Sour Dough in Bread Machine, keeping sour dough starter alive, gardening whilst the starter matures

I’ve perfected making sour dough at my place. It’s taken a while for me to get it working properly. I’ve come a long way from my first attempt at making sour dough some 4 years ago. I promised a viewer I’d bake a loaf in my bread machine but as I began filming I realised I hadn’t checked to see if my bread machine had a ‘bake only’ option! When I checked, it didn’t. Sour dough needs a lot more time to rise in the final proofing stage (about 22 hours for mine) and unless your bread machine has that option & mine doesn’t, you can’t bake sour dough in your bread machine. So I had to bake my loaf in my oven. I hope you still enjoyed watching the episode and learnt a few more tricks to help you on your sour dough baking journey. Using & Keeping Starter Alive: Feed your starter when you take it out of the fridge before you use it to begin making your bread with 2-4 tablespoons of wholemeal flour & 1-2 tablespoons unchlorinated water. Place on bench & let it double in size. This could take 4-8 hours. Once doubled go to next step of preparing the starter to go into bread machine to make your bread. Then after you’ve used your starter to start your baking leave about 1-2 tablespoons of starter behind in the jar and place 2-4 tablespoons of wholemeal flour & 1-2 tablespoons of unchlorinated water and mix to a stiff starter. Add more flour if needed to make it stiff. Then place in fridge. It will keep alive this way for 3-4 days & even longer. Sour Dough Ingredients: 400 mls unchlorinated water 2 tsp Himalayan Salt 30 g olive oil (or 30mls) 1 tablespoon sugar 2 tablespoons powdered milk 150-200 g active starter 600 g plain bread flour Method: Place all ingredients in bread machine and select dough menu. After mixing & first proofing turn onto a floured board & stretch dough using floured hands. Form dough gently into a long log & place in a large oiled baking tin and sprinkle with flour. Let it rise for about 22 hours on the bench. Bake your dough in a large sandwich loaf in a hot oven (200-230C) Turn out of tin to cool off. Music by Indiebox ‘Taking Care’. Royalties paid via Bensound subscription. Thank you!