Day 2 – 08.08.2020 (Sat)

Surprise! BoBo doubled in height! It was all foamy and bubbly.

So, I started my first discard and feed. I gave it a good stir. I left 20g in the jar and added 20g water and 20g flour (10g W/M, 10g B). Remember earlier I mentioned to weigh the empty jar? It is helpful now. My empty jar weight is 254g, so I just remove the content until the scale show 274g. Easy!

And to make it easier to track its growth, I added a DIY ruler by its side. I’m sure some of you might have recognized the ruler from Ikea measuring tape, which is free and placed at every corner of their store. I simply cut of the end, and tape it to make it waterproof.

By 2.40PM, it went up to almost 4cm (8.40AM – 1.8cm) before dropping. It did smell a little weird (not pleasant). But I have no idea how a sourdough starter should smell, so I just brush the thought off.

At 8.40PM, I repeat the discard and feed process. And that’s for Day 2.

Day 1 – 07.08.2020 (Fri)

 

After letting this thought play in my mind for weeks, today shall be the day! I know it sounds silly. “It’s just flour and water”, but I do get this nervous / kan-cheong feeling whenever I’m about to do something new and it’s not exactly pleasant.

So I started at 8.30AM. Almost like some sifu choosing auspicious timing for some important occasion. But it was nothing like that. I just need to choose a time that 12 hours later I’ll still be awake and free to feed my starter.

At 8.30AM, I weigh out 20g wholemeal flour and 20g filtered water into the jar. Wholemeal cause I read somewhere that it’s easier for yeast to grow with wholemeal flour. And filtered water is important because there is no chlorine or anything harmful that might kill the yeast. Gave it a good stir till everything is well mixed and there is no dry bits of flour, scraped down the sides with the spatula, clean the inside of the jar (optional), and put on a rubber band to mark the starting point.

I don’t like mess, and so I clean the inside of the jar. First, cause I don’t like seeing white marks at the side from stirring which will probably dry up and form some kind of crust later on. Second, it’s easier to see if there is anything happening inside the jar. Plus, it looks better in picture. A damp cloth / kitchen tower will easily do the job. Well, the cloth is a more environmentally friendly option.

As expected, nothing much happened. 8.30PM, it still looks pretty much the same. I gave it a good stir, wish BoBO goodnight and went to bed. But in my mind, I was starting to doubt if this will actually work.

The Tools

I keep BoBo in a glass jar. I use 3 jars in total. One for the starter, one for my discard, and another one to swap when the jar is dirty. I have few of those jars lying in my kitchen cabinet from years of eating fermented bean paste (taucu). Yay to reuse, and less buying!

To stir, I started off with a silicon spatula. They are great for mixing and scraping down the jar after each feed, but not so good to move out some of the starter to the discard jar. And so, now I use a normal metal spoon during feed. Yay to easy washing after feed!

And my favourite kitchen equipment, an electric weighing scale. And a useful tip from one of those Youtube tutorials, weigh the empty jar and write it down somewhere!

My AM feed is usually around 8.30PM, and PM is at 8.30PM. I wasn’t particularly strict with the timing. Some days, I overslept and fed it at 10am, and some days I wanted an early night and fed it at 8PM, but I do try to follow the timing as closely as I can. After all, a hungry man is an angry man. 😈 

The Why's and The How's

How It Started...

After months (almost a year) of wanting to try sourdough, I finally did it! I started doing some reading in July. And with Youtube and Google, there was information overload. Everyone has a different approach to make their own starter.

Basically a starter is flour and water, left to ‘ferment’ over a period of time. Even though there is only two ingredients, there are many variables to them.

Let’s start with flour… All-purpose flour, bread flour, wholemeal flour, whole wheat flour (Are they the same? Still can’t tell the difference up to today), rye flour, and a whole lot of grains that can be turned into flour. And there are some bakers who call for a mix of two types of flour.

Now to the water. Some used unsweetened pineapple juice, others just filtered water. This is a much easier choice for me. Unsweetened pineapple juice sounds like a run to the supermarket, and that calls for extra work. So filtered water shall do for me.

Next, how much should I start with? Some use 1 cup flour and ½ cup water (after some googling, that’s around 120g flour with 120g water), others 60g flour with 60g water, some 50g flour with 50g water, some 3tbsp flour with 2tbsp water, and the list is endless. But the most common one is equal amount of water and flour. And I went with that.

Again, this whole project started as an experiment. No idea if this will work or not. And so after doing some maths and comparing the amount of flour that I’ll need, I decided to go with 20g wholemeal flour and 20g water. (Yups! Sounds a lot lesser than what others are using. But I’m “kedekut” like that, and don’t want to waste in case this whole experiment doesn’t work.)

Disclaimer: I'm totally new at this. Not sure if I can replicate this cause I have only done it once. But this is what works for me in the Malaysia weather. And keeping a record here, just in case I might want to do it again!

But if you’ll like to try sourdough and don’t want to start from scratch, I don’t mind sharing some of BoBo (my starter) with you. Just that he is quite new (D.o.B.: 7th August 2020) and you’ll have to come and collect it from me 😁.

My New Lover - BoBo

 

The idea of making bread without store bought yeast is tempting.
Sourdough bread from bakeries and cafes are even more tempting. Crusty crust, and soft inside.

[Nah, I'm no where near there yet...]

But all that have to start with a starter. For me, I like to call him “My Baking Partner” and I named him BoBo (pronounce “popo”). Not much of a reason for the name, just thought that it sounded cute. 😅

And yes, BoBo is a the new 'he' in my life. And he definitely thrive on lots of love and care. He needs to be fed twice a day. And his 'house' needs to be cleaned frequently. But occasionally, he does 'hibernate' in a cold place (the fridge) when I need a break 😂.

The Bread Noob

Est. May 2018

Just start somewhere.

Mr. Breadmaker was my starting point... Seems easy that I only need to weigh out the ingredients, put them into the machine, press some buttons, wait for 3 hours and Tadaaaaaa! I have my fresh loaf of bread. For a baking noob like me, that was a breakthrough. Never in my life did I know that I could actually make a loaf of bread (kinda cheating - cause the breadmaker does everything!). Still proud moment it was! 

Breakdown.

Just when I kinda get the hang of it, Mr. Breakmaker gave up on me. Maybe I have been making it work too hard... What a slave driver I must have been. One fresh loaf every alternate day. That’s how good fresh homemade bread taste like. From a person who doesn’t eat rice and tries to cut down on carbs, the diet plan flew out the window. I would get myself on the treadmill just so that I can keep the bread in my diet. Haha! That’s motivation for me! 

Well, everything in life comes with a little hiccup... So does my breadmaker. And every end is a beginning of a new adventure. Hello, stand mixer!

It’s okay to get dirty.

I hate sticky, wet, messy stuff! Flour and water - definitely a big NO NO for me... I still remember the first time I touch the dough. Yucks! I was using the tip of my index finger to poke the dough. Nothing like the Youtube videos... The dough sticks to the rolling pin, etc. How do they make those videos look so effortless? What we see online are most often the result of many hours of offline trial and error. 台上一分钟, 台下十年功. Slowly, it is not as yucky anymore. It’s flour after all. And the bread did turn out ok.

It’s not always a success.

But there are days when the outcome just does not turn out as I hoped for... Maybe I have used up the beginner’s luck. Not “Instagram-friendly” bread. The bread turned our dry. The dough doesn’t rise as high as before. The dough is too wet. The shape just look weird. The bread sink after  taking out from the oven. Same recipe, same ingredients, and even the same baker. Yet, it yields different outcome. Too many variables even with the same set of ingredients and recipe. Nothing is fix. 

And time to go back to the ‘beginning’ - To just start somewhere (again!). Hopefully, this time round it will get better.

And the actual reason for going back to the start of the cycle: I am done with writing (typing) for today. Hehe. 

So goodbye for now :)

And hopefully the next loaf will turn out well! 

Thoughts, the not so nice kind

19.12.2017 

How could someone write down what was in my thoughts for months so accurately and so precisely... 

The pain, the hurt, the struggle. Death.

“Ending it is easy to say. Ending it is difficult.
That difficulty is why I have been alive until now.” - Jonghyun

** Wanted to post up the printscreen of the whole text, but it seems like I need to install some Google app to insert pictures. Too much hassle 💩. So here’s the link to the translation I took the quote from. 

***

Writing out ‘thoughts’ work for me... Especially those not so pleasant ones. It’s like taking the trash out of the house. You throw it out, and no longer think about it anymore. 

It works for me... Maybe it might work for you too? 

#fromsomeonelearningtoliveagain ❤️