The Sour Dough Story...

Bake like an Egyptian! Sounds a bit like the Bangles song from the 1980's but it's true you really can bake like an ancient Egyptian or one of the great adventurers of old from the Gold Rush Miners of the Yokon or Californian Klondike in America. Using the same simple ingredients that our ancestors used you too can make this, the oldest and most original form of leavened bread.

Made using naturally occurring yeasts, this bread takes time and patience to produce. 

They say that the mildly sour taste is a result of the lactic acid produced by lacto-baccilli, and a key part of mastering the art of making sour dough bread is keeping the ratio of these acids in balance. 

And whilst your starter will have a certain sourness to you, trust me if it smells offensive or like something you really don't want to think about - throw it away and start again, as it doesn't make a good loaf I can tell you that from experience..

My first attempt at making Sourdough bread used grapes in the recipe as it is said that they are a source of lactic acid, quite frankly it was a disaster! However, I have since learned that simple flour and water will do the trick in the right environment, with the wild lactobacillus contained in the starter or 'mother dough', giving each loaf it's distinctive flavour.  It's just that you may find you have to try several recipes to get the one that has the right amount of sourness for your taste, as I'm no expert in Bread-making I will wish you well in your quest for finding the right recipe for you, however I've found the following website helpful in my sourdough story... how-to-make-a-sourdough-starter.

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