Honey, I forgot to feed

Honey, I forgot to feed the sourdough! article & photos by Geraldine Woods-Humphrey

An almost white great tit, stark against rain dreary skies has been the only excitement in the garden lately and so I’ve turned my attention to other things. As luck would have it I was given a sourdough starter; little did I know what I was letting myself in for.

I’ve wanted to make my own bread for a long time; who can resist the satisfaction of cutting into your own loaf, and that smell when you open the oven door? But you know what it’s like, somehow you never get round to it. Friends suggested I should get a bread maker… ‘Simples.’ My conscience stopped me, after all, there, standing in the kitchen was a black, fuel guzzling monster that repays continual stoking with effortless cooking … the Rayburn, the perfect bread making machine. There is also that little thing called ‘life,’ doesn’t it just always get in the way of the things you REALLY want to do? Besides, my sourdough starter was a gift, I couldn’t allow it to die, unloved in its jar on the second shelf of my fridge.

A sourdough starter is alive. Flour and water are inhabited by natural wild yeasts causing it to ferment. It’s been used for bread making since the ancient Egyptians and has travelled with humankind on all our many adventures throughout history until the 19th century when brewers yeast came into use and sourdough declined in popularity. Sourdough even played a part in the California gold rush, and could be found firmly established in the prospectors’ camps on the Klondike. happens every two days, feeding is daily, sourdough is a demanding life form and my life has become a never ending round of feeding birds, dogs, humans and the cat. Fitting it all in isn’t easy and unlike a whippet, the starter doesn’t remind me it needs feeding, so there has been some neglect of the beast in the fridge.

My starter bubbles away in its jar like anaemic lava and like all living things, whether it's a goldfish or a whippet, it needs looking after. I take my jar from the fridge daily and leave it to reach room temperature before feeding the creature inside with flour and water. If I leave the starter out of the fridge too long, it rises, creeping over the rim of the jar like an alien from an early Star Trek episode…you know the ones, fibreglass rocks, shaky walls and green slime.

My first effort at making sourdough almost burnt out the motor of my little Kenwood forcing me to knead the dough by hand … as good as a fifteen minute workout. Baking

51 I was relating all this to a friend over coffee one morning when she asked, ‘What if you want to go on holiday?’

‘Those Klondike prospectors were called ‘sourdoughs’ because they carried their starter with them in a leather pouch round their necks.’ I replied.

‘Yes, but would you get through customs?’