Follow the Sourdough Day 5 The Sponge

Follow the Sourdough Day 5 The Sponge Hello, this is Chef John from foodwishes.com with another installment of Follow the Sourdough. It is day five and we’re making the sponge. So here we go, my starter is ready. It’s frothy, it’s sour, it’s fermented, it’s bubbly and I can’t wait any longer. So I’m going to make my sponge. So you’re going to pour your starter, all of it into a bowl. You’re going to add a cup of flour and a cup of warm water, not hot, warm. If it’s too hot, if it’s over 100 degrees, it will kill the yeast and you have done all that for nothing. So make sure it’s just barely warm. You can even use cold water. It just takes a little longer for the sponge to start bubbling. If your starter is ready, do not move along with this recipe until you’ve seen the last three episodes, okay? So just refrigerate your starter and then you can follow along with the rest of it because you really got to get the timing of when you make the sponge and the bread down. Otherwise, you’re going to be baking bread at like three in the morning. So read the post, watch the next episodes, and then take your starter and do what I did today. So you’re going to whisk that together very smooth. It’s going to again look like that pancake batter we started with. And then we’re just going to let this sit out. So what’s going to happen here? Our starter, which should have a very active and enthusiastic yeast colony in it, it's going to grow into this sponge. It’s going to take that flour and water and it’s going to start bubbling. Cover it with plastic. Poke some holes in it so you got some breathability. And this is going to take anywhere between four and 10 hours. I don’t know how warm your kitchen is or wherever you’re going to keep this, so you’ll just going to leave this out. So I’m going to say mine is going to go about eight hours. The longer you leave it, the longer you let your sponge ferment, the more sour your sourdough will be. Alright, so that’s it for this episode. Make sure you read the post for the next steps and as always, enjoy!