First, I should point out that his name isn’t pronounced like “pollen” as I’d assumed until today. It’s PO-lan, with a long “o”. Just in case you get asked on the street. All in all I have to say the session I went to (and I call it that because it’s wasn’t a lecture per […]
READ ON…over at the University in a little while. If you don’t know Michael Pollan, he is the very talented author behind Omnivore’s Dilemma and The Botany of Desire. While I hold his work in very high esteem, I confess that his politics irritate me greatly (as many of you know, I detest politics in my […]
READ ONWatching a starter grow is a wonder…oh wait, I said that yesterday. It’s just that it is. Last night as I left mine contentedly bubbling away in its bowl, I headed to bed with a grin. “We have a lovely starter,” I mused to the wife. Distracted, she asked me a moment later what it […]
READ ONSo, now that you know something about the process of fermentation you can probably guess what that brown liquid is that collects on top of a bread starter. Yes, that’s right, alcohol. A very impure form of alcohol, otherwise known as hooch. Sure, you can drink it, but one taste will demonstrate all too clearly […]
READ ONA very natural question when you set out to randomly culture fungus and bacteria. How do you know you’re not getting something dangerous? There are some pretty deadly microbes out there, especially bacteria (though several kinds of molds and fungi will kick your can too, now that I think about it). What’s to keep the […]
READ ONOne notable exception to the starter microbiology I sketched out below is San Francisco sourdough. Set out a bowl of flour-water slurry there, and a different thing will likely happen. Namely, that your starter will very likely culture a very different and interesting yeast by the name of Candida humilis (formerly called Candida milleri, formerly […]
READ ONSo what’s going on in a starter bowl? The answer: lots of stuff. Beneath that happy, bubbly veneer there’s war is going on, between all manner of lower forms of life, all of them vying for supremacy. Sort of like the presidential primaries. Bu-dum-bum. Starters are not what most people think they are: cultures made […]
READ ON…to whoever it was who nominated me for the Bloggers Choice Awards! Of course I like to flatter myself that I’m not interested in these kinds of “prestige” awards. But gimme a break, who doesn’t love a little recognition? “Hey! That’s me!”
READ ONNo, not really. This starter goo just happens to look better in a rustic crockery bowl. This is what a homemade starter looks like when it’s ready and rarin’ to go: puffy with lots of big bubbles. This is not to say that a starter has to be in this kind of prime condition to […]
READ ONMicrobial (also called “biological”) leavening is the grandaddy of all leavening techniques. It dates back to when the first human mistakenly left his bowl of gruel sitting out while he rushed off to join the village mastodon hunt. The result was what we now call a “starter”. And while the biology of microbial leavening can […]
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