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Welcome to the World Steve Junior!

Writer's picture: Felicity VincentFelicity Vincent

Hi everyone, I'd like you to meet Steve Junior, my new sourdough starter! I brought him into the world three weeks ago now and we're now living in somewhat harmony.

I'm very new to the sourdough world so followed the wise words of The Perfect Loaf to get started. As suggested I used half strong white and half wholemeal rye to make Steve. Here he is below on his first night...

I didn't get the surge of activity excepted but kept up with the feedings and eventually (maybe 3 days later) bubbles appeared at the surface! The satisfaction of seeing those few bubbles was slightly ridiculous but what can I say, I was just so proud of my child (essentially farting for the first time)!

I have been feeding Steve twice a day for the past three weeks now following this recipe:

- 75g starter

- 50g wholemeal rye flour

- 50g strong white flour

- 125g tepid water


Although recently I've started increasing the amount of rye I use as I like the flavour it's giving to the dough. So for instance a few time I did 60g rye / 40g white, and now I've moved to 70/30. The Perfect Loaf mentions that all rye starters also work but I'm not sure whether I want to take it that far yet.

My main issue with this new hobby of mine so far is the amount of waste it's producing. Feeding it twice a day means loosing about 150-200g starter a day and using up 200g of flour. I've found a few ways of using up the discard starter which I'll talk about in another post, and I'm now putting the starter in the fridge for half of the week which saves a lot of savings but still it's not solved the entire issue, so it's just something to keep in mind.


But anyway, after 2 weeks of feeding, I decided to have my first try at a proper loaf. This is the recipe I followed, and here is the result!

And this is why I 100% recommend taking on your own sourdough starter. I haven't felt a sense of achievement like that in a long time! I was so proud of that bread!! It tasted amazing, the crust was unreal and look at all those air bubbles... it actually looked like a sourdough.


I pretty much followed the recipe to the letter but here are some of my key learnings:


1) I think my starter wasn't quite strong enough because the levain didn't ever pass the float test, but there were a few bubble so I risked it and just added a bit more than the recipe called for... seemed to have worked.


2) I accidentally put the salt in too early so added more starter... probably against the rules but again, seemed to work.


3) I left it for 2 hours during the autolyse and could really feel a difference on the dough texture, so highly recommend that.


4) I didn't really like the 30% wholemeal / 70% white combo, the wholemeal didn't add enough flavour but was too present for it to be a white loaf so I'm going to try 40/60 next time.


5) Cooking in a dutch oven definitely works!!


6) It took a long time! It was realistically minimal effort as this method doesn't require any kneading, just stretching the dough a few times, but it still took the entire weekend and a bit to make, so I don't think I'll be able to keep up making one a week.


7) All in all, it's been great and I'm in love with Steve, a lump of fermented ground up wheat.


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