Day 3 - We Have Achieved Fermentation!!!

Well, last night when I took the pictures I was excited...

These are taken at the 32 hour mark. Clearly the yeast has settled in and there is bonafide fermentation taking place. Hooray!You can tell just by looking at the level and the bubbles from the side view that something has changed radically since the same time the day before. From the directions that I am following I was expecting it to be days before this would happen. Not sure what this means about the cleanliness of my house.

Now check out what was happening just 4 hours later! Man, it's the Attack of the Killer Yeast! Very exciting. I went to bed expecting that this morning the starter will have blown up to the rim of the container and I can give it a feeding and put it away.

But then..

This morning it looked the same. I went ahead and fed it a cup of water and a cup of flour, and let it set out at room temp for a few hours. I did not see additional activity at this point and was a little concerned. Hmmm.

I went ahead and mixed up a little dough to see what would happen. The recipe I used is loosely based on a formula for "No-Knead" Bread from Jim Lahey at Sullivan Street Bakery in NYC! This is the bread I intend to make first.

Sounds really easy and really awesome! Check out the video from Jim and the New York Times at YouTube.

Here is the formula that I am using as an ingredient modification with Jim's method unaltered:

1 cup Sourdough Starter
1 cup Distilled Water
2 teaspoons Kosher Salt
3 cups Flour

I think that I will prefer King Arthur bread flour, but that's not what I had on hand to start with today. I just used some all-purpose schwag. Just testing basic principles at this point.

I put all this stuff together at about 3:00 pm. It is now 12:30 am and to be honest not a lot has happened. Also, the newly fed starter hung out in a warm place for about 5 hours with no significant change. I'm a little worried. Hope I didn't kill the little guys somehow.

I'm really hoping for a miracle of life to be happening in that bowl come morning. Check back this time tomorrow...there'll either be a cool pic of a crusty loaf, or a very short description of Sourdough Starter - Take #2!