The Sponge

I have my own living, breathing yeast colony, full of microbes from my own neighborhood, sitting on my kitchen counter top. Last night I poured a cup of this starter into a large bowl with some warm water and flour. Then I fed some more flour and water to my starter. This morning, when I removed the cloth from over my new colony, I found...the SPONGE...beautiful and bubbly, smelling very yeasty. 

Later today the SPONGE will have some other things added to it and become a loaf of Challah for a farm gathering tomorrow morning. My fingers are crossed. I'm anticipating a pretty and tasty braided loaf. 

I used the instructions from Sandor Katz's Wild Fermentation to make my starter. Then I made sourdough pancakes from my starter twice. I thought the pancakes were very good and they cooked up easily. When I made the second batch of pancakes, I didn't leave the mix to sit for hours as the author suggested and they were still airy and delicious. Now it's on to Challah. It's very exciting to know that I don't need to buy yeast from the grocery store anymore unless I want to. And I can bake healthier bread.