One of the worst things about moving into your car and tent for the summer is that it's not an ideal habitat for pet sourdough. I discovered this awful truth last march, and now, as I pack up and bid adieu to nightly showers, sheets, and refrigeration, i'm saddest to say goodbye to the yeast community that has sustained me the past few months.
There is hardly anything better than a warm loaf of bread, just out of the oven, spread with a little butter. I love how baking each loaf seems like a little bit of a miracle- you combine the simplest of ingredients- flour, yeast, warm water, salt, maybe some sugar or oil; and work it with your hands until all of the stress and tension has been released from your body into the accepting and forgiving dough. Leave it somewhere warm and it rises, filling the room with that yeasty aroma that smells like home, wherever you are. You punch down the inflated dough, an incredibly satisfying feeling, and leave it to swell again. Finally, you roll your creation into a bread pan, and trust the oven at 350 degrees to finish the work you've started.
From bread, I've learned patience, flexibility, and the absolute superiority of real butter. But, of all the breads I've baked, my sourdough has to be my favorite.
Having a sourdough starter is like having a pet. But a productive pet, you feed it, and it feeds you in return. This is serious sustainability. It saves me money not buying baker's yeast. A community of yeasts and the associated bacteria that feast on the end-products of the yeast's metabolism, my starter usually lives in a yogurt container on the counter, happily doubling in size when I feed it equal parts unbleached flour and water. Every couple days I scoop out a cup or two and bake bread, pizza crusts, pancakes, or on special occasions, donuts.
I made the donuts last weekend, my sourdough's last hurrah. They are dense, cakey spice donuts, the sourdough flavor mixing in with ginger and nutmeg, fried in hot oil and rolled in cinnamon sugar to finish. You don't even want to know how much oil it takes to fry them, but they are so worth it.
Before I truly said good bye to this starter, which has been a loyal friend for several months since I inherited it from a coworker, Lindsey, I began to grow babies. I grew the starter and divided it into lots of mason jars, for Felicia, Briant, Cayenne, and Sarah, along with instructions on the care and feeding of these new pets. Don't stir with a metal spoon. Put it to sleep in the refrigerator if you aren't going to feed or use it for a few days. You can bake almost anything with it.
It's fun to trace the sourdough lineage, to watch the culture that sustained me these past few months, hopefully live on in the kitchens of my friends. The starter I gave up last year died in the hands of my sister, wielding a metal spoon, apparently, but a daughter starter has been living the good life in Albuquerque, providing the weekly bread for my friends Sarah and Alex for over a year now. I like that it creates a sense of community, connections through the strains of yeast we all enjoy.
So I wish all my baby sourdoughs luck, and the new parents great success in raising a healthy, happy community of yeasts. Maybe, when I move out of my tent next fall and into somewhere with an oven (yay!!!), one of them will still have some living sourdough, and I can inherit a daughter of my starter's daughters, and keep my baking full circle.
3 years ago