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It seems like everyone in this town (Brighton, UK) realised that they were about to run out of dried yeast yesterday, and there's none to buy. This morning I took to twitter with photos of the beginnings of a sourdough starter and there are a lot of photos of folk doing the same.

Mine won't work though. It's Half and half strong white flour and whole buckwheat flour. The idea is that the latter will donate yeast. Or maybe it will...

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Give it time. It takes about a week to bootstrap a starter. You need to feed it every day by giving it equal amounts fresh water & flour and discarding about half of the starter.

Once you have a stable starter, it's very forgiving. I tend to use pretty much all of it and then toss some flour/water into the container it used to be in. The little starter left behind in the container mixes with the flour and water and it lives on. I keep it in the fridge when I don't need it.

I had to give it 3-4 days before I got some activity. Any flour should work as long as it is unbleached. I've had good success with just Sainsbury's strong white bread flour. It has given me a fragrant peachy starter.

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