Bread making has always fascinated me.  I love the smells that come out of the oven while it is baking, the most pleasant aroma on earth.  Usually when I make bread, I dump a packet of store bought yeast (usually long expired!)  into my bread maker with flour, water and a dash of salt and hope for the best. I decided to try something a little different today...

For some reason today, I got interested in trying my hand at making bread the old fashioned way.  The way people did it thousands of years ago, with natural yeast.  This type of bread is commonly known as sourdough. The process of making it uses naturally occurring bacteria and yeasts that are flowing along in the air that we live and breath in.  From research that I been doing, it apparently is very easy to make sourdough starter cultures.

Take a cup of water, along with a cup of flour and mix  both well in a glass bowl and wait for a few days.  Eventually, the yeast will take up residence in the white pasty soup and start to feed and grow. During the early part of the growing process it is necessary to remove about half of the mixture and add a fresh half cup of flour and water once per day. Growing temperatures should be around 80 degrees F, and not higher than 100 degrees F, as this will kill off the yeast.  Also, do not use a metal bowl or utensils to stir the paste as this may react with the mixture and kill the organisms. Sounds pretty simple. 

After a few days it should become quite frothy as the yeast grows inside the past.  Then it can be kept in the refrigerator, where the flour and water will only need to be half swapped once a week. There is also a balck liquid that I have to watch out for, that may form on my starter.  This simply needs to be poured off if it does form. 

If I can get some leaven to grow, I plan on keeping this starter and use it to make some bread.  I simply need to take a piece of the start each time and work it into dough.  Since this is going to be a prolonged process, I will post something later next week.  Hopefully, I will have some news of progress next week! If you want to follow along, be sure to subscribe to our feed.