A sour kind of day
There was a time when I thought sourdough was this intimidating, terrifying, impossible thing that required constant work and dedication.
Today I use almost zero commercial yeast. I've found that I can ignore my starter for a lot longer than I had thought. The night before I want to use it I give it a good feeding and in the morning it's ready to be fed again or used right away. I'll usually feed it again to get a nice sour tang.
Here's what I was greeted by this morning. Don't they look happy? All three were built from a single white-flour starter that I keep fed by keeping 1 oz of starter and adding 2oz of water and 2oz of flour. The day before yesterday I broke it in three and fed each one a little extra. Last night I made the final starters that would go in the bread - they were built up to about 18oz each by keeping about 6oz of each starter and adding rye and white flours and water to make 18oz...ish :)
The one in the center is destined to be BBA pumpernickel - the formula calls for a very wet starter. The other two firm starters will be Bread Alone's "Rye with Caraway" and "Coarse-grained rye with cracked wheat berries". I'm preparing for my annual Oktoberfest celebration - Oktoberfish 2007 :)
I'll post pictures as I go.
-Joe