After last weeks Rye Soda bread the starter is ready! It didn't take long and was so easy, just a couple of days of refreshments (RYe flour mixed with tap water to a paste) and it was doubling in size within hours. I don't know if the conditions in South England are ideal or whether using fresh organic Rye flour is a sure fire technique but it amazes me how easy it seems to be to get a working starter.
With the advent of a new job and a change of location I stopped baking bread over the last few years. A few loaves here and there but using quick and less tasty recipes. Reasons included not having time to bake (full time job and running regularly) and moving to a place with less space in the kitchen (very difficult to get my Kenwood chef out easily). Well the Kenwoods gone, I have a new 4 day/week job and I was fortunate/unfortunate enough to slip a disc over Christmas! So sat around on a sunny Sunday unable to run I decided to go out and buy a bag of Rye flour to start a new culture.
When I was working part time looking for a job I found bread baking to be a fulfilling enjoyable part of my day to look forward to. Since starting work full time as a teacher however my bread baking has dropped to zero as lesson planning has taken up more and more time. Then a couple of weeks ago I found out I would be teaching microbes to year 8's (~12 years of age), so I couldn't resist the chance to combine something I love with what should hopefully be a good way to teach some of the topic.
I intended to start a blog and leave a post every week with updates of a new loaf or new idea as a way to help me keep on experimenting and learning. So far, alas I have fallen at the first hurdle, after an impromptu trip to Paris I failed to update my blog the first week and haven't done so since.
I decided to start a blog to keep a log of my baking and hopefully get some feedback on my efforts. Rather than start by driveling on about how long I've been baking for etc. (plenty of time for that). I think I'll get straight on to posting this mornings efforts.
