My dearest friend, Erin, came to visit me in my new hometown this weekend. It was a lovely visit on every level and we ended her flirtation with SF by taking a sourdough bread starter class. We thought it was a sourdough class anyway, but it turns out a starter should be used to make any bread that you want to be delicious. I have known about bread starters since childhood and had used one briefly for the trendy "friendship bread" that went around my neighborhood growing up. My interest in starters and bread baking was rekindled by a timely facebook post from a friend and a groupon ad for a SF based company called Sour Flour. http://www.sourflour.org/.
Our class was taught by Danny, the president (and founder?) of Sour Flour. Over a period of two hours he taught us the basics of bread baking and using starters. He really encouraged experimentation and practice, along with some basic science, to get started as a bread baker. He was incredibly passionate about his work and his approach kind of reminded my of one of my favorite comics : http://xkcd.com/877/. He also made bread baking seem so simple ("It's just starter, water, flour and salt") that I decided then and there I was going to become a home bread baker!
We studied starters during the class, made a quick flatbread and, finally, made our very own starter to take home with us! Now, one can make a starter from scratch, but Danny generously gave us a head start by sharing a piece of his. And in a way, I think sharing a starter encourages a sense of community and excitement about baking that might not come as easily otherwise. Danny's starter is 2 years old and was originally "born" in Costa Rica. (that made me happy because one of my favorite places to be is Costa Rica). I can't remember if Danny's starter was named Dulce or Blarf (he has one by each of these names), but, regardless, I knew I had to name my starter if I wanted to care for it properly. I decided to name my starter Rolando. Whenever I personify an inanimate object I tend to think of it as male (don't ask me why, this isn't a psych blog) and the name was inspired by my first trip to Costa Rica. Erin named her starter Gertrude. We hope to reunite them again in the future to make the world's most delicious, bi-coastal loaf of bread!
This is Rolando:
Caring for a starter is serious business that requires a basic level of commitment. You must feed your starter on a regular schedule to avoid death or destruction. I plan to feed Rolo once daily initially and will make adjustments as I learn. I had to go buy some fresh flour for my first feeding. I chose my flour based on the fact that it had a high protein (gluten) content and that it was produced locally in South San Francisco. I don't know much about flour types or how they affect bread yet, so I figured I could start with anything, really, and I love protein.
I have fed Rolo twice now and he is growing nicely! I'll be out of town for a week visiting family, so I stuck him in the fridge for a short hibernation while I'm gone. Also, I decided to transfer my flour to a more accessible container before I left, and as another best friend (Jay) knows, I have a perception problem when it comes to choosing appropriately sized containers.
Well, that's it for my first three days with my new starter! My plan for the blog is to share my bread baking experiments with fellow food and science lovers. And if making bread is really as easy as Danny made it seem, maybe I can get others to start home baking, too!
