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Sourdough starter

In Blog on July 13, 2011

I’M besotted with baking at the moment, so over the coming weeks, I’ll write a couple of posts about my sourdough and me.

Today, I’ll start – where else? – with the starter. If you’d like a soundtrack, I suggest The Loaf, by Darren Hanlon.

For those of you who haven’t come across the makings of sourdough before, the starter – otherwise known as the culture, plant or mother dough – is a kind of wild, bubbling, gurgling yeast. It’s the thing that makes the dough rise and contains the bacteria that make it sour. To my understanding of yeast, what happens is this: as the mix ferments, the yeast eats the sugars in the flour and releases carbon dioxide, which leavens the dough.

You can make your own starter in a week, by fermenting flour and water. I have a beautiful book called The Handmade Loaf, by Dan Lepard, in which he suggests adding raisins and yoghurt to the recipe.

But if you’ve got a liking for narrative – or convenience – I suggest you prevail on a friend for a portion of their culture. To keep it alive, you must feed it regularly with fresh flour and water (or you can store it for a while in the fridge or freezer and revive it later). This bakery in San Franscisco has been using the same “mother dough” since 1849.

While I was away hitch-hiking last year, my old starter died. I discovered the jar recently, toppled over under our kitchen bench. When I peered at the jar’s congealed innards, it I realised that both of us – the culture and I – were petrified.

Its death was apt. Over the last few years, I had made a number of half-hearted attempts at baking bread, but gave up, not really knowing what I was doing.

But then I fell in love with Les Bartlett’s small bakery near Maleny on the Sunshine Coast. There I met Penny, a fellow Melbournian, who was staying there to learn Les’s craft. Earlier this year I saw Penny again and she brought me a sample of his sourdough plant. For most of this year, I’ve been baking twice a week. I am only beginning to learn.

This is what my jar looked like the other day:

 Sourdough starter

Last week, I was talking with a good friend whose grandmother died recently. He was driving to visit her one morning, when he received a call saying she’d passed away. While we talked, I began to think about my family.

Two years ago my grandparents on my mother’s side died within a week of each other. At that time I gained solace from the wisdom of another friend, Daniela from Argentina.

Daniela is the person who first showed me how to bake bread, while I stayed for weeks at her remote camping ground – Ecocamping Ñorquinco – on the edge of a lake, in a national park, in northern Patagonia. Here she is by the lake, with bread for morning tea:

 Daniela with bread

She told me that while she did not believe in an afterlife, she knew that her relatives, generation upon generation, lived on through her and through her children: not only in their minds – for memories rarely surpass a few generations – but also in their bodies. Her ancestors lived on, physically, through her.

I find this profound; it seems both soulful and scientifically valid. I think of generations stretching back in time, each of us given our substance by those before us, even as we must make our days, minds and bodies our own.

Sourdough is like that. Whenever I open my jar of culture to begin a new batch, I call upon a living portion of the past. The mother loaf goes back to Les, and maybe beyond. Its family tree extends through all those with whom he’s shared it, and on and on, in turn.

Lago Ñorquinco

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Comments

  1. Gerhard Grasser says

    November 15, 2011 at 2:14 am

    How poignant and insightful an article you write.  I just admire the way you have captured the essence of the human condition as a reflection of the conncetedness of sour dough in its history and diversity. Pity really that too many of us don’t take the time to indulge in thought to try to understand that there are connections in each and every one of us much beyond the obvious.  We are little individual cultures after all! 🙂

    It was a pleasure to spend the weekend in your company at Boonderoo Farm sharing our learning and experience in sour dough bread making.  I am still unsure how to get the bread to you, as Mal isn’t planning to come to Carlton this week.  As a last resort, we will be at Boorandarra Farmers Market in Hawthorn on Saturday if you would like to pick it up then, but please let me know beforehand.

    Best wishes, Gerhard

    Reply
    • michael says

      November 15, 2011 at 6:46 am

      Hi Gerhard, thanks for your thoughtful comment. And for your kind attempt to bring all that delicious bread. I can’t believe I forgot it! I’ve just started preparing my first post-course loaf. I hope it turns out well. There’s a small chance I’ll be coming out valley way later in the week, and if so, I’ll get in touch. Great to meet you! See you again…

      Reply

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