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BUBBLES!

Day 3 of Sour Dough Starter

Things are starting to happen in the wheaty depths! Yesterday (day 2 for those who have lost track already) I noticed some bubbles in the side of the mixture, and also that the mixture had risen about 1cm above the mark I had drawn on the side of the jar! I didn’t think far enough ahead to take a photo as documentary evidence, and this morning it had subsided back to the original level, but there are still bubbles there. And a rather pleasant wheaty/yeasty aroma. Still a very slight warmth emanating off the surface as well.

So according to the instructions, I added a further 50g water, 35g whole wheat flour and 15g rye flour.

I wasn’t expecting things to start happening this early on, but it does get a bit warm in the living room/kitchen. Tomorrow the recipe gets a little more interesting with having to discard some, and add a larger quantity of fresh ingredients.

Musings

I’ve been thinking a bit lately about why I’ve become interested in these little projects – the homemade this and that, the cooking, knitting, building etc. I wonder if it’s because up til now, I have had very little say in my career. I decided I wanted to study medicine, then to pursue a career in surgery as a result of my experiences in medical school. But internship and residency don’t leave much else open in the way of choice – you submit your term preferences, but the allocated terms often bear little resemblance to your original list of preferences (sometimes you wonder why they don’t just allocate things randomly). You submit your requests for leave, and all to often have them turned down. You begin at 7am, and work until the jobs are finished, which is often 6 or 7pm or later. And then there’s the rostered overtime shifts, the weekend shifts, the sick relief shifts, the “we forgot to roster someone on” shifts. None of which you can get out of.

The training programs are hardly any better, and in a lot of cases (like surgery), are actually much worse. Say I do get a late round offer (which is looking increasingly less likely), I could end up in Sydney, Melbourne or any place in between. I wouldn’t get much say in it, and the chances of swapping locations in a year or two are practically non-existent. Of course, once you qualify as a fellow things get a lot better, but that won’t be for 5-10 years. I’ll be old by then…

So, it makes a nice change to be able to do things for myself and to decide when I’m going to do them. Some of these things, like the yoghurt, provide a fairly quick moment of gratification, the sourdough is going to take a lot more patience, and the house-building is a very long term goal, but they’re still borne out of my own thoughts and actions. (This is where I start to develop a god complex).