Sourdough Chronicles – Day 1

The one great thing about the blogosphere is that one can actually get in touch with the blog author for advice, tips on a certain subject and get precious direction.

One of these examples is a fellow foodie – Nicole – the author of the fantastic Pinch My Salt blog full of superb recipes, tips ideas and marvelous pics, who had a great photo chronicle on making her own sourdough starter from scratch. Her detailed pics and description inspired me to make my first sourdough starter. If it is a success it will be passed down to my next generation, and probably mention in my will how to share it among my children so they wont fight over it.

Mother Sponge

Creating a starter, also known as Mother Sponge, is a very simple process. You are basically creating a habitat where the already existent yeast (in our case in the flour and maybe in the air), will reproduce happily ever after, by feeding it with a mix of water and flour (un-bleached, all purpose).
Apparently the Mother of all Sponges, lives in San Francisco, CA, where a bacteria named Lactobacillus Sanfranciscensis was discovered in the sourdough starters made there, the main culprit for the bacterial multiplication.

And you wonder why real-estate prices are so high over there…

Ingredients

It cannot be more simple. I followed Nicole’s recipe that calls for:

• 1 cup 100% whole wheat flour
• 3/4 cups bottled water

The reason for the whole wheat flour is because it has much more wild yeast than all purpose flour.

I mixed all these and poured the result into a glass jar, where I will be monitoring its progress (or regress), by adding a rubber band that indicates its initial level.

In the end, I covered it with cheesecloth, so I won’t have uninvited bugs feasting on it (or vice-versa), and left it on our fridge.

I kissed it goodnight and went to sleep. Let’s see what happens tomorrow!