More Sourdough Stories…the Rise of the Starter Blob

Throughout this pandemic and confinement, I’ve been waking up to bad news pretty much every day. Usually it has to do with death, disease, U.S. government incompetency,  or some other coronavirus-related nightmare.

The thing is, I receive these horror shows on my phone.

While I’m in bed.

I certainly do NOT expect to find them in my refrigerator!

But this morning, I opened the fridge door and saw this:

Yikes!!! WTF ????

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you can probably guess, but in case you’re not, here’s a little background.

For some as-yet-to-be-determined reason, sourdough starter is the new worldwide pandemic hobby. Perhaps it’s a back-to-roots-how-can -I be-self-sufficient-movement? I had no idea this was even a thing, but a little research revealed that like beekeepers, sourdough-starter people are fanatical about their babies. Apparently serious sourdough-starter people name their starter and pass them down like family heirlooms. Starter can be so valuable it is given as a wedding gift. People even take their starters when they move. Seriously.

My Donostiara friends are no exception to global trend-settting, and a few weeks ago, Carol, a fellow author on this blog, began her own starter.

We’ve all been horse-trading for six weeks now, honey, humus, flour, toilet paper, brownies, pretty much everything but spouses (although if this goes on long enough, who knows? Anyone up for a swap?)

Anyway, when nationally-renowned-foodie expert, Gabriella, got wind that Carol had successfully birthed some starter, she requested a bit for her own culinary adventures. Carol was again happy to oblige, as Carol will take any excuse to get out of her house, and so they swapped starter for flour.

After Carol delivered the goods, Gabriella was all set to bake her sourdough bread, when she realized her scale had a dead battery. She sent out an alarm on the whatsapp group, and I, having just bought ten, offered to supply her.

(Many theories were put forth about why I would have ten 3-volt lithium batteries, the dominant one having to do with my having a large quantity of small smoke alarms. The imaginings were much more exciting than the truth, which was simply that when I went on Amazon to buy batteries for my own broken scale, the best price was for a package of ten. How boring is that? I probably should have hinted that they were for sex toys or something).

As Gabriella noted in her recent blog post, we both had legitimate errands that would lead us to the same place in a neighborhood downtown, so on a rainy Tuesday, I ventured on the bus, the first time in six weeks.

• 

• 

• 

I have to say, I was very impressed that the municipal government would go so far in a pandemic as to actually change out the seats on a bus from blue to green to help people social distance. The sign on the blue seat says no sitting here, and green means go–how impressive is that? Creating color-coded seats while all the factories are shut down? I was even ready to write about it, extolling the virtues of progressive government. And then I remembered–the buses already had multicolored seats. Oops. It was a nice fantasy while it lasted.

Meanwhile, after I finished my errand, Gabriella zoomed up to meet me in full counter-intelligence gear. This woman was not about to let cops or quarantine get in the way of her baking! I mean, look at that outfit–boots, jacket, helmet, scarf. For a moment I thought I was in East Berlin, circa 1984!

From there, both Carol and Gabriella posted their successful endeavors, all stemming from this magical starter. Carol even delivered to me a slice of her bread, a spongy, light, melt-in-your-mouth piece of sourdough bread that was definitely amongst the best I have ever eaten.

Being both a writer and a scientist, I was curious now. Sourdough starter is a leavening agent that is produced by attracting endemic yeast to a mixture of flour and water. As it develops, it attracts bacteria, who jump into the fray and add to the microbiological mix. It becomes a living organism that you have to “feed” to keep it going. Carol had definitely nurtured hers to the point where you could practically taste love in that slice of bread.

I have to say, this idea of nurturing something, anything, really appealed to me.

I’ve been wanting to nurture something for weeks now, and I confess, I really miss my cats a lot.

• 

• 

I knew the starter wouldn’t purr or want its belly rubbed, but the idea of taking care of something beside myself was seductive. Even if that thing was a set of microscopic organisms. At least as we nurtured these little biologics they would in turn be nurturing us.

Unlike that other little not-quite-alive-thing that’s wiping us out for our sins of over-consumption! And, I might theorize, for forgetting what we all learned in Kindergarten, as it relates to other living beings on the planet:

Share, Share, Share!!

Which, ironically, we all seem to be doing a lot more of during this pandemic. I suppose it’s Mother Nature’s way of reminding us that we humans got a bit carried away thinking we could exceed our carrying capacity indefinitely.

Anyway, eager for more sharing, Carol, ever the adventurer, adventured out again to make the drop and get me started with starter.

Now, I know that when Carol gave me this starter, her instructions were explicit. And I dutifully noted them. Each night, the starter gets its equal weight in flour and water. Then it needs to go in a warm oven or be left somewhere warm. She said something too, about discards, which I sort of heard, and I vaguely remembered from her post and Gabriella’s, but I was mostly focused on keeping this thing alive, so I didn’t pay much heed.

My first night, success! I added 100 grams of water and flour and the next day I had a bubbly, frothing concoction.

The next night, however, distracted by some problems back home, I put the starter on the scale, noted the weight, and then absent-mindedly began adding 250 grams of flour.

When my kitchen suddenly looked like a snowstorm, I realized I’d forgotten to discard. Because even though the starter blows off some matter as it digests the carbohydrates in the flour, it’s still adding bulk. I’d gone from 100 grams to 200 in one night, and now I was heading up to 450.

It’s like the Goddamned virus, I thought. It sneaks up on you and does that obnoxious exponential growth thing when you’re not paying attention.

Now I had a gloppy mess. A big one. And I didn’t know which part to toss, because I’d mixed it all together. I had no way of knowing where the actual live starter was.

But, I reasoned, live organisms like heat. If I just stick it in the fridge, surely that’ll slow it right down.

Which brings us back to the very beginning of this story and my blobby starter. Which also demonstrates why I long ago decided that even after getting a science degree, I am safer behind a keyboard than in the lab.

I do admit I was curious though, so after cleaning off the blobby stalagmites, I opened the jar and…

WOW. Look at this:

That’s seriously a microbiologist’s wet dream. I’d tried to slow the bugs by putting the freeze on, but they paid me no attention, munching those carbs and blowing off C02 to produce those air holes, which are what gives sourdough bread its lovely, spongy texture.

I couldn’t very well ignore that. The little bugs were just begging to be put to work. So back to the kitchen lab I went.

I don’t live here full time and thus don’t have a fully stocked kitchen, so it took a little creativity: an old juice bottle for a rolling pin and a microwave rack for the cooling rack.

• 

• 

But once I’d figured out the tools, and with Carol’s sage advice and Gabriella’s recipe in hand, I did okay for my first time out of the gate.

Flour, water, salt, herbs, butter.

Roll out and slice the dough, top with olive oil and salt, and prick it with a fork.

• 

• 

From there, bake and shake and cool…

And then, my first batch of crackers.

• 

• 

So the day started with a scary blob thing taking over my fridge and was eaten up by my making crackers today, which is forty-I-don’t know-what the-fuck-day-it-is-anymore of quarantine.

Honestly, I don’t even know what the purpose of this post was (I think the whole thing might have been a ruse just to post pictures of my cats).

But I do know, it’s 11:00, starter blob feeding time again.

And tonight, I’m paying attention!