Meet Ralph...

Meet Ralph, the new member to our family.... family of inanimate items ('people') we keep around the house (I haven't introduced you to our cacti named Mork and Mindy):

If I hadn't previously mentioned, I decided I wanted to be able to make bread from scratch... not just with yeast, but from scratch-scratch... like, grow and feed my own starter. This is how Ralph was born. You can't keep something on your kitchen bench that you feed every day without naming it.... by the way.

So the key to keeping Ralph healthy and happy during his growing days is feeding like clock work. Not enough and not regular enough and Ralph will go out and look for 'bad' bacteria rather than the good stuff, which generally will sadly be his demise. So here is what Ralph looks like after a week of careful nurturing and good bacteria:

So after this week, which was a challenge, it was time to see if my smelly little friend could be turned into bread. For those that know me I do not look after our house plants, its not my forte. Somehow through an intense desire to grow my own food I manage to keep vegetable plants alive. So a whole week of feeding something regularly was a feat.

Here is how it all went:

I forgot to take photos of the first part where you make a 'sponge', which is really a wet mixture of Ralph and flour. But after I had left that overnight I turned it into a dough.

 

Dough is now kneaded and ready to start growing in a nice warm spot:

I will admit now that I was VERY excited to find my dough had puffed right up overnight. You can tell by now this is a relatively long process... theres no waking up one morning and deciding you want bread that day. A homemade starter takes much longer to rise and do all those usual things.

 After creating a nice traditional loaf shape, off Ralph went again to his little sleeping spot in the hot water cupboard. Sshhhhh sleeping....

 

 Cooking, cooking, cooking.....

And ta-daahhhhhh........... bread!

 To review, all fairly successful really. It grew, it baked and it tasted like sourdough. I probably should have left it to rise a little longer before I baked it, but I was getting impatient with repeatedly putting Ralph to bed... lazy bastard.

This may disappoint you, but this is the end of the Ralph saga, a slightly sad demise:

I will be honest, the day after I successfully made that loaf I forgot to feed Ralph one night. He didn't go out right away and feed on bad bacteria but it did made me realise I'm not totally cut out for keeping something alive on my kitchen bench and I had managed to achieved what I set out to do. I know I can do it if I ever decide to again. Ralph shall live on... Stuart says all bread that comes out of the oven is a little bit of a Ralph from now on.