The thing about starters is, they’re incredibly easy. If they weren’t, human beings would never have invented bread. The only trick is remembering to care for it. The vast majority of starter failures come from forgetting to feed one on a regular basis. If you can do that you won’t have any problems. Begin a […]
READ ONGrowing your own starter is an elementary project than can become complicated if your water is compromised in any way. If you’re connected to a municipal water supply that’s heavy on chlorine, for example, or if you have a water softener. On the other extreme a relatively “dirty” water supply can introduce organisms that will […]
READ ONThe thing that is sourdough, i.e. a naturally fermented leavener, obviously goes back to virtual pre-history…10,000 years at least. My interest at the moment, though, is in that specific version of the natural leavener that we North Americans call “sourdough”. For indeed “sourdough” is a term that’s specific to North America, no other bread baking […]
READ ONYes you can…with a little egg and fat of course. I know, it sounds weird given that starters can be stinky, slimy things, but the fundamentals are there for a wholesome breakfast. Despite the fact that yeasts have been working all night, there’s still plenty of starch left for the rest of us. And as […]
READ ONSo what can you do with a bunch of starter that’s been sitting out on the counter all night long? Why not eat it? Old school sourdough pancakes are nothing more than slightly sweetened, egg-enriched starter, poured onto a hot griddle. They were a staple of frontiersmen in the north woods back in the day, […]
READ ONWhenever you’re maintaining an active, full-strength starter, you always need to at least double its weight to keep it healthy and happy. That can be a lot of starter assuming you keep it going at room temperature…two ounces makes four ounces make eight ounces make a pound and so on. Do that every day for […]
READ ONThose interesting emails just keep right on coming! Tara wrote in just this morning to say: I have written today to come to the defense of the delicious salt-rising bread [you wrote about in your] Non-Starter post…I am a microbiologist (well, almost… I have a few more weeks of my masters) and one of the […]
READ ONA gentleman by the name of Carl wrote in to ask: I read your recent blog entries about starters from your blog with great interest. One thing that puzzles me is that you did not mentioned anything at all about what the temperature should be when you start a starter. Should the temperature of the […]
READ ONOn the subject of brick ovens, I got this very interesting note from a fellow by the name of Mexico Bob: A few years ago I was in the City of Veracruz, Mexico and I went to visit the house of Hernan Cortez at Antigua which is a few miles north. He built this house […]
READ ONI received a communiqué from one Father Stephen on Saturday, taking issue with my use of mild profanity in one of last week’s posts. It read like so: Et tu, Joe? “Though Saccharomyces cerevisiae is one bad M.F. microbe,….” Oh Joooooooooe! It seems there are fewer and fewer places we can go without the “cool” […]
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