Home-Made Sourdough Starter

Sourdough bread starters have some things in common with ginger beer plants:

• both are symbiotic cultures of bacteria and yeasts (known in some circles as "beasts")
• both are "fed" in order to multiply and grow, before being divided when you want to use them
• After division, part of the culture is used to make the product, either ginger beer or bread, and part is kept and fed again

But they also have some differences:

• There is only one ginger beer plant, as far as I know, but there are many sourdough cultures and each one is different
• You can only get an authentic ginger beer plant from someone who already has one, but you can make a sourdough starter from scratch

I tried to make a sourdough starter from scratch on Saturday, using the instructions in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Fizz Carr's River Cottage Family Cookbook. I've called it Fizz. I thought of calling it Hugh, but since it's supposed to bubble and froth, I thought Fizz was more appropriate. I won't reproduce the recipe here, if you want it you'll have to buy the book, but basically you mix flour, water and orange juice, then feed it every day with more flour and water until the natural beasts in the flour multiply.

So far it's looking a wee bit frothy, but it's not very lively. I need to feed it again today, and tomorrow I can use it to make bread. I'm also waiting for an established starter to arrive in the post, so I can compare it with my home-made version.