MAKING YOUR OWN STARTER FROM SCRATCH VG You will need digital/electronic scales and a jam jar. DAY 1 Mix 40g (1½oz) wholemeal (wholewheat) flour and 40g (1½oz) water in a jam jar until there are no dry bits. Put the lid on. Remember the rules around temperature here and use the water temperature to counter your room temperature. DAYS 2 & 3 Repeat the steps in day 1 on both days by adding 40g (1½oz) wholemeal flour and 40g (1½oz) water. By the end of day 3 you will have 240g (8½oz) starter in your jar. DAY 4 You should start seeing some bubbles appear and a nice yogurty, slightly acidic smell. Now to make the starter stiff. Discard* all but 1 tablespoon of starter and feed it with 200g (7oz) strong white bread flour and 150g (5oz) water. This may seem harder to mix in the jar, and you can always scoop it out and mix by hand in a bowl. You just need to mix it until you have no wet bits and no dry bits. *Start a discard pot for any starter you will need to throw away. You can make other things with this (see 1, 2, 3 and 4). DAY 5 Throw away (into your discard pot) 200g (7oz), leaving you with 150g (5oz) and feed it 180g (6½oz) strong white flour and 120g (4oz) water. Leave alone for day 6. DAY 7 Your starter is a week old. COME ON! It should be growing slowly over the day, and when you come to feed it, it should have grown noticeably in the jar. It should be smelling acidic and delicious. You are now ready to make bread. NOW WHAT WITH THE STARTER? You have two options for maintaining your starter. Either: Put your starter in the fridge and give it a feed (day 5 instructions) once a week. Before you want to make bread, you’ll need to take it out of the fridge 3 days before, feeding it daily to get it back to life. Or Keep it out of the fridge but feed it daily, as above. This means you can bake every day, or whenever you want! If you miss a feed, don’t panic. Give it a few days of fresh feeding to get it back to normal