Your starter for ten

I did a terrible thing the other week. I was standing at the counter feeding my hungry mothers ready for the great sourdoughing session the next day according to my normal practice. I have a little routine to the feeding - with three of the hungry little devils I need to have some set order or I get horribly lost.

I take the mothers out of the fridge and put them in a row on the worktop. I fill and boil the kettle. I go and fetch my tub of rye flour and my tub of strong bread flour. I get out my scoop. I hunt around for my little plastic pot with the dishwasher salt in it which weighs a total of 154g, a figure which by no coincidence at all is exactly the same as one of my mother boxes sans lid. I fill my jug up with mostly cold water and a good slosh of kettle hot water, and that's me ready.

Take the lid off the first mother box. Tare the scales using the little pot, whip it off replacing it, Indiana Jones style, with the delidded mother. Take note of the weight of the contents. Work out in head how much mother I'll need the next day. If adding a third of the mother's weight in flour will exceed my requirements, then bung in a third of my mother's weight in flour. If it won't exceed my requirements, dither while working out in head how much flour to add to bring mother to a quantity suitable for my needs with some left over to blup in the fridge for next time. Add about that much flour. Take off the scales and place on the worktop next to its lid. Slosh into the box sufficient water to allow mixing to the right consistency. Mix to the right consistency.

Repeat the process with the second mother.

Repeat the process with the third mother.

Relid and leave mothers in a row on the worktop to froth and bubble overnight.

That's the plan, anyway.

Where it goes wrong is when you're not paying attention to which flour you're using. Remember we got out two tubs. Imagine you're on automatic pilot when feeding the first mother, working out quantities in your head and so on. In goes the flour. In goes the water. Mixmixmixmix mixmix mix mix m i x m i x m i x m i ...

If you've three mothers, two of which need fed with wheat flour and one of which needs rye, and you just reach for the wheat flour and feed the nearest mother, the odds are pretty good that you've fed a wheat mother with wheat flour. Unless you're me, that is.

Aghast, I surveyed my replete rye mother which had, for the first time, tasted wheat. Now in many respects this wouldn't be too much of a disaster. It would quite happily feed on the wheat flour and be ready the next day as usual. But I had just polluted my 100% rye mother. The 100% rye mother that I use to make loaves which I sometimes give to my wheat free colleague. I decided then and there that she had to go. I'd let her ferment overnight, use her all up tomorrow and then that would be it. Not such a drastic course of action in the light of the backup I'd taken of it a few months ago.

I rummaged in the freezer and pulled out the lump of solid starter. It was a rather strange shape, but I didn't hold that against it, and left it in its bag in a bowl overnight on the worktop. In the morning it was sludge, and ready for a feed. I spooned in a good helping of rye flour (after a triple check and a final hesitation before tipping the scoop), sloshed in some water and mixed it all up, confident that it would be bubbling merrily in no time.

It wasn't. The next day I fed and watered it more. The next day it sullenly failed to bubble. The day after that I fed it again, rewarded this time by an utter failure of fermentation. Nothing, not even the tiniest little fartlet.

Now, I did have a get-out-of-jail-free card, in the shape of Clive Mellum who is the father of my mother and who would, I was sure, happily come to my aid if I were to email him a tale of woe and zoom up to the test bakery at Shipton Mill with a suitable receptacle and an expression of deep appreciation. It would be embarrassing to admit that I hadn't taken enough care of his mother, and in many ways more embarrassing to admit to what almost felt like a murder rather than simple neglectful matricide. I resolved that I'd arrange to do this once I could drive again and make my own way there. In the intervening weeks, I'd just not have rye starter bread on the menu.

Come Friday, when routine mother feeding time arrived, I went to the fridge to get them out and realised that there were only two in there. The rye mother had been sitting disregarded in a corner of the worktop for days, my attempts at resuscitation failed. I popped the lid off to empty it out and was met with a small area of healthy bubbling. Mother's alive! I scooped out the bubbly bit into a bowl, emptied the rest out, tipped the bubbly bit back and gave it the feed of its life. In the morning it was fair honeycombed with bubbles all the way through and ready to go back into production use.

So now through no care or expertise, I've got three mothers blupping away in the fridge again. Huzzah! I am going to be awfully careful about feeding in future, and I am so glad I had a backed up version in the freezer. In fact I'd better do another backup before I get it all wrong again...

Tie your mother down

Let me tell you about my mother. She lives in my fridge and comes out once a week for dinner. The night before a baking session she sits on my worktop all night, then heads back to the fridge again. I know that some take issue with calling sourdough starter a mother, but 1) it gives you the chance to exclaim 'Oh! I must feed my mother!' and 2) I tend towards Clive Mellum's idea that calling it a mother makes it sound kind and friendly and not scary. Because for a while, it all did seem rather scary.

Resolving after my Bertinet day last year not to buy bread again seemed like a big decision and it wasn't without trepidation that I rolled up my sleeves and faced the prospect of the weekly bake. As the weeks went by, I became more confident and more interested in extending my repertoire. Sourdough was the obvious next step but the trepidation levels mounted as I read about the trials and tribulations of creating a starter, casting half of it away, feeding and nurturing it, and finally performing the alchemy of loaf creation. Much of the advice appeared to contradict the rest - type of flour, temperature, quantities, other ingredients, discarding or not discarding. Having informed myself extensively on the internet, I finished up feeling that I knew less then when I knew nothing.

A friend recommended the River Cottage method of creating a starter, so I looked around and found it here. Taking a deep breath, I boiled the kettle and readied my strong white. Not being at all confident how it was going to turn out, I took a note of what I did and recorded how it looked, so that I'd have something to refer to next time.

So, here's what I did.

Monday

In a pudding basin, I mixed up
50g Wessex Mill French Bread Flour
50g Stoneground Rye flour
warm water to mix

I behatted the bowl with clingfilm and left it to do its stuff in the airing cupboard with a whisper or two of encouragement.




Tuesday

As I peeked into the airing cupboard I saw with great joy a bit of a fizz on top of the mixture.

50g of the French Bread flour
50g of the Rye flour
cold water to mix

Again with the clingfilm but I left the bowl on the worktop to continue the process at ambient temperature now that it had 'taken'.




Wednesday

I discarded half the contents of the bowl and decanted the rest into a plastic box with an airtight clippy lid.

100g French Bread flour
cold water to mix

I clipped the lid onto the box and left it on the worktop.




Thursday

Froth-a-rama! I discarded half again (you have no idea of the mess it made in the take-me-to-your-composter box).

100g French Bread flour
cold water to mix

Then back to the worktop.




Friday

Again with the discarding.

100g French Bread flour
cold water to mix

Again with the worktop.

I didn't take a photo this day, so instead here's a picture of a wrought iron flower in the grounds of the Château des ducs de Bretagne in Nantes which I took the week after.




Saturday

Discard.

100g Shipton Mill Baker's No. 1 Strong White flour
less cold water than previously

Worktop.




Sunday

Discard.

100g Shipton Mill Baker's No. 1
less cold water to mix

And now the starter moves to its new permanent home, the top shelf of the fridge, where it lives during the week and is woken, like a fairy tale princess, every Friday ready for the weekend's baking.



Worktop.




If you're thinking of starting a starter or mothering a mother, then I urge you to just give it a go. It doesn't always work but it's easy enough to do it again. I keep my three mothers in the fridge and feed them weekly, it's not at all onerous or difficult and every weekend I make the most amazing bread with them. Huzzah for mothers!