Sourdough rules
Author: 8th Jun 2020
I’ve been a baking bread since I was a child, learning from my mother, as she had done from hers. I’ve often wondered, how many centuries back that family tradition goes? Come lockdown comes a shortage of floor, but more seriously, of yeast. Being elderly and in serious lockdown, what to do? First, a neighbour offered me a ‘good tempered’ sourdough starter. I then remembered an email, a few years back, from a relation who was passionate about sourdough but made it sound a prolonged and messy business. But needs must, so I tracked down the email, and with that and an internet search got to work. With beginner’s luck I produced one very small but delicious ‘bun’. Enough to get me going. Skip fights with the scales, confusing millilitres for milligrams and many incorrect exercises in long division to work out quantities, I’m now on good terms with my definitely good natured starter and regularly make a decent sized loaf every week. But the starter rules: make me or lose me!