If you follow these steps,
in 10 days, you can have starter
that makes the bread like this one.
Beautiful sourdough bread.
First of all, you need a jar,
and it needs to be a reasonably big jar
because you're gonna put stuff in the bottom
and it's gonna rise.
So you need to have a little bit of room.
You need a little cup, you need some flour.
I've got wholemeal flour,
but you can use plain flour or baker's flour,
a little bit of honey, a rubber band.
Not essential, but helpful.
And something to mix with.
I like to use a combination.
So the process of making starter takes just over a week.
At the week point, you could try and use it,
but ideally you wait for about 10 days.
First of all, we're going to get 50 grams of flour.
So,
in it goes.
35,
51.
And now we're going to add 50 grams of filtered water.
So,
there we go.
A tiny little bit of honey.
You can kind of dip the end of a knife into a jar of honey,
and then use that same knife
to mix together your starter mixture.
And this is literally all it is.
So starter is like yeast.
It has yeast in it, but it's the natural form of yeast.
Make sure it's all nice and mixed together
so that you can't see any dry bits of flour.
And that's it. The first step is done.
So you just leave it.
Important note is you want a jar with a lid,
but you don't want the lid to be completely airtight
because some air needs to get in
for the starter to be able to rise.
So I like this kind of jar,
and I take that little plastic bit off
that usually is on the outside.
And then you can close it so nothing nasty can get in,
but still a little bit of air is going in and out of it.
And now we leave it for 24 hours.
OK, so after 24 hours,
all you have to do is give it a little stir.
Don't add anything, and that's it.
And then you leave it for another 24 hours.
So now it's the third day,
and you're going to add 50 grams of flour,
just like before, and 50 grams of water.
And again, a little bit of honey.
And then
mix, mix, mix.
In those first few days,
you probably won't notice much happening,
but it's around this point where you should,
hopefully, start to see your starter
getting a little bit bubbly maybe four or five hours
after you've fed it.
The honey really helps it to get bubbly.
Don't be fooled by the honey.
It needs to do what it does with the honey
without the honey before you can bake with it.
Now again, we're gonna leave it for another 24 hours.
Okay, so on day four,
you can discard a little bit of your starter.
So about half of it, and you can keep it if you want.
I usually just throw it away.
And now we're gonna feed it again.
50 grams of flour
and 50 grams of water.
And then we mix.
And now we wait 24 hours again.
So around the day four or five mark,
you can stop adding the honey.
And this is where we start to see
how the starter
is coming alive by itself, how strong it's getting.
And you really need to see the starter rising by itself
before you know that you can actually use it to bake bread with.
On day five, again,
you can discard some of your starter,
about half again.
And we're going to feed it again
50 grams
and 50 grams of water.
Once that's all nicely mixed in,
we get to do something a little bit exciting.
I have this lovely rubber band.
So we can shut this.
And we can put the rubber band around
at the point where the starter is.
And this is a really nice way to gauge
how much it's growing.
So you're going to keep on doing
what we've just done on day five.
Discard half, 50 grams of flour, 50 grams of water,
mix it together.
And then from day five,
six, seven,
eight, nine, 10,
you keep looking: 'how much does it rise?'
And around day, maybe day eight to day 10,
day 10, you'll be safe,
you should see your starter over a period
of about four to six, maybe eight hours,
depending on how warm it is in your kitchen,
you will see your starter rise and double in size.
And when it's doubled in size
and it's looking really bubbly,
that's when you can use it to bake with.
When your starter is ready to use, you'll be able to tell.
So it will look a little bit like pancake batter.
It will have doubled in size.
We'll have lots of nice little bubbles on top,
and you'll notice a structure forms inside the starter
when you lift it up.
It kind of looks like when you bake your bread
and it has those holes in it.
We'll see here.
There's lots of holes.
That's actually one of the best ways to tell
whether your starter is ready to be used.
If it's forming a gluten network like that in the jar,
then it's gonna form a gluten network in your bread dough,
and it's gonna make really nice bread for you.
I actually started a starter 11 days ago,
and I mixed it together into this bread dough,
which has been in the fridge overnight.
So we're going to bake it.
So let's see how our new baby starter goes
making my little loaf of bread rise.
Plop it in.
Give it a little spray.
So, once your starter is ready,
you don't have to keep feeding it every single day.
You can actually – OK, see you Benny.
You can actually keep it in the fridge,
and this will kind of pause it.
So you want to feed it about once a week.
And the cool thing is that you can feed it once a week.
You can let it rise so it gets nice and bubbly,
like what we wanted it to look like,
so it's about doubled in size.
And when you see it at that point, put it in the fridge.
And then you can use it to bake with it
any time during the week.
So when I talk about feeding the starter,
what I mean is the same as what we've been doing
for these 10 days.
So 50 grams of water, 50 grams of flour,
and leaving maybe about a third of the starter in the jar,
or even less, and do that once a week.
And your starter will be very happy
if you keep it in the fridge the rest of the time.
So very important to feed your starter.
And it's also very important to feed your dog some bread.
Wait.
OK.
Looking good.
If you follow these steps,
in 10 days, you can have starter
that makes the bread like this one.
Beautiful sourdough bread.
It seems too good to be true but it's not.
(air whooshing)