Sourdough starter - day one

sourdough starter
Bourke Street Bakery, Paul Allam & David McGuiness

I once worked as a shop girl in a bakery. It was an artisanal bakery, using old methods and pure, best ingredients. On taking the job I thought I was going to get my hands into learning all about baking. The only thing I learned was how to roll pastry for pies and tarts, as fast as humanly possible in the shortest time possible. It was murder. I did this for a year and then realised one day that I would go no further in my education in this particular bakery as I had been employed as a mere lackey (from the 1529 OED meaning 'uninformed manservant' or the 2006 OED meaning 'servant'), so I quit. But I did keep my ears and eyes open for the entire year and whatever little crumb of information I could gather, I did.

Anyway, an interesting bread which the bakery produced that I had never tasted before was called sourdough. I grew to love the chewy, tangy flavour of that round, flat loaf, especially when it was toasted or cooked over a grill on the bbq. The other interesting thing, which I never knew back then, was that it was made from something called a 'starter'. At the bakery I  would often see Peter, the Polish baker, crouched down on the floor stirring the contents of a white bucket in which a very yeasty slop used to live. Apparently it was years old. On leaving the bakery I wanted to make my own sourdough one day. (See my post here to view what I thought was a starter last year, but it turned out not to be because I didn't know what I was talking about).

Just before last Christmas I visited the famous Bourke Street Bakery in Surry Hills in Sydney, with my sister-in-law. It was a pilgrimage and we enjoyed good coffee and two delicious tarts after purchasing some wonderful bread.

The famous Bourke Street Bakery in Sydney

The Bourke Street Bakery had had a book published in 2009 and we were able to thumb through it (see it in the photo) as we savoured our tarts.


two delicious tarts next to two good cappuccinos next to Bourke Street Bakery cookbook

Fast forward twelve months and I finally purchased the book. Why did I wait so long to buy it? Price, actually. I waited until it came down and Sydney-siders will be very miffed to know I purchased it for only £9.45 online. This book is absolutely full of detailed information and is truly a complete baking reference. I will be cooking many recipes from this fabulous book but today, it is sourdough I want to master. Actually, it is the starter which must be mastered first.

This will be an exercise in patience. I need a starter which I will nurture from now on and which will grow. It will be a bit like feeding an animal. If you don't feed it, it will die! But it is going to take three weeks of feeding before I can even begin to use it, so you will have to be as patient as me to see the end result but if we can last, and it 'works', then there are some wonderful breads to bake from this basic starter.

According to the boys in Bourke Street Bakery, I need two buckets. Not finding ones suitable today, I'll just use what I have until I do. I also need organic flour and some spring water.

Equal parts of flour and water are put into a bucket (50g and 50ml) and left for a day.

I mixed the flour and water together.

Tomorrow the feeding schedule begins.

Bourke Street Bakery, the ultimate baking companion, Paul Allam, David McGuiness, Murdoch Books, Sydney, 2009.