Let there be Sourdough

I made my first sourdough bread last week.  I used a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe, which worked a treat.

I say "last week" because that's how long the process took.  The first time around you have to make your starter, which involves getting natural yeasts in the air to start to work in a mixture of flour and water.  Once you get the fermentation process going, you have to feed the starter with more flour and water on a daily basis, till after about 7 days you get a wonderfully rich and fruity smelling goo that can be kept in the fridge and brought out whever you need to make a loaf.

The result was easily the best bread I have ever made:  with a great crust, a really rich flavour, and a firm but chewy texture with plenty of air pockets.  But this wasn't the greatest pleasure of the week.  That was rather the fact that the whole process had an elemental quality to it - you started with nothing but the flour and water, but by coaxing yeasts from the air all around, and then nurturing them over a pretty prolonged period, you had suddenly created what felt like something out of nothing:  a bit, I suppose, like rubbing sticks together to make a spark and then a fire.

What's more, the starter is theoretically endlessly recyclable:  when you take some to make your new loaf, you feed the residue with flour and water and off you go again.  One poster on the River Cottage blog claimed his father had a starter which he kept going for 30 years.  I bet that had some interesting flavours to it ...