I had hoped for the longest time that I would have a Suzanne. Everything I’ve tried in the past has failed, mostly due to my lack of persistence and patience. But finally, success! After a promising start, a difficult and a delayed middle, she reached her completion!

Oh, settle down. 🙂 She’s a sourdough starter.

Let’s start from the beginning, shall we?

I’d been talking with a friend about our inability to get sourdough starters going in the past, and how many different methods there seemed to be to get one going. The Bread Baker’s Apprentice book that MM gave me weeks ago includes a method as well. After all that discussion, I thought I’d take up the challenge again, since we’re stuck close to home for a while.

But what method to choose? Knowing myself, I had to find an easy one – which led me to the King Arthur Flour website. Starting out with equal parts water and whole wheat flour, and then feedings of equal parts all-purpose flour and water, meant I had pretty much everything I needed to get going.

I started out with a wide diameter bowl with a fair amount of success for the first few days.

The starter showed a couple nice bubbles, but nothing crazy, which is what the website suggested should happen. Once I started to feed it twice a day, it continued to produce a few bubbles each feeding. Again, this is what the KAF method said would happen. It was an interesting consistency. Halfway between a thick batter, like pancakes, and an honest to goodness bread dough.

By the way, a digital scale is really necessary for this as well as any bread recipe…

About five days into the experiment, I’d finally gotten the feedings down to a routine – and I thought I was making progress. Unfortunately, that was about the time that the consistency changed, and I didn’t think it was for the better. So a made a snap decision, and switched the bowls, to a more rounded one. Once I had done that, I found the starter to rise more consistently and create more bubbles, which is what I was really hoping for! I could finally see multiple bubbles on the surface, as well as around the outside.

Finally!

Unfortunately, failed to take a picture of this success, mainly because I was so excited that I was finally getting somewhere! 🙁

Once I had determined the container the starter would use for its permanent residence, I took care of the final feeding and discard, using the discard to make Rustic Sourdough Bread.

And then it was time to name it. It had been fickle, and took its sweet time getting ready, so by sheer stereotype, it needed to be a girl’s name. And I thought I should stick with some kind of alliteration, so her name had to start with an S.

And hence, Suzanne the Sourdough Starter was christened!