“The bread was so powerfully aromatic that, had I been alone, I would have been tempted to push my face into it.”

This was the sentence, penned by Michael Pollan in ‘Cooked’, that made me want to make sourdough. Up until then, i had relegated it to the domain of intense foodie-types with surplus time on their hands. Then i became one of those people around about my early thirties, so it was time to harness the elusive airborne yeasts and begin. My first starter was frankly a disaster. I used fancy organic rye flour, bottled water and a pretty-looking Kilner jar, surely the elements of success. After a few days of discarding and adding to the precious elixir, i was left with nothing more than an expensive, foul-smelling wall plaster. For several weeks thereafter, it greeting me mockingly from where i had hidden it in cupboard, too stubborn (and stingy) was i to call it a failure. This was an error, people. The final product was a black, volcanic substance with a smell perhaps reminiscent of the earliest forming of algae 3 billion years ago.

Kilner jar and all in the bin, i took to the internet in search of a shortcut. Turns out there’s lots of starter to buy online. San Franciscan, English, German, whatever. My little packet of 30 year old Derbyshire gloop arrived neatly sealed in a Ziplock, and was soon bubbling merrily in a (new) jar the next day. I fed it for a week, daily, thinking this was all very labour intensive. I later discovered that a 12-hour feeding schedule was in fact preferable, for maximum starter health. Heck, you’d think i’d bought a puppy. After a week of all this i was half expecting to come home from work one day and find a sourdough loaf just sitting there on the bench, such was the effort already invested. No such luck.

Then came the real work. On a Tuesday night i prepared my ‘sponge’ or ‘leaven’, a mixture of starter, flour and water which serves as the pre-cursor for the dough proper. Hesitantly i peered into the covered bowl 12 hours later to find a pleasantly risen pouffe. This was promising.

Wednesday, my day off. A perfect opportunity to get acquainted with the real business of bread-making: kneading. However, as i have already confessed to being an inveterate short cutter and nothing like the purist i need to be for making sourdough, one will not be surprised to learn that the Kitchenaid pounded my dough whilst i sat and had a nice leisurely cup of tea. Once smoke was beginning to emerge from the mechanism of my kitchen friend, I turned out the dough and did a few token kneading gestures to check it wasn’t concrete, and to examine for the elusive gluten. Mechanical kneading risks over-working the dough and losing all the helpful protein that creates the bread architecture, the quintessence of a sourdough loaf. Without being any clearer on the presence or otherwise of gluten, i plopped my dough into a bowl and proceeded with stage 65 which is the first rise. This is where you discover if the yeast culture has any life within. My dough rose pleasantly enough the first time, so i knocked it back, and repeated this all again a few hours later. Next stage: the proving basket (‘bannetone’). I wished it well, briefly carried out the laying on of hands, and left it to hopefully double in size over the rest of the day.

Miraculously, a reasonable rise had occurred. Not quite a double upper, but not a boulder either. Into a hot oven it went, alongside a tray of water to help crust formation, where hopefully the final rise occurs. The smell of baking bread wafts around the flat (quick, put it on the market!!), and a good hour later my boule emerges. Not a looker, you’ll agree, but a passable first time loaf. Edible, just about, and a decent sour flavour. I’ll settle for that.