Good morning! Well, we are in the middle of an early Spring nasty cold snap here in South Australia, so I am hoping it will not slow this young one down too much, but this is the joy of working with a living thing, we get to enjoy the randomness of it. Let’s pop off her lid and have a look.
Hmm, not sure if you can see that there, but we have a little light fizzing. Let’s look from the side.
Solids have sunk to the bottom of the jar, that is good, giving those baby yeasts plenty of moisture to swim about in. Right, time for this little one to graduate to a bigger jar. I am going to transfer to a 250ml jar now, but you can go straight into your bigger one if that is what you have. Don’t forget to make sure your new jar and lid are clean by giving them a wash in hot soapy water and then scalding them, as we discussed right back at the beginning, or after their bath by popping them into the oven and bringing the heat up to 100 degrees C for twenty minutes.
Scald your spoon, let that cool, once the new jar is cooled, give your mother a good stir and transfer to the bigger jar.
Now stir in 50g (ml) of luke warm water and 10g of buckwheat or quinoa flour, I used buckwheat again as I have not yet picked up more quinoa, if I had quinoa flour I would use that as buckwheat is harder for the yeasts to digest, give it a really good stir, pop on the new (scalded and cooled) lid, pop her back into her corner. We will pop in and have another look at her this afternoon.
Before you go, I have a had a couple of questions come in that I want to answer here.
1/ Can I use just quinoa flour for this mother? Yes, absolutely. My first grain free sourdough mother only got quinoa flour until she was over a week old, even now at almost one month and as full of attitude as a fifteen year old human, she finds quinoa flour easier to digest, almost like giving her white sugar. If I had not run out of quinoa, this little one would be getting only quinoa flour at this stage.
2/ Can I use just buckwheat flour and brown rice flour? Um. Yes, to the buckwheat flour, yours will likely be a little slower since buckwheat is harder for the baby yeasts to digest, but it will be okay, look, that is what this young one is getting and she is doing okay so far. Brown rice flour, I am not sure. I have made this with wheat and with rye as well as the grain free flours but I don’t use rice flour, or rice at all actually as it sets my asthma off. I suppose the answer is, you could try.
3/ Why is mine not bubbling yet? It is still very early days. Right now we are going to celebrate every tiny pin hole bubble because for every bubble we have a yeast either doing a burp or a fart, and that is a beautiful thing. But, it is going to take time for us to build up enough yeasts for us to really see much happening. And this is by no means an exact science. It may not work for you this time. It may not work for me this time. All we can do is try.
So it is morning here, how about we come back and have a look at her this afternoon, see if there is anything to celebrate yet.
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