Pet Sourdough?
By Eric Uyeji
North American Post Contributor
As I get older, I seem to find interest in things that were not even on my radar a few years back. I guess that is what happens when your kids leave the nest and one is no longer driving them to soccer practice or going to school events.
A few months back, someone had mentioned to me that they had been making sourdough bread and it required the use of a “starter.” At the time, I had no idea what a starter was and really did not understand what it meant to “feed” it. Feed it?
Fast forward to now, my wife mentioned we should try and make our own bread. We did some research online and watched a few YouTube videos on how to do this. What I realized is that in order to make bread, we would need to take care of this jar of flour and water for at least two weeks just like a pet! The process is quite interesting and does require some daily attention, thus the feeding. In simple terms, the extra flour and water mixture feeds the bacteria and yeast. This converts the sugar in the flour into carbon dioxide which makes the starter rise. I am probably a little off on that but I hope you get the idea in simple terms!
The first few days, the mixture did very little. We mixed it, put it in a jar and placed it in a dark corner. I was getting a little worried that it was not working but by day four, we noticed a rise and some bubbling. This is the part about killing off the bad bacteria.
Essentially, this starter is eating the new flour we have added. The smell also starts changing to something very stinky! It smelled a bit like vinegar and/or wine. The next few days we had to do the daily feeding by removing some of the mixture then adding fresh water and flour as food. This is repeated for a handful of days until the mixture rises quickly after the feeding.
That’s where we are at this point. Taking care of it daily, we hope it becomes stronger by rising quickly and by developing more flavor. They say you can bake bread in about two weeks but the flavors improve with age. This particular starter may not reach that top level of taste until maybe a year from now! I am going to be feeding this pet for a long time.
Hopefully, I will have more to share on this once we are able to make a few loaves of bread!
