Life’s a Traveling Circus
Life’s a Traveling Circus
I feel quite like Dr. Frankenstein. I have a creature growing in my kitchen, formed from flour and water (which we called paste when I was in kindergarten). It’s now known as ‘sourdough starter’, and, after a few weeks and a few failures, I have managed to make mine live. As one master sourdough breadmaker referred to it in his web how-to, I’ve created a ‘pet’ which can exist in my refrigerator forever. Yeah. We’ll see how that goes.
I’m a slow learner. After two or three trial and errors (mostly errors) I think I may have succeeded. The first time around, after five days of twice-daily feedings (more flour and water) I had a nice soupy batter, due to the fact that each of the cooking sites I read had their own opinion of how much water and flour should be mixed for each feeding. I tried them all. No luck. One lady in a comment section said she stuck hers in the oven overnight with the light on and the door ajar, resulting in a nice frothy rise. Uh huh. Mine smelled like vomit the next morning, without a bubble in sight.
I was beginning to feel like maybe Austin didn’t actually have any wild yeast beasties in the environment and that’s why there’s no sourdough bread here, when it occurred to me that perhaps I should be using organic flour. Duh. I was pretty sure I’d succeeded with the new improved batch, but after three days it went the way of the first. Too bad I didn’t need any wallpaper hung.
Back to the comments section of the most helpful site, Kitchn. Bought a new glass jar with a wide mouth to give the starter greater access to the air (actually much easier to work with, even though my first jar was much cooler looking). Decided to add a tablespoon of organic whole wheat flour to the mix, after one commenter said that sometimes has more wild yeasts in it. Who knew? The next day I had a nice, bubbly starter. Awesome!
The second day after feeding I was still hopeful.
The next two days my hopes were dashed. You’re supposed to pour out half the starter each time before you add the new, and on the fourth and fifth days my beauty had fallen flatter than a beehive hairdo on a humid day. I almost threw it out, but by this time I was determined to succeed, so I punted most of it into the trash, mixed up more food (with some whole wheat flour) at 10:30 p.m. and left it on the table. Didn’t look too bubbly the next morning, so I didn’t feed it, and besides I had a noontime appointment. By the time I got home, it had a slightly dry top, but underneath that was a mass of bubbles. And when I dropped a spoonful into a cup of water, it floated! Success!
So tomorrow I’m going to embark on an actual attempt to make an artisan loaf of sourdough bread. This next stage involves folding, proofing, shaping . . and a Dutch oven heated to 500 degrees. I’ll let you know how it goes, unless I burn the house down.
