Photo by Nadya Spetnitskaya on Unsplash

It was a photograph of perfectly turned out sourdough on my Instagram feed that inspired me to have a go at making my own bread. “It’s just flour and water,” the caption read, inviting me and thousands of other followers to give the art of breadmaking a crack.

With great anticipation I prepared a starter, a balanced mixture of water and flour. Thanks to wild yeast, the starter became a living thing, bubbling away in the pantry while I got on with other things. Every day I “fed” my starter by discarding some of the mixture and adding fresh water and flour. Then, weeks later, when the starter was ready, it was time to get hands-on with my first mixture of dough.

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