Tuesday 20th April 2010
by rkhooks
Last week I started to dabble in with sourdough. I got a crash course in sourdough bread baking but was still a little dubious as my track record with looking after living things isn’t that great. Maintaining a starter felt all too much like having to take care of a plant or a beer smelling tamagotchi. My last attempt of growing rosemary and thyme ended up in the bin. Luckily Clotilde from Chocolat & Zucchini has been doing a great job writing about sourdough with plenty of recipes.
Sourdough or a natural starter is a combination of fermented flour, water, wild yeasts and friendly bacteria which is used to leaven bread. It’s a tradition to name your starter, so I decided to baptise mine “Lucca” as I’m testing and researching sourdough bread recipes for some culinary workshops I’ll be doing in Tuscany near the town of Lucca.
I went about feeding my starter every day (organic white flour and filtered water). I accidently put it in the fridge and it froze but I managed to bring it back to life. It’s quite warm in Paris (Spring has finally kicked off) which is just the kind of temperature Lucca likes. A week of feeding and I thought it was about time to put Lucca to a test. I used the 1 2 3 sourdough recipe which is pretty fool proof. I went for a mix of wholewheat and white flour with a sprinkling of seeds. I made my sponge early in the morning, gave it 6 hours and then made the dough in the afternoon and left it to rise for a further 6 hours and by 10pm I had a fresh loaf. I must say I’m very impressed with the crust which is made by putting the dough in a oven proof dish with a lid to bake. The water evaporating from the bread creates steam and makes a very crunchy crust. Another plus with sourdough is the bread keeps really well. Even a week later toasted it still tastes great. More beer smelling tamagotchi tales to follow…
Check out Clotilde’s well documented basic sourdough recipe for further information.
Tags: healthy, homemade, natural starter, retreat, sourdough





It is indeed an offspring from Marie’s Fluffy which makes it 2nd generation offspring of your Philémon. Will be taking some dehydrated version of it on my travels.
Hehe, that’s great!
I’m honored that my 1.2.3 sourdough formula has been adopted by you! I’ve adopted your granola basic recipe
(http://makanaibio.com/2010/05/notre-granola-prefere.html)
So glad to see you’ve joined the club of enthusiastic sourdough bread bakers! Your loaf is gorgeous.
And if Lucca is an offspring of Marie’s Fluffy, then it is a 2nd-generation offspring of my Philémon.