Hi!

As part of my attempt to eat healthier foods, I decided to start the sourdough journey, especially after reading so many posts about this "romantic" connection between the baker and the starter! I love these sort of things..

I wanted a wholemeal spelt starter, so I followed this [1] recipe. As they say, started small (a table spoon full flour), and built it up for a week instead of throwing starter away. At the end, it had bubbles, and smelled like ripe bananas and alcohol, so I assumed it was working.

Yesterday, I put a cup of water in a bowl, mixed in half a cup of my starter, and then gradually sprinkled in the wholemeal spelt flour (roughly 600 gr). I had to add more water, since the dough was way too hard. However, the recipe said that with spelt, let it be hard, cause after and hour or so it will be much more wet. So I did, and after an hour came back to add the salt, and the dough was as hard as before.. Added the soalt, and about 1/4 cup water, kneaded, and left for the night to rise in a towel covered bowl. All that was following (half the amount, and estimated, since I have no measuring gear) this [2] recipe.

This morning, I checked the creation. It had a bit of a crust on it, and the size remained exactly the same. And although the buttom went a bit soggy and wet, the dough remained quite hard.

I should probably chuck it to the compost bin.. But before that, I thoght maybe I'll get some advice here. And hopefully next time it will come out better. It is my first bread ever, other than breads I used to make in a bread maker, which don't really count.

Thank you for reading!

Eran.