Pumpernickel, day 1

Sourdough is probably not the best of baking experiments for me.  Starters apparently require regular feeding, and, well, I'm not the one who feeds our cats.  I do feed our fish, though, when the pond isn't frozen, and that's a twice-a-day thing.  So maybe I can remember to feed microorganisms so I can later eat them.

Ahem.

Anyway, I don't entirely remember how I got onto pumpernickel a couple weeks ago, but I think it was because we got a loaf for New Year's Eve.  It was much more popular than the white bread, so I thought about making some.  I've got an okay recipe for the bread machine, but then I looked at the Wikipedia article.  I got to the second paragraph (no coloring agents... Malliard reaction... 16 to 24 hour baking...) and my brain said, "I want to try that."

So, I went in search of recipes.  There's a large batch one linked from the Wikipedia page, but let's face it: I can't make forty loaves' worth of bread at a time.  The recipe has yeast, so I'll have to see how it goes without it.  I don't have old pumpernickel to throw in, either; I'm going to try it with cooked whole rye (as hinted at in this recipe).

For now, though, I am on Day 1.  Day 1 means means I need to make a sourdough starter.  Not hard: 50g of flour, 50 g (mL) of water, tossed in a bowl and stirred.

The initial rye sourdough starter

Let's face it; my kitchen scale sucks.  So while I was measuring out the 50g of rye flour for the initial starter, I also measured out some food for it for the next few days.  The water is easy to do with my bread machine's measuring cup.

Sourdough food

So, yes, I'm better about prepacking lunches for microorganisms than for myself.