Saturday, June 10, 2006

Feeding the beast



On my visit to San Francisco in March, I picked up a packet of sourdough starter, figuring it would be a fun thing to make. It wasn't until I opened the packet that I realized that this wasn't a fun one-off, but a lifelong commitment to feeding an always-hungry, temperamental batch of yeasty dough. And it needed warm weather -- which is why I haven't bothered starting it until now. My current carb-lite approach to food actually fits in rather well with making sourdough; by my reckoning, I won't be able to actually produce and eat any bread for at least 2 weeks. And I recognize that I should be generating my own starter from scratch, using organic ryes and wheats and capturing the yeasts that float freely on the air, but -- I live in the middle of a city, PJ won't let me have the windows open for more than 5 minutes a day because of the bugs, and quite frankly I don't trust what's floating in the air around here. Bloody hippies.

I mixed up the starter last night; this is what it looked like.



Rather unprepossessing, being of the shade and texture of freshly poured concrete.

12 hours later, little bubbles of gas are definitely forming. Rest assured, I will post pictures of this lengthy process.

I'm hoping that this really will represent a taste of San Francisco: If I can't sense cable cars, seals, and gay pride in every mouthful, I'm asking for my money back.

1 comment:

stinkypaw said...

For baking bread, I'd say your mixture looks right to start with.

And by the way, not sure I'd want to feel "gay pride" in my mouth... but that's me! =^..^=