I suffered from sourdough starter anxiety. Late at night I would lay awake,
tossing and turning worrying about the state of my starter which was
sleeping in the fridge or bubbling on the counter. Could I reconstitute my
starter if a natural calamity befell it?
A scientific experiment seemed in order. Many sourdough starter recipes may
be found on the web. Some use grapes, some yogurt, and some potatoes. Cumin
is a constituent of some starters. Some recipes recommend grinding organic
grain on basalt stones all the while singing incantations to Ceres or other
gods of the hearth and using spring waters collected from the Himalayas and
transported via camel caravan across the silk road.
I selected six flours from my pantry and used bottled water from a
mid-Mississippi aquifer. I mixed 30 grams of flour with 30 grams of water
and allowed the mixture to sit at room temperature (a cool room temperature
ranging from about 65 to 70 F). The flours used were (1) Gold Medal
Organic All Purpose flour, (2) Gold Medal Bread flour, and (3) Gold Medal
Bleached All Purpose flour, (4) Hodgson Mill Rye flour, (5) Pillsbury rye
flour, and (6) a whole-wheat flour I had purchased at a water mill in
Champions, Nebraska.
I fed each of the nascent starters each day for the first week and then
began to get a bit erratic. I generally doubled the amount of starter at
each feeding, starting to dispose of about half after the third day. There
was activity (bubbles) on second day in some of the mixtures. One of them,
the Champion's Mill flour developed a mould and was dumped. It showed
activity and the mould may have been a result of inattention on my part.
At the end of two weeks time all surviving mixtures were doubling their
volume within an 8-hour period, which was my definition of a completely
active starter. I have used each of them as leavening agent in loaves of
bread. They all worked well and gave acceptable results. There were
differences in the different loaves, but then each loaf of "sourdough" I
make seems different. My old standby, Carl's Oregon Trail starter, is a bit
more active than the experimental ones but the finished loaves were very
much alike. Carl's starter has had more than a century and a half to
practice raising bread so the difference in activity perhaps shouldn't be
surprising.
So I sleep peacefully now, knowing I can always make some more starter if
it is needed. The satisfaction I got from my first loaf of bread from a
starter I had made myself was akin in feeling to that of catching my first
trout on a fly that I had tied myself. I released the rainbow back into the
river but ate the bread.
Prosperous and Happy New Year to all.
Ken