Sour dough

Yesterday a friend called round with a jar of sour dough starter and rye flour to feed it that she had started 6 days ago. I have been making bread at La Singlarie for around nine years now ever since the 30 minute round trip to the bakers before lunch started to take up valuable time which I could of been sanding, painting, holding up crucial pieces of timber or passing tools to the proper workman (farmer J) when we were building the gites.

On the whole I make a batch of white organic wheat flour loaves to last the week for us and if gite guests want them. The flour comes from an organic farm outside of Albi in the Tarn where it is growen and milled. Brought in sacs of 25kg it lasts well along with a 5 kg sac of wholemeal which I sometimes add to the white or make rotis with or add to Hovis malt flour to make it last a little bit longer (cant buy it here). Sometimes sunflower, pumpkin, poppy and linseed's are added sometimes nuts and even more occasionally brioche is made when there is a few too many eggs around. But I have never made sour dough bread.

I have often thought I should have a go but have visions of the story of the overflowing porridge pot but with starter dough, for I understand it has a life of its own, a bit like having another pet it needs to be cared for and fed. I'm not very good at keeping plant pots alive - can I keep a starter dough going?

Reading up in The River Cottage book on bread starter doughs can go on for years, one even for 30. I cant see this one reaching that old. So today I halved the starter, added more water and flour, mixed it and left it in its jar to 'do it thing'. Tomorrow the same process but I will give the discarded dough to a friend down the road, I feel I cant have sole responsibility of a living dough (and may need to get some of her should anything happen to mine).

Not reading the instructions properly I didn't read the bit about needing to make a sponge dough 12 hours before making the bread so as it was a hot sunny day, yes the heat has finally come back I stuck it outside in its bowl inside a plastic bag to 'do its thing'. It went bubbly so I guess that's on the right track. Then added wholemeal flour, salt and water, mixed, needed and placed in a bowl to prove for an hour. Re needed and rested it is now proving again, the more you continue this process the better apparently then it needs to be left for four hours, which means it may be a late night, one I  cant afford as we have two pigs to butcher tomorrow so its going to have to 'do its thing' over night and hopefully will still resemble dough that can go in the oven tomorrow morning - that's  if it hasn't taken  over the kitchen by then, visions of dogs covered in dough stuck to the floor come to mind.