It lives!

A confession: I forgot about my sourdough starter for months, and when I finally did unearth it from the fridge, it had completely dried out. Bad, bad baker!

I rehydrated it, and started daily feedings, but things weren't looking good. It smelled okay, but never got bubbly, and I thought it might be hopeless. But then, after about 10 days, there were bubbles. And now, we have bread:

I used the Natural Starter Bread recipe from Chocolate and Zucchini. I used a mixture of white, wholemeal and rye flours (about 200, 300, 100 grams respectively), plus some vital wheat gluten. One of the things I like about this recipe is that it has a long rising time -- my starter is kind of slow, and the 8 hour rise worked nicely for it. I wasn't sure about the recipe's suggestion of starting the bread in a cold oven (I've always assumed that you get the most oven spring from a preheated oven) so I used my usual technique based on the no knead bread one (where you preheat the cast iron pot, and bake the bread in that, for 30 minutes covered and about 20 minutes uncovered).

The bread worked out very nicely, with an excellent sourdough flavour.