Sourdough Bread

Pet Food?

Owning a sourdough starter is a lot like owning a cat: It doesn't require a lot of attention, but you can't completely ignore it either.

Although I love baking bread I avoided sourdough for years because of its need for attention. I had been under the (false) impression that you had to use it once a week or more to keep it going and, because I like baking bread more than I like eating it, that sounded like too much trouble for too much bread.

In addition, my first bread cookbook was James Beard's Beard on Bread and he pooh-poohs sourdough as seldom being as satisfying as that archetype of American sourdoughs made in San Francisco. He notes: "Jeanne [Voltz] agrees with me that it is a most fickle process. … I have even found variations in its performance from one neighborhood of New York to another. … I am not sure it is worth the trouble."

However, my tenure in Sacramento, California  resulted in an addiction to sourdough bread and so last fall I bought a starter from King Arthur Flour and gave it a shot.

I've been pleased as punch.

The bread was good to start with but it has now "gone native." By this I mean that local yeasts have taken over from the Vermont yeasts it arrived with giving the bread its own unique character. It has a delightfully tart flavor that I've learned to maximize producing some of the best sandwich bread I've ever eaten.

It also does well with additives such as olives, dried tomatoes, and, my favorite, grated gruyere.

And bread isn't the only thing it's good for. It makes dynamite pancakes -- particularly blueberry pancakes -- and excellent biscuits. And one of these days I'm going to make English muffins with it.

Although it does require some care, its demands aren't great. There's no litter pan to clean and empty and no cat hair to vacuum off the couch. It does need food and water. But this is satisfied by adding a cup of starter to a half cup of water and a cup of flour every two weeks -- and I've gone as long as four weeks without touching it with no ill effects to the starter. Try that with a cat.

Some people even name their starters. I'm not prepared to go that far, but I do have a certain mild affection for the jar of flour, water, and yeast at the back of my refrigerator.

At least it doesn't throw up on the carpet.

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