the success story

....so here are the rest of the pictures and conclusion of my saga concerning the starter.

when i got up the next morning, i must admit i was a bit afraid to find a dead seed culture again. to my surprise, and satisfaction, the phase III starter was still foamy however not to the same degree as the night before. unfortunately, i deleted the images from the camera to show u.

the end was finally near. i refreshed it with the necessary quantities of flour and water [see yesterday's post], and within a few hours phase IV was fermented.

once this stage was reached, i could finally move on to making what is called "the mother". this is the main sourdough starter which will be kept in the fridge until need and occasionally refreshed. and the point of all this, u ask [for u non-bread making people]? this is basically the yeast, a living dough which will ferment all loaves of bread i will make from it.

here is the pre-fermented "mother" after the addition of the flour and water. it is much firmer than previous refreshments, somewhat like the consistency of a bread dough.

the next step was waiting for this to ferment once again. this happened rapidly within a matter of 4 hours.

after this, the dough was kneaded and sent to the fridge to live. this is the what the final "mother" looks like:

unfortunately, the picture is off here.

i must add here that this method uses significantly less amounts of flour and water than the "usual" way of making a [sourdough] starter. often copious amounts are wasted, enough to fill bathtubs!

i am in the process of using this "mother starter" now to make a loaf of wholewheat sandwich bread, one of the recipes i need to test. pictures of the results over the next day or two.