The sourdough starter bubbled and fermented away in the fridge.  After three days it looked like this:

I have to say that my initial thoughts on the mother were less than confident.  However, it was clearly fermenting and smelled fresh, not funky.  I stirred the liqour back into the solids at the bottom and measured out the ¾ cup I would need for the batch of bread.  Then I added more water and flour to replace the volume I’d just removed.  The container sat, loosely covered, on the counter until the following morning, by which time it was nice and spongy again.  It was returned to the fridge.

The bread took a long time to make but required no kneading, which is different.  It seems to rely upon the yeast in the mother actually breaking down the gluten.  I hasten to add that this is surmise, not fact, and I’ll be delighted for someone to put me right on that.  So basically, you just stretch and fold the dough a few times over a few hours and then shape it into a loaf tin (or in flour-dusted cloth-lined basket for a more authentic look), let it rise until it has doubled in size and bake it.

Easy peasy.  Even I can do that.  See ……….

Now, it tasted good, and the texture was good too – not as crumbly as the bread that I normally make.  but it wasn’t sour enough.  So since then I’ve been messing around with letting the starter, or mother, get hungrier and hungrier.  I’ve also experimented with different methods of actually making the bread with varying degrees of success.  The last batch was good and sour, maybe even a tad too sour, but it didn’t rise properly.  We’ll have another go this weekend and see what happens next.

Oh, one nuggest of information for you: if you put the bread into the hot oven and then pour a large glass of water onto the bottom of the oven it creates wonderful steam, which makes for a nice crunchy crust and it also does quite a nice job of cleaning the bottom of the oven too!