Lara's Dinner Party (Part 5, Truffled Autumn Salad)

This is a really easy salad that is light and could be in some distant galaxy be described as healthy but still fills and warms you up like you need Autumn dishes to do. All of the flavours are strong and work brilliantly with another. You should only prepare this a few minutes before you serve, you can cook and chop the ingredients beforehand but don't dress or assemble it until you're about to serve it as it will go soggy and the elements in the salad will lose their texture. There are no measurements really required here, just use about equal amounts of bacon, figs and dolcelatte.
The word 'Autumn' in the title is a little misleading as you could really make this anytime, I just think the oaky browns and warming tastes of this are quintessentially Autumnal. If you were going to do it in Summer, you may not even need to caramelise the figs as they'd probably be sweet enough already, just add a bit of balsamic vinegar into the dressing.
1)Slowly cook a few rashers of good quality smoked bacon until they have dried out and gone very crispy. This crispness works as the crunch in the salad, so you don't need croutons.
2)Chop some dolcelatte (or any blue cheese like stilton, roquefort, or a sharp goat's cheese) into small-ish chunks and keep in the fridge so they don't soften too much.
3)In the pan you cooked the bacon, cook some maple syrup and balsamic vinegar until reduced and sticky but not burnt. Add some quartered figs and cook in there for about a minute until they soak up the honey and vinegar and caramelise a tiny bit. Only a minute or so as you don't want them mushy. In place of figs you could use pears, apples or even quince but just poach it first. If you're going to go for pears, and they do work very well, don't bother peeling or stalking them, chop them as they are and throw them in the pan.
4)Prepare a ripe avocado by peeling it, removing the stone and slicing it.
5)To make the dressing, combine 80ml of extra virgin olive oil and the juice of the lemon you rinded from Part 2 of the dinner party, a pinch of sea or rock salt, a tablespoon of wholegrain mustard and I know this seems like a posh and unnecessary ingredient but if you can, add a small teaspoon of white truffle oil to add a delicious musky garlic flavour.
6)I am incredibly lazy so used a bag of peppery salad leaves, rocket or watercress is a good bet, and a few bags of just mild mixed leaves. Toss all the other ingredients into the salad well and let the guest serve their own salad dressing.

Lara's Dinner Party (Part 4, Baked Camembert and Roasted Garlic)

This is the starter and is very easy to do; you can whip it up just 10 minutes before you're guests arrive but I like to put the garlic in for an hour on a very low heat so it goes very sweet and soft. I did it when the bread was proving.
1)Cut the top off 4 bulbs of garlic and place it cut side down in a small baking tin. Pour in some olive oil, a little honey, a few sprigs of rosemary and two bay leaves, some rock salt and a handful of peppercorns.
2)Place it in the oven at about 150 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour.
3)Peel any wrapping and stickers off a round of Camembert and place it back in the wooden container it came in. Slash a cross in the centre.
4)Place in the oven for 10 minutes and serve it with the bread from part 3 and the roasted garlic.

Lara's Dinner Party (Part 3, Pain D'epi)

A Pain D'epi is a French loaf made in the shape of a stalk of wheat. This means the bread is almost like a tear and share, so works really well served with the salad and starter as the guests can tear off a chunk for themselves rather than slice one. The recipe is a basic bread dough so you can make a regular loaf or dinner rolls if you prefer.
1)Combine 500g strong white bread flour in a bowl with a 7g sachet of yeast and 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt. Make sure the yeast and salt don't directly contact.
2)Stir in 325ml of lukewarm water and a tablespoon of virgin olive oil or other fat such as 25g lard or vegetable shortening until you have a nice soft dough.
3)Lightly dust the work surface with flour and knead the dough until it is smooth and elastic and cleans the surface of bits of itself. About 10 minutes.
4)Coat in oil and leave in a covered bowl in a slightly warm place or room temperature until doubled in size, about 1-2 hours depending on the warmth of the place you left it, or overnight in the fridge.
5)Turn the risen dough out on a floured surface and punch the air holes down.
6)Divide the dough in two and roll each piece out to a long baguette shape, and put on a floured tin and cover them with oiled cling film to rise again for about 45 minutes.
7)Once they've doubled again, take a pair of kitchen scissors and snip a blob of dough and turn it one way then snip another blob of dough about the same size as the first beneath it

and turn it the opposite way. Don't cut them all the way down, leave them connected. This is quite fiddly and messy but they will look neat after they've baked. Have each blob of dough you snip equal size as best you can.
8)Purely for the look, dust them lightly with more flour. Bake in a pre-heated steamy oven at 180 degrees until golden brown and hollow when tapped on the bottom. You may need to swap the loaves in the oven so they bake evenly.
9)Take them out of the tin and leave to cool on a wire rack.

Lara's Dinner Party (Part 2, Lemon Shortbread)

Delicious, melting shortbread makes a perfect accompaniment to the creme brulees. I don't know why but the lemon in it just kind of works beautifully with the custard flavour in the creme brulees. If you don't fancy the lemon just leave it out. I made this while the bread was on its first prove, which I would recommend to stop jobs piling up. Another tip is to have the dishwasher loading and hand-wash any pans or boards you use to reduce mess to make sure the whole process of cooking lots of different things go even smoother. The cleaning up is the main thing I struggle with because I'm incompetent at basic life skills, but I'm sure you'll be fine.
1)Stir 125g of plain flour and 60g of semolina or cornflour.
2)Rub in 125g of butter with your finger tips until it is thoroughly mixed in. You will notice that the mixture will start to clump together as the butter gets mixed in.
3)Combine 60g of caster sugar with the grated zest of one large or two small lemons.

4)Stir it into the flour mixture and gently bring it together to form a dough. Roll it to about the thickness of a pound coin, and in a round. To make it look even neater use a knife to cut a smooth circular edge and crimp the edge with a fork, prick over the whole thing and score 8 wedges in the dough.
5)Transfer to a baking sheet lined with greaseproof paper and  bake in a pre-heated oven at 150 degrees for about 35 minutes.
 until golden brown.
6)Leave to cool in the tin for 5 minutes before gently easing it off the tin with a palette knife and leave to cool completely on a wire rack.

Lara's Dinner Party (Part 1, Creme Brulee)

Lara, I'm making it up to you, with more food! I'm cooking a three-course dinner for my family, Lara and my other friend Kitty. I'll post the recipes in the order I made them, and I made dessert of creme brulees the night before first. Here's how I did it!
Here I see I made them in cutesy heart shaped ramekins; that has its virtues, although it is much more welcoming and a lot easier to cook this in one dish- just add about 10 minutes to the cooking time.
1)Whisk 6 egg yolks and 60g caster sugar together until it's a little paler and thicker. It won't increase in volume, but it will thicken and all the sugar should be nearly dissolved. To separate the eggs, I like to crack the egg in the palm of my hand and let the egg white fall between my fingers and flip the yolk between each hand until it's clean of white.
2)In a saucepan, whisk 450ml of double cream, 100g mascarpone that's softened at room temperature a bit, and a teaspoon of vanilla beans from a pod or jar. I prefer seeds over essence as the taste is better and you don't alter the consistency. If you can only get essence use 2 teaspoons. Whisk it until there are no lumps of mascarpone.
3)Heat to nearly boiling, then remove from the heat. If a film has formed over the cream then whisk it back in before gradually pouring it into the eggs, mixing constantly. Don't beat it as it goes foamy, just stir until it's combined.
5)Pour into your ramekins. How many you fill depends on their size. Pouring through a sieve helps dispel air bubbles- if a large cloud remains tap it off with a spoon (consider your cook's treat). Put the ramekins in a roasting tin and pour water from a recently boiled kettle around them to about half full so they cook evenly.
6)Bake them in a pre-heated oven at 150 degrees and put them on a low shelf so they don't brown. Cook for 30 minutes until firmer but still a little wobbly. It should jiggle like a dance move but not wave like a Mexican. Some may need 5 minutes longer. If they go slightly brown and messy at the top like mine, that's no problem as the caramel will hide it. If they feel very wobbly that's okay as they do firm up in the fridge.
7)Before you torch them you will need to let them cool in the fridge. I left them overnight, but it certainly doesn't need that long; you're just aiming to have them fully chilled. Take them out and sprinkle fully and evenly with caster sugar, then gently torch them with a blowtorch until the sugar goes a dark amber colour, but don't burn it!

You've got to pitta pocket or two!..The pun didn't cover the kebabs...

The only thing that binds these two recipes is that you serve them together, and any kebab shop will agree with me on that. The kebabs are again very customisable, but I do recommend that you use the chorizo (I used the little sausages, but you could chop up some salami) and the pineapple chunks; it may seem unorthodox but the sweet juicy grilled pineapple works fantastically with the greasy, spicy chorizo and charred veg. Other than that you can use any veg or meat chunks you want or even prawns.
However, whilst chorizo does grill beautifully when it gets a crispy crust and juicy centre, that crispy crust can fairly easily turn into garlicky cardboard if it burns a little too much on the grill or BBQ. If this worries you, though it shouldn't, then double up the basting liquid and use it to firstly marinade some pork chops cut into cubes, about 1 for every 2 people before threading them onto the skewers and basting and grilling as usual.

A little note on the pitta breads, if you want them to be nice and puffy then roll them ridiculously thin and have the oven really hot and steamy. Mine were quite big so were oddly shaped as I couldn't keep them round filing them out, so you could probably get about 10 rather than my 8. Do not let them go crispy in the oven. If you want the classic speckled look, cook them in a lightly oiled skillet, but they won't be very puffy. The bread dough I used is a relatively basic white dough, so you could make bread rolls, a regular white loaf or if you add a few more tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, a pizza dough.

1)In a large bowl, combine 375g of strong white flour, 1 sachet of fast action dry yeast, and 1 and a half teaspoons of salt, just don't let the salt and yeast contact directly. If you have some nigella seeds add a tablespoon of them, I just didn't have any.

2) Stir in 250ml water, 2 tbsp natural yoghurt and 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil gradually until you have a soft but not sticky dough. You may not need all the water.

3)Knead the dough for about 10 minutes. A good way to do this is to hold the dough down with one hand and push it out with the heel of your other hand and then roll it back, turn it around, beat it with both hands a bit and then repeat. You will notice that you can push the dough further without it breaking as you knead it more because the gluten strands will develop and become elastic and smooth.

4)Bring the dough together, roll it in oil and rise it covered in a bowl in a warm-ish place (I just use the kitchen shelves) until doubled in size. About 1-2 hours.

5)Turn the dough onto a floured surface and gently punch it down until all the air bubbles are out. Divide into 10 equal-sized balls and roll them out until very, very thin, you should almost be able to see your hand through them.

6)Cook them in batches, by placing 2 or 3 on a floured tray that has been preheating in the 220 degree oven with water at the bottom. Only cook them for about 3 minutes. When they're out of the oven wrap them in a teatowell so they remain nice and soft.

1)For the kebabs, chop up some veg into bite-sized chunks. I used peppers, onions (I hypocritically used white onions when I recommend you use red onions), the small chorizo sausages, pineapple chunks which I extremely lazily bought ready chopped, and you could use courgettes or slightly steamed asparagus too.

2)Make a nice sauce to drizzle over the kebabs before grilling by mixing the juice of one lemon, 80ml of ordinary olive oil, 2 crushed garlic cloves, a heaped teaspoon of paprika, salt and pepper and a handful of chopped parsley.

3)Thread the veg and chorizo on some metal or wooden skewers (and if you go for wood soak them in water first). Don't be alarmed if the wooden ones blacken, because they look like porpucine spines when you remove the food from it which is...cute...

4)Baste each kebab liberally with the sauce and grill it under a scorching grill until well-cooked and slightly charred. Don't be tame, scorch the edges well as it makes a delicious sweet flavour on the peppers and onions. This makes a lot of smoke so prepare your ears for the smoke alarm. Mine have pretty much become immune which, now I think about it, is quite a bad thing...

5)To serve them, stuff the pita breads with the kebab paraphernalia, salad and any sauce you want. Hummus is also good with it. If your pita breads didn't form a packet, just fold or wrap it.

Thai Chicken Noodle Soup and Spring Rolls

After a few very fiddly and difficult recipes I want to go back to the theme I tried to create of 'easy'. And real life easy not professional chef cooking show easy.
When I include two recipes on one post there is usually a common theme or ingredient and the one here are the intriguing Vermicelli Noodles. They are made from mung beans but are commonly mistaken to be a type of rice noodle. They are also easier to cook than rice noodles, you just need to soak them in boiling water and are also much stranger, looking like loads of jellyfish tentacles. If you wanted to use egg noodles in the soup you could, but I would always prefer the beanthreads. You can't substitute them in the spring rolls, however. You can get them in any Asian food shop. To cook them put them in a bowl and soak in boiling water for about 5 minutes, checking when they're soft but still with a little bite to them.
Both recipes are also Asian, but the noodle soup is inspired by Thailand and the spring rolls are Vietnamese. This means they obviously wouldn't be served together, but I decided to as a plate of cold spring rolls with dipping sauce isn't what you crave on a cold English day. The soup is also not traditional as it is slightly creamy from coconut milk whereas a normal one would be a thin broth which again is not very comforting for this time of year. I recommend meat like prawns or cooked chicken in the soup; I used cooked chicken thighs but I think breast would be better. When you cook the chicken, save any juices for flavour in the soup and leave it to cool in a foil package to help it go nice and tender.

1)I'll start with the spring rolls. Take a rice paper wrapper and run it under warm water until it's soft but not hard to handle. Carefully dab off any excess water. Keep it as flat as possible while working with it, you don't want creases.
2)Take some fillings like matchstick carrots, peppers spring onions, beansprouts (I'll write an entry on how to sprout beansprouts in the future) whatever veg you like. You could also use some cooked chicken or prawns if you like. Also use some cooled soaked noodles. Make a small pile of fillings on the side of the wrapper closest to you, carefully pull the wrapper over the fillings and roll it up like you would a fajita. I rolled them in another wrapper afterwards to keep everything tight, but this is optional. Serve them raw with a nice dipping sauce or the soup.
1)For the soup, mix a tablespoon or so of Thai curry paste, red or green, into 1 litre of good chicken stock.
2)Bring to the boil and add some soy sauce, lime juice, fish sauce if you have it (I didn't), a teaspoon or so of turmeric, about 3.5cm of grated ginger, 2 snipped up lime leaves, a bruised lemongrass stalk, chopped coriander, stalks and all, some muscovado sugar or honey to balance out the flavours and a few chopped spring onions. Bring to the boil and add 400ml of coconut milk.
3)From here it's mostly up to you, add some quick-cook veg like sugar snap peas, baby corn, spinach, pak choi, some cooked meat and your beanthreads noodles. Let it all cook together until the veg is cooked but still crunchy and the noodles are warmed through. To serve it, use a spaghetti server to scoop the solid matter and a ladel to serve the liquid so you get an equal amount of material in each bowl. Eat it with a fork and spoon (Thai food is not traditionally served with chopsticks) and top with fresh coriander.

When you're too cheap to buy your bestie a birthday present

So it was my main bae Lara's birthday today, and I couldn't afford (as much as I love her) to buy her a present. As a result, I kidded myself that making her something would be as thoughtful as buying a box of makeup or food that a professional has made. All it took was some chopping and chocolate melting and I had a cute gift that does, despite my trying hardest, look like I cheaped out on her. I did try to get you something nice baby I did. The flavours I used in this chocolate bark are very customisable, you could use any kind of dried fruit or nuts or even crushed toffees or mints. Nothing at all but chocolate is also possible, but I like the extra flavours and textures. Be very wary of your friend's allergies, as anaphylactic shock is not a nice birthday present.

1)The first step is to melt your chocolate. You can use milk or dark and also have some white chocolate to marble with the dark chocolate. Now me and chocolate melting do not get on, so my method is to have a bain marie, a bowl over simmering water, and turn the water off once it's boiled as I always end up burning the chocolate. If you are competent at melting chocolate, use any method you want. Buy more chocolate than it looks like you'll need, as a bar of it has much more surface area than volume.
2)Pour the chocolate into a small tray lined with baking parchment, you don't need to grease ontop of it but have some grease on the tray so the paper sticks neatly. Then, pour some white chocolate in streaks over the dark and use a knife to gently marble the white chocolate, but do not mix it with the dark, just swirl it in a little.
3)Sprinkle some chopped nuts and dried fruit over the chocolate, I used Brazil and walnuts and some dried apricots, but any will work well.
4)Let it set in the fridge until fully hardened. There's no point doing any Bake-Off style tempering or anything as the chocolate just won't stay shiny.
5)Take it out of the tin and peel off the parchment, then break it up into bite-sized pieces. Keep it cool while you send it to your friend so it stays fresh and the marble stays clear.

ZOMG SUSHI!!!

I first made sushi about the time I was in my smug know-all 11 year old phase, but boy were they dreadful. I never went back. Until now, a neighbour of mine had some Asian lodgers staying who left loads of their delicious Asian ingredients like Mirin, Rice Vinegar, a fantastic bamboo mat, loads! A quick raid of the local Asian grocery Setonaikai (they should have kicked me out to be honest, I spent hours) later to get the sushi rice and nori, I was set. After a couple of disasters and something you could describe as a success, here's how I did my California Rolls, Sesame inside out Rolls and toasted asparagus Nigiri.

• Be very careful to not burn the rice, keep the heat low and be vigilant.
• This way of cooking rice is just what it says on the box. Follow the recipe on the back of yours.
• Keep a bowl of water on sight at all times, as the sticky rice is impossible to handle without it.
• The fillings I used are just because I was cooking for a vegetarian, if you wanted to tackle raw fish or sashimi such as salmon or tuna be my guest, just keep the fish slices thin and neat and make sure they are safe raw!
• Don't overstuff the rolls, keep the rice layer nice and thin and only use a little veg or fish.
• Inside out Rolls often use a spicy tuna mixture, made from tinned tuna mixed with mayo and chilli sauce, you can use this if you wish.
• I found the hand-shaped Nigiri easier than the rolled recipes,so you can try that first to get a feel of the rice if you wish.
• For Nigiri some recipes call for tearing the nori, but I would recommend cutting it with kitchen scissors, as it looks neater and is much easier.
• Don't spread rice all over the nori, leave a few inches at the end of the mat furthest from you. About 3/4 should be covered.
• Wrap the roll very tightly using your fingers and the mat.
• For inside out Rolls you should try a few different methods, they won't be as tight and may fall a little and lose their roundedness, but that's okay. Be careful that the cling film isnt wrapped into the roll, it should just be on the outside.
• Keep the seam or join of the nori where the roll ended on the bottom of the roll when you slice it.
• Use a very sharp knife, I recommend serated to slice the sushi and keep the blade wet.
• Always serve sushi with a little wasabi, pickled ginger and soy sauce.

1)Wash 250g of sushi rice in a pot by swilling it in water then draining the cloudy water like you're panning for gold. Repeat about 4 times until the water starts to run clear then finally drain it in a seive.
2)Return the rice to the pot and cover it with 330ml of water (or simply 1 cup of rice to 1 1/3 cups water) and bring it to the boil. Then quickly lower the heat and leave to simmer for 10 minutes, stirring very occasionally just to check its not sticking to the bottom of the pot.
3)Leave to cool in the pan for 25-30 minutes with the lid on.
4)Leave to cool completely before folding in 3tbsp of good rice vinegar, 2tbsp of white sugar and a tsp of salt.
5)Place a sheet of nori on the bamboo mat and cover it lightly and evenly with the rice, leaving some space either end (see above).
6)Arrange some thinly chopped matchstick fillings like carrot or spring onion on the side of nori close to you, but make sure it's on the rice not the nori.
7)Start the roll tightly with your hand and then use the bamboo mat to roll the sushi carefully and tightly.
8)Use a sharp knife to slice the sushi, saw through it gently and don't press hard, let the knife do the work.
9)For Inside out Rolls go to step 5 but then cover the rice with cling film and flip it over. Have the side without rice under it towards you and put the fillings there. Roll it up very tightly, being careful the cling film isn't being wrapped with it.
10)Take it off the mat and pull the cling film on either side of the roll to tighten it. Unwrap the cling carefully.
11)Keep your hand and knife wet to cut the sushi carefully.
12)Finish them off by rolling in toasted sesame seeds.
13)For the asparagus nigiri, steam the asparagus for 2 minutes until it's slightly softened and bright green.
14)Stir-fry the asparagus in sesame oil and soy sauce until the edges go brown and crispy.
15)Wet your hands well and take equal sized blobs of rice and shape using your palm and other hand's fingers to make rough rectangle shaped rice balls.
16)Cut each asparagus spears in half and layer the halves on the rice balls, you should top each one with about 3 pieces of asparagus. Cut the nori into roughly 1-inch wide strips and wrap them around rice and topping. Have the join of the nori ribbon at the bottom or use water to stick them.
There you have it! Bit fiddly but very rewarding and tasty no matter how they look. Trust me, it was the only way I enjoyed mine.

Sourdough start-up loans

I always wanted to try sourdough, but I was put off by the long starter-making and difficult preparation of it. However, I got an excellent excuse to engage when a local bakery, The Artisan Bakery (check them out they're brilliant) gave away starters and held a competition to make a loaf. I didn't win obviously, I'm completely useless but I learnt a lot about it in the process.
Sourdough gets its characteristic tangy flavour and ciabatta-like texture because it rises from its starter made simply from flour and water which grows a culture of bacteria and natural yeast. This bacteria produces lactic acid and when it contacts the gluten from kneading it makes lots of carbon dioxide which gives it a big bubbly rise.
In terms of making you have to be prepared for experiments and disasters. The starter can be a stiff dough to thin batter, mine is often akin to a sponge cake mixture. Therefore, you have to be fluid with the recipe, and try different amounts and times to find the best method for you. The recipe I used today uses wholemeal flour, so the texture is more dense and the sour flavour is lessened from the taste of the grain. If you wanted to, you could experiment with a wholemeal starter or even rye. I hadn't ever actually made my own starter *at time of writing*, I was given a small pot which I have kept going since September, but it's died (or was rather killed by neglect) and I had to start afresh, their pot had been from a starter that was started 6 years ago! If you want to make your own starter then you just have to mix strong flour and water until you get a consistency which is slightly thinner than an American pancake batter (the thinner the mixture the less water you will need in the dough). When you start it you have to be on the ball, keep it at room temperature and refresh it everyday by which I mean tip out half the mixture and add extra water and flour until it is revived to the roughly the same volume it was before it was refreshed. Don't be daunted by scum- this is just alcohol that forms from the yeast's fermentation process and you can either stir it back in or tip it off. Once it is very sour and bubbly it is active, and see below to see how to keep it, though bare in mind, Sourdough starter isn't a pet and certainly doesn't need fastidious care.

• I recommend that you don't try sourdough until you can do basic loaves so you have a general feel of dough and rising.
• The guidelines I am following are specific to Shropshire's baking roots, so if you want to try San Francisco or Italian, the troubleshooting of this recipe won't be as relevant.
• Wholemeal is harder to work with than white, so you should try white first.
• Flour every surface that the dough comes in contact with liberally with flour, as the dough is very tacky and can't hold its own shape well.
• Make sure the dough isn't contacting a lot of air when it proves as it develops a very dry skin that can be very problematic. With its long prove, it can dry even with its bowl covered with clingfilm- as a solution, I'd suggest rubbing over a film of oil on the surface of the dough.
• I recommend leaving it to prove overnight to develop its flavour and texture more. Natural yeast works much slower than yeast you might buy in a packet so it doesn't rise enough in a few hours which would be sufficient for regular bread but overnight gives it a massive prove.
• Buying equipment such as wooden bannetons are useful but expensive, a floured tea towel in a bowl will work just as well.
• Keep your house fairly warm while making it. I don't mean blowing your heating bill, but have the room the dough is rising in free of draughts.
• Kneading should be done for about 10 minutes. Put some music on and pretend your pounding David Cameron's face until the dough is very smooth and elastic. Pressing the surface of the dough ball should spring back. Try not to add too much extra flour if it becomes sticky, the dough will clean up after itself after it's been kneaded for long enough.
• Don't be afraid to slash the bread quite strong, as it won't affect the bread if it's a very thin slash, but don't be too deep either as the bread will collapse in the oven. Use a very very sharp knife as this will cut the surface without applying collapse-risking pressure.
• Have the oven pre-heated during the second rise. I used to be fanatical about putting ice or a shallow tray of water into the oven to provide steam; real bakery ovens are routinely injected with steam. These days I don't bother, you'll never really recreate that steamy environment and I don't find it makes a lot of difference anyway.
• To refresh a starter, either stir in the film of alcohol that has developed on top or pour it out along with half of the starter from the jar and add more water and flour until it is back to the same consistency. This must be done either the night before or a good half a day before you start making your bread.
• If you want (and I presume you do) to keep the starter for a long time without using it, it wouldn't be a good idea to keep it out on the side at room temperature because it will remain too active: what you must do is have the starter almost as thick as a dough which means it will be less bubbly and lively and keep it in the fridge. At this temperature it will only need to be refreshed once a fortnight and every time you do refresh it ensure you take it back to its thick consistency. Don't worry, any attempts mould may plan to inhabit the starter will be futile- the pH is too low. If any mould does grow, you may need to call an exterminator and a prodigious lawyer as you've probably grown a highly dangerous superbug. To use the starter from the fridge refresh it the night before but make it nice and runny (though not too runny or it doesn't have enough resistance to double in size as it should) and leave it at room temperature to reactivate it to proofing glory. If it doesn't double, which is the best indicator that it's ready to use, refresh again and leave it until it's at the right activity.

You should commit to making sourdough once you've made it once, as the starter is great after being refreshed and kept for weeks, you could even give some away!
1)Refresh your starter a day or half a day before you make it by adding a few more tablespoons of water and flour until it reaches your desired consistency. Leave it out of the fridge until you use it.
2)Combine 500g of strong white flour (or 250g sw and 250g strong wholemeal ) with 100g of the starter, 325 ml/g of water, 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil (you can vary this fat- shortening and delicious lard works well) and 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt. Be careful that the salt doesn't contact the starter directly. Also if you're making a wholemeal bread consider sprinkling linseeds, wheatgerm or anything else you might want to make the bread grainier, and more substantial.
3)Mix the ingredients together, adding more water or flour until it reaches a wet dough.
4)Knead it on a floured wooden surface like a large chopping board until smooth and elastic. You can also knead it in a bread machine or stand mixer. Don't be tempted to add too much extra flour- to give the bread a lovely open texture you need a loose wet dough and you will simply have to go by eye and more importantly by feel to get there.
5)Put the dough in an oiled bowl, cover with cling film and leave to rise for about half a day or overnight. It should be well-risen, strong-smelling and doubled in size. Do not continue until that dough has doubled. If you have a busy morning and cannot get back to tend to the dough until you're back from school or work, it might be a good idea to retard the rising by keeping the dough in the fridge. This will stop the dough from over proving.
6)This bit's the hardest:turn the risen dough out on a well-floured surface. Ease the sides of the dough out and pull back to the centre and repeat until you have a defined seam and smooth top that doesn't flop too much. The dough is very wet and shapeless so you have to be patient and gentle and keep repeating the seam-making to have a tight shape.
7)Place the dough in a bowl lined with a very well-floured tea towel, seam-side up and cover the seam side with oiled cling film. I also did an oblong loaf on the baking sheet that had been dusted with lots of flour and covered with a floured tea towel. This method is more likely to have a bread that will go flat in the oven, but if you can get an oblong loaf right it looks very attractive.
8)Leave it to rise again for a long second prove, about 2-3 hours until it again doubles in size which of course depends on the heat of your house.
9)Turn the bowl over and drop the bread deftly onto a lightly floured baking sheet and remove the towel carefully. Dust it with more flour. Simply remove the towel for the oblong loaf. Slash the round loaf with 2 vertical and 2 horizontal slashes. Slash the oblong loaf with three, equally-spaced, slightly slanted horizontal slashes. A lame is perfect, a serrated blade works fine.
10)Bake it in a pre-heated oven (160 degrees Celsius) for 40 minutes. It should lift of the sheet easily and sound hollow when tapped if it's done. If the crust is browning quicker than the interior is baking, cover it with tin foil. Knowing when it's done is difficult so the only way to know is from experience unless you don't have an irrational fear of thermometers.
11)Leave to cool and serve. A good sourdough has a speckled top (I've provided a picture below) from airholes being trapped under a skin of gluten and large, shiny air holes. The taste will vary, mine didn't taste strongly sour as I didn't prove it for very long, and it had a more regular air structure gas wholemeal bread is always less airated. If it's not perfect right away persevere! Keep refreshing your starter as it will only get a better taste and you'll make better bread!

Here's another one I made which had better airation and a much more pungent flavour. Somehow with the same ingredients it was much bigger.

Absence and Embarrassment

Soo... I've been away for a long time now... So long that reading back on my smug 12 year old-self is extremely painful; did I actually think people read this rubbish? But then again, I haven't changed much and cooking is still a big part of my life, but there are other things that consume my time now so I've done a lot less than I'd want to; I'm a 15 year-old GCSE student so my relentless learning of German verbs, terrible drama performances (only terrible because of me, everyone else is great), trying to keep all the rubbish I write in Science to the mark scheme, uncovering the horrors of further trigonometry and trying to find a reason to care how the reader is influenced by repetition in texts sap a lot of my creative juices. I also play jazz and folk alto saxophone terribly and I do the extra GCSEs of Statistics and Astronomy. If you're given the chance to do Astronomy take it, it's actually really interesting, (I attended a lecture on the Aurora Borealis AKA the Northern Lights yesterday to complement the course and it was absolutely fantastic.)
I like to think that listing all this extra nonsense that I do makes me sound really broad-minded and busy but really I still have hours in the day which I spend being anti-social but somehow still social on Facebook and kneading and rising bread, but I feel like the greatest percentage of my time goes towards trying to remember why I went into the room that I walked into. Bread has become one of my latest obsessions and I try to make a loaf as often as I can. In fact I have a wholemeal sourdough rising right now which looks promising. I'll do a post about sourdough at some point because it's such a rewarding type of bread to try.
In case you cared which you won't but ya know here's some of the stuff I've made in my absence. They DID taste good, don't judge the crappy photos too soon.
God why have I said 'you' so often in this, no-one's reading it? Well, my future self is. Sorry in advance.