Photo ©Ben McPherson

I have now shared my sourdough amongst at least four people. Possibly more but I forget. The latest recipients were my friend Ben McPherson and his wife Charlotte, who live in Norway and are keen to get started on sourdough making.

This is the furthest my sourdough starter has ever travelled and I told Ben that part of the deal, now that we were sharing wild yeast spores, was that he had to keep me in touch with how his starter was doing.

You can probably tell that Ben is a writer, producer and director by this photo of his starter, which he has put in an ENORMOUS jar and obviously crouched down to take this photograph from as dramatic an angle as possible. I said that it – the starter – looked like it needed its own TV show.

Anyway, I sent it heat sealed in a very strong plastic bag and that bag was in a plastic security sealed envelope. And yet the starter burst out of the heat sealed bag (which is made to withstand sous vide cooking) and only the plastic envelope stopped it escaping further. This just shows the power of the sourdough starter.

Ben has refreshed it and will hopefully start baking at the weekend. I hope to convince him to do a guest-post soon. Maybe with sub titles.