Making your own sourdough bread: Day One

I am a baker by nature and I love freshly baked breads, cookies and more. I want to make things that are as natural as I can and I have been reading a lot lately about different ways of soaking your flour, grains and beans. As I was reading about these methods I stumbled upon making sourdough bread and became intrigued.

It is easy, I mean really easy and has no artificial yeast in it (it makes it own yeast so it is better for you). Once it is fermented, it takes about a week to accomplish this you can make your first loaf and continue to use your starter forever, it is hard to kill it off. This way you have a good heartily baked bread that is good for you. I will post more on this later but for now this is what I did and will do this week to 'grow' the starter.

The reason it is called sourdough is because the longer you ferment the more strong the sour taste. I will explain more later but if you dont like sour bread it doesn't have to have that strong sour taste.

Sourdough Bread Starter
Step one:

Take one cup of flour and one cup of warm water. Put into a wide top opening glass or plastic container with a lid do not use metal container. Stir the flour and water together, put on lid, and then keep it on the counter or somewhere warm (70 degree).

You can choose the flour you want, white, wheat, spelt is all mentioned as good uses. I used white tonight because I didn't have wheat but I will get some wheat tomorrow and start another.

Step Two:

Every 24 hours "feed" the starter. Take half the starter and throw it away. Take a half cup flour and a half cup warm water and stir that into the starter. Remember keep it in a warm place in the kitchen. Do this every day for 3 to 4 days. In that time you will start to see bubbles forming and you will get a yeasty, beery smell and it may start to puff up too. When it develops a bubble froth it is done. Simple huh?

OK so get started on the STARTER, play on words..like that? lol. And tomorrow I will tell you what we are going to do with the wonderful, yeast, beer smelling mix.