I feed a starter every 3 days.

It is slow to react. An hour passes. Three. Five. Seven.

In time, it rises, bubbles, reaches the brim. The sharp smell of it pierces through my nostrils, and is swiftly followed by a soft sweetness.

I pour it into my metal whisking bowl – the bowl that doubles as a ‘space hat’ or a ‘ringing bell’ or a space ship for people who are two.

I add water, olive oil, salt. Whisk it. Little hands whisk too.

I pour in some strong bread flour.

Mix with my hands until it is a rough, misshapen ball of dough.

I cover with a damp cloth, allow it to sit for an hour. When I check on it, it has become stretchy. I shape it into a ball in fifteen seconds, cover it again, and forget it for a day.

When I check on it again, chubby arms hugging my legs, incessant chatter in my ears, clanging from the ‘ringing bell’ of another bowl reverberating through my skull, it has doubled in size. The dough, not my skull. It smells sour, sharp, sweet, plump.

I shape it again, and put it into a basket lined with a muslin cloth, shove it back into the oven (turned off), and forget about it for a night and half a morning.

At 9am, I pull it out. Again, it has doubled in size. I shape it, cut it, put it into my cast iron saucepan with lid that some people like to say is an oven in a European country, and put it in the now turned-on oven.

After forty minutes, halfway through that time I have taken the lid off and let the loaf brown…

After forty minutes I have a loaf of delicious sourdough bread.

I let it sit for an hour, then I slice into it.

It’s still hot and steamy, and when I put a slice of cold butter on it, it melts immediately.

I serve it to my children, and they eat it, oblivious to the fact that I fed the starter three days ago.

I think of that, though, when I see them eat it. It makes me smile.