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 😂.