I ate my first sourdough bread at Hugo’s of Hyatt Regency Hong Kong, Tsim Sha Tsui, my first hotel workplace.

Sourdough bread is not common in Hong Kong. It is a kind of “Western bread” which takes time, effort and knowledge to bake using natural yeast, which might be the reason why chain bread shops won’t offer sourdough bread considering cost and efficiency. Even though sourdough bread becomes available in standalone bakery these few years, it is not priced at a reasonable price. In addition, as I live in “far” New Territories, not CBD of Hong Kong, I could not grab a sourdough bread easily. Therefore, the desire to bake my own sourdough bread arises.

When I was still a full-time worker, cultivating sourdough starter was challenging (indeed keeping sourdough starter is always not an easy matter itself!). Sometimes I forgot to feed, or was unable to observe its growth and conditions to adjust the feeding accordingly. Amidst a busy, hectic schedule, urban workers like me would opt for storing the starter in the fridge during weekday, and feed it “aggressively” before baking.

With all the references online from sourdough masters plus personal experiences, below is some tips of keeping a sourdough starter “healthy” and “active”.

• feed the starter when it is active (volume reaching 2x or above)

• if you put the starter in the fridge like me, after you take it out from the fridge, i realise feeding 1:1:1 twice a day is more effective than feeding 1:2:2 at the first place. It is to cultivate more yeast in the starter, followed by increased ratio like 1:2:2 to feed the proliferated yeast.

• Some people define active starter as “increasing the volume to 3x or above in six hours”.

• I used to cultivate one more starter using 100% rye, in addition to my existing one built with all purpose flour. I baked once using the 100% rye starter with AP flour, honestly I could not taste the difference - perhaps adding more rye in the bread component should make a more obvious difference. Thus I give up the culture, in order to spare more time on developing the techniques in perfecting sourdough!

Babying sourdough starter is a long road. Feel free to share your path with me!