Half-baked idea

I'm rolling in dough.

Decades spent sniffing around Victoire patisserie, throwing money at Morpeth bakery and endless searches for
Dr Allinson's infamous brown loaf, have forced me into trying my hand at the art of sourdough bread making.

My mother had a love affair with a loaf of bread. Called Crushed Wheat, it was a frigid brown brick of wholemeal blandness. I endured childhood years of lunchtime envy as my cold beef on brown went head to head against my mates' mouthwatering slabs of butter and vegemite slapped between two soft layers of white bread. It was no match,
Tip Top was the one.

I've suffered from a rise and fall in emotion that is directly linked to the glutinous threads of clag-like dough stretching between my fingers.

It's a sticky situation to be in, for the sense of anticipation an amateur baker feels when the flour turns sour and buns are removed from the oven is palpable.

Making sourdough requires the crafting of a pre-ferment or 'starter' made up of flour and water which feeds on itself. Wild yeast present in flour gets cosy with bacteria and an orgy of natural flavours begins to fester and ferment. It's a process similar to a pungent cocktail that bubbles between one's sweaty toes, but it's far more tasty.

The living, breathing pre-ferment or mother yeast requires daily feeding. It is the beating heart that either pumps up the world's best bread or delivers a lousy loaf.

I've experienced the latter.  Early on, expecting to find two pert doughy breasts proving on the stove ready to bake, I was met by a pair of pancakes. I felt flat. Five days getting the starter ripe, 13 hours standing, eight hours proving and a quick-fire 40 minutes in the oven had produced flat breads. A mea culpa rather than bread of life moment.

For days I produced cow pats of quality. The rounds were sour and crusty but instead of upwards and onwards my dough had a mind and direction of its own, mainly downwards and outwards. Desperate to stop the spread of depression, I switched flour, flicked the wholesome wholemeal and reached for some wonder white.

With no need to knead, I picked up, folded, gently massaged and whispered sweet nothings into the fat white flabs of dough.

Six loaves later and my fortunes have risen across the kitchen and a broad spectrum of flour. My 30-year-old freestanding cooker is firing on all burners. It's never had so much work and after midnight is almost gassed, like me.

SD's sour dough – it's a baker's delight.