Certified Organic Live Sourdough Starter, Very Old and Mature - 46 year old Lake District Starter, Bread Starter - 80g for all types of flour with printed instruction by Kombuchaorganic®

Update: 3 months later: starter still going strong, alive and well. Feeding once a day now or even less and it’s continuing to make fantastic bread!Wanted to try making sourdough after baking my own bread using my Panasonic bread machine for the past 8 months or so. I did not have the energy or time to cultivate my own culture so I bought this starter from Amazon.It arrives in a small plastic sealed bag, as other reviewers have mentioned. Its quite watery on arrival. When opened, the intense smell of sourdough bread made me realise that this is the real deal and the bread would turn out with amazing flavour!Instructions could do with a bit of improving. Searching online I fed the starter with 100grams of Wholefood Earth Organic Wholemeal/Dark Rye Flour and 100 ml of boiled and cooled down to room temperature water and stirred into a plastic container. Within 2-3 hours the starter had almost doubled in size and retained its volume for a good 12 hours or so. I then used the first 100grams to make a sourdough bread with white bread flour in my bread machine which turned out amazing! Used its sourdough programme, removed 50 grams of water and 50 grams of flour from the base bread recipe and replaced with 100 grams of starter. It has a bit less rise than yeast but the flavour and texture was out of this world and a massive step up from the yeast type. Good open air bubbles in the bread, chewy and a very crunchy crust.Fed the starter again on the same day with another 100 grams of flour and water and it doubled again within a few hours and retained its strength. The culture is certainly very active and eats up the flour at an astonishing rate. Now I will split the culture in two and have one as backup in case I do something wrong and kill one of it.Have just prepared also a couple of pizza's to try tonight! Looking forward to tasting them and see whether they are like the Franco Manca sour dough pizza which I love!Highly recommended, the flavour, smell and rise is excellent!

I've been using this for 6 months & was a novice to sourdough bread making. This has made the most delicious bread. The advice online for sourdough is akin to building a rocket. I broke all the rules- used tap water to feed, metal spoon, and I always use the starter straight from the fridge. It still produces the most delicious sourdough. Initially I did follow the instructions with the packet - in the first instance using organic rye to feed. Then switching to whatever I have onhand. I store it in the fridge & feed when I remember or bake. It is very forgiving, and produces ace bread.

I have tried starting my own sourdough but without success and have given up.After a while I have found out that you can buy it online and decided to give this one a go and I'm glad I did.Everything was super easy.When you will first start looking into baking your own bread using a sourdough starter ( which is one million times healthier than with fast yeast) you will come across a lot of information and details that seem like a lot and it will put you off from actually doing it.I know because that's how I felt, but I'm glad I persisted.At first, after receiving the starter, I have done things by the book because I didn't want to mess up. And I mean things like perfect measurements, using certain flour, kneed a certain time ( on the clock) , very precise proofing (controled time and temperature) then left in fridge before baking; and other things like feeding the starter before using, only using it if it floats, etc. All of this required a lot of planning and time which I didn't have, but I couldn't give it up because I wanted to feed my little boy bread which was healthy and nutritious.That's when I left the tons of rules aside and started experimenting to see what the easiest option would be and it is like follows:When you first receive the starter weigh it; add the same amount of flour (any flour. It can be different flour every time. I haven't tried gluten free) and same amount of water in grames (yes, weigh your water to match the weight of the flour). Mix it and that's it. Leave it to double in size and you're good to go. After the first feed, you can double it again and again or add as little flour as you want ( doesn't matter what quantity, just add the same weight of water). Don't worry if you're a few grams off, nothing will happen. You can store it in the fridge without feeding it for months even. I have used the starter straight out of the fridge and it wasn't floating either. Dough still proofed and has come out great every time.I use a bread machine to kneed the dough for 10 min, than straight to a bowl for proofing. I have left it to proof between 4 hours to even over night (overproofed) and the bread still has come out alright. Haven't given it 3-4 kneading sessions at different intervals, haven't put it in the fridge before going in the oven and the bread was still great.To conclude, after all this typing: Don't listen to all that nonsense about doing everything by the book, because it will put you off and you'll go back to buying sponge like bread with 0 nutrition from the supermarket. Buy a good, organic unbleached flour and you'll see the difference. When I first tasted the sourdough bread I made with the starter I got all emotional... I remembered the taste of the bread my grandmother use to make for me and my sister when we were little, with flour from garains she used to grow, and she baked it in a wood fire oven. She didn't have some fancy kitchen scale to measure everything or worry about controling the environment for the starter to grow. She had a hundred other things to do around the house so she couldn't spend hours on the bread alone.Her bread was amazing every time.I will never go back to buying unhealthy supermarket bread with 20 ingredients in it.Add flour and water to your starter whenever you have the chance, even once a month if kept in the fridge is fine.Add strater to flour, kneed it, proof it, bake it. Done! Lovely bread doesn't need be complicated.I know this from my nan, may she and my grandfather rest in peace.Thanks for reading this and God bless everyone!