2 cups unbleached bread flour
2 1/2 cups water
1/2 pound red grapes

Remove grapes from the stems. Wash under cold running water and allow to dry about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, rinse new cheesecloth under running water to remove all lint and sizing.

Wrap grapes up in cheesecloth, fastening the corners to form a pouch.

Lightly bruise grapes (to begin the fermentation process) and put them in the flour-water mixture. Cover tightly and leave sitting at room temperature for 6 days, stirring once or twice each day.

The liquid will become separated and the pouch will puff up as fermentation proceeds, and it will take on a mildly fruity aroma with an odd color. By day six, the taste will be somewhat sour, but pleasantly so, and the fermentation process will have been accomplished, and you will have a weak starter.

Squeeze the grape-filled pouch of grapes of their remaining juice, adding it to the starter. Place in a clean (sterile) glass or crockery container and stir thoroughly to combine.

At this point, you can use your starter, but it's still weak and not as strong as it could be after further feeding. You can also refrigerate until you're ready for the next step.

Three days prior to using, add one cup flour stirred together with one cup of water to the crock or jar; combine well.

Allow to sit at room temperature, without being covered, until mixture begins to froth and bubble as yeast would.

Cover and refrigerate. Do this again on the 2nd and the 3rd day, then cover and store in the coldest part of the refrigerator for up to 6 months.

If you're going to be storing it for very much longer than this, discard any portion of the starter over two cups and feed it again as before (the one cup flour / one cup water mix).

Before using old starter that hasn't been used in a long while, rejuvenate it by going through a 2-3 day feeding cycle as above.

If starter becomes too sour, cut your batch in half and discard half, then build it up again by feeding it.

Submitted by: CM