I’ve decided this year I want to embark on an adventure to make and perfect my own sourdough bread. I can’t eat traditional shop-bought bread because it’s full of sugar and yeast which is the worst combo to keep my candida at bay.

Sourdough is great because when you create your own culture it literally gathers wild yeast from the environment around you and even better it’s all A-OK for a candida diet. Plus who doesn’t love sourdough bread or homemade bread for that matter!

I also find it fascinating that every starter is unique, because your environment is completely different to other people’s environments, so it’s special to you.

I’m going to follow this guide by Riot Rye to make my starter.

So today I start on this adventure and I’ll take you with me – whether I succeed or fail, i’ll surely enjoy every step.

Day 1:

I decided to make two starters, because technically even though I can eat sourdough bread because wild yeast is fine for my candida, I also wanted to take it a step further and see if I could make it gluten-free as well. I’ve read a lot online about sourdough breads and bread making and it seems like gluten-free bread is just really hard to make right, so I’m not expecting much from it. However, what have I got to lose but a bit of flour and a bit of water 🙂

I’m worried about the rye starter because it looks dryer than I’d expect but we’ll see how it goes.

Day 2:

My rye sourdough still looks a bit on the dry side but it’s definitely changed. The gluten-free starter has already started developing little bubbles which is a good sign 🙂

Day 3:

So everything has flipped today (how quickly things change in the world of cultures!). My rye starter is now looking brilliant, lots of lovely air holes, smells bitter sort of like apple cider and all things point to it’s working perfectly. I’ve fed it with some more flour and water today and expecting good things for tomorrow.

My gluten-free starter on the other hand developed some mould, which is apparently quite uncommon. I read up about it online and it turns out if it’s just surface mould you can scrape it off and salvage the starter by feeding it, which I was due to do today. So I did just that and we’ll just have to keep an eye on her to see if that pesky mould comes back. Worst case scenario I have to dump this starter and just keep going with the rye one.

Day 4:

I did what I was supposed to today and extracted 50g of my starters and replenished them both with 50g flour and 50g water. Honestly, this felt weird. It felt like I had a flourishing living thing and I was discarding 100g of it and then going backwards. I’m not sure. 

Day 5:

So my starters don’t look bad, but they don’t look as vibrant and bubbly as they were on Day 3 so I’m worried. I’m continuing to follow the instructions to a T – today discarding yet again and keeping only 50g starter replenished with 50g flour and water. I’ll just trust in the system and hope it works out.

Meanwhile, I felt weird throwing away the “discarded” starters from yesterday and today because, well, I don’t know, it just seemed wasteful. So ssssh don’t tell anyone, but I didn’t discard it. Instead I transferred them both to new containers, and also replenished those discarded starters with fresh flour and water. So now I’ll either end up with 2 good starters or 4! I mean like I said before when it’s just flour and water so what have I got to lose?

A follower on Instagram commented today that she named her starter… I thought that was a lovely idea so thank you @bellasupiana for the great idea. But first, I want to make sure the starter is alive and well and working – so I’ll ponder the names for my 2 (or 4!) starters and when I know they are healthy I’ll name them 🙂

Day 6:

So my gluten-free starter is going nowhere – it’s started to separate again, it’s not bubbling and quite honestly it just looks like wet flour in a jug. I’ve just discarded the extra one and I’m keeping an eye on the main one but I’m going to focus instead on my rye flour starters which both seem to be going well. 

Today I am tasked with feeding my starter 150g flour and 150g water and leaving it overnight. Tomorrow is the big day, when I’ll find out if it’s worked, alive and ready to make my first sourdough loaf with.

Day 7:

Wow! I woke up this morning to a beautiful, active, bubbly sassy starter! I am naming her Trixie – not only because this has been a roller coaster tricky week of ups and downs, but also because it has some sass to it 😀

Trixie looks wonderful, even as I watch her now she is active and bubbling moving the cellophane on top – she is a living breathing thing and so today I will prepare my first loaf of sourdough bread <3

To be continued…