The Sourdough Experiments: Day 1 and Setup

There's not a lot of video tutorials for sourdough despite how trendy it is right now. The tutorials I could find insisted on bread flour and me, being a carb-sensitive gremlin from the wrong side of the Kuiper Belt or something, thought that I could try some keto-friendlier versions.

Sourdough seemed easy enough. You need a container, flour, water, and LOADS of time. Seemed perfect for me, one of Nature's Shut-ins.

So I acquired the following:

• 3 Mason jars of reasonable size
• 1 kilo of wholemeal flour
• 1 packet of bread mix [honestly, it was this or some overpriced "make bread in 5 minutes sweaty (:" kind of deal. No thanks]

We already had the almond flour and this dummins accidentally opened a second one before the first was finished, so there was a sort of need to use the smaller cache.

Step 1: Sterilising the jars

Since the dollar shop was now out of mason jars, I was super paranoid about them being really clean as well as accidentally breaking them. So. In a pot full of filtered water, I put down a trivet piece and boiled the heck out of the glass for ten minutes.

The tutorial lady said use cling wrap and I'm like "No plastic!" so I devised a means of creating a non-perfect seal in a re-usable form - Paper towels and/or judiciously loosening the lid of the mason jar. The former was to keep cat hair, flies, and other non-welcome pestilence out of the forming sourdough, whilst also allowing the welcome microbes in.

Labelling is by means of paper tape and permanent marker, so I don't make any mistakes [spoilers: I made mistakes]

As you can see, the three batches are rather small. I used quarter-cups of filtered water as well as quarter cups of the relevant flour. Only the Day 1 starter batches of Wholemeal and Instructions starter were identical.

These did not have their lids on so the household microbes could find a good home.

Coming soon(ish) Day 2 and 3.