Your starter for 10 ...

Bread has always been one of my weight-loss Nemeses.

I love the stuff - cobs, splits, baps, rolls, tiger bread, wholemeal, stoneground, focaccia, ciabatta ... you name it, I love it.

The problem is, it's full of those pesky carbs that create the sugar highs our brains love so much, so we eat far more than we should do. And I take great pleasure in making bread (breadmaking machines? Pft)  and a warm freshly baked loaf gets short shrift at Colgan Towers.

I was well aware that, if I wanted to lose weight, I would have to renegotiate my relationship with it. So I went cold turkey and my brain's receptors re-set themselves and now I no longer crave it. And, surprise surprise, the weight started falling off.

I now eat, at worst, one or two slices of bread a day. Quite often I have none. But, when I do eat bread, I tend to go for sourdough because it contains a lot fewer bad carbs than most breads because much of the sugar is removed during the proving process. Whereas conventional bread requires yeast and sugar to get a rise, sourdough uses a starter - a fermented paste of flour and water that captures the natural yeasts that are in the air all around us. No sugar is needed.

So then I had the idea of baking my own sourdough ... so I needed a starter.

It's not hard to do - you just need some patience.

Get yourself a jar with a sealable lid or a bowl and some clingfilm. 

Mix together 100g of strong bread flour - any kind - with 125ml slightly warm water. Mix thoroughly, and leave the jar/bowl somewhere warm (around 25C is ideal) for about an hour so it can 'catch' the wild yeast. Then seal it and leave it for 24 hrs. 

For the next six days you 'feed' your starter. This means pouring away half of the mix daily and adding 100g of fresh flour and 125ml slightly warm water. Stir it well and reseal.

After 3-4 days you should start to see bubbles appearing on the surface, and it will smell yeasty and a little acidic. This is a good indicator that the starter is working. On day 7, the starter should be quite bubbly and smell much sweeter. It is now ready to be used in baking.

Many bakers treasure their starters and lovingly keep them going - I know people whose starters are over a decade old and have matured wonderfully. Many also have a tradition of naming their starters - you are growing a living thing after all. So I asked Facebook friends to suggest a name for my new creation. And they didn't disappoint.

Among my favourites were:

Bubbles, Sheena Yeaston, Budding Holly, J B Yeastley, Yeast of Eden, Percy Breadwards,  Yeast is yeast, William Butler Yeast, Clint Yeastwood, The Thrush, Simply bread, Krakatoa - Yeast of Java, The Yeaster Rising, The Yeasty Boys, In Bread, Marilyn Mondough, The Blob, Dough Selecta, the inevitable Yeastie McYeastface, and Your MUM.

I decided to call him/her/them/it (what is the right pronoun for yeast?) ... 'Bubbles'.

I'll keep you posted  on Bubbles' progress and post some photos of the bread that ensues.