risen and it was baked for about 35 minutes (first 20 minutes covered, the rest uncovered).

This time, you could taste the difference

Whether it's worth all the extra fiddling about...well, I found it fun, and I had the whole day around the house. Given that, I'd do it again, but only if I had the time.


Friday 1st April 2011.
I've had 450g of ferment in the fridge for the past week, and this morning I took it out of the fridge first thing.


Around 5 in the evening it looked quite active I poured it all into a jug and washed up the Kilner jar. I then poured 150g back in the Kilner jar and added 200g of water and 100g of white flour, leaving it out on the worktop for the moment.


To the 300g of ferment I added 200g of Doves organic wholemeal and 200g of water.


Around an hour later I noticed a few large bubbles had appeared;
By 7.40 the starter was expanding and was up to 750ml on the side of the jug;
By 8.05 it was up to 825ml;
At 8.40 it had risen to 875ml