Jenny gave me the book because she has a daughter who has some pretty severe gluten intolerance issues and she is curious if the nutritional claims hold up in real life, but she’s just not a bread baker (her words), so she asked if I could pretty please help. Well, I’m not a great bread baker either, but I’m eager and willing to learn. And really, taking a crack at keeping a sourdough starter wasn’t a very difficult decision for me to make – first, I would walk barefoot through a fiery hot pool of bubbling butterscotch for Jenny; and second, I’ve always wanted to try sourdough from the ground up: My mother kept a sourdough starter when I was very young, and the pancakes and bread she used to make for us is are a wonderful food memory for me.
Honestly, I wish I could just write out giant chunks of Caleb and Melissa’s book – they’ve done their homework, they outline their hypothesis well, and frankly, it makes a lot of sense. But I’ll leave that to you to read if you wish and draw your own conclusions. Here, I’m just going to concentrate on sharing the natural yeast (i.e., sourdough) process – and hopefully some wonderful recipes – with you.
Getting Sourdough Starter
To aid readers in the process, when you buy the book, Caleb will mail you dry sourdough starter for the price of a self-addressed, stamped envelope. (That’s a SASE, for you aging Zoomers.) I mailed my request off and had these little babies in hand a week later.
Starting a Sourdough Starter
The directions in the book say that I need about one tablespoon of starter to “get started,” but Caleb only sent me about ½ a teaspoon, so I’m just going to push through and see what happens. I also consulted these great directions for reviving Sourdough Starter at Yumarama, and I’ll update you on the progress next week on Sourdough Tuesday.
Hey, Renée, best of luck with the starter flakes.
The only thing I’d suggest in your case with the very small amount of flakes is to start pretty small in the wetting and feeding quantities. You don’t want to overwhelm the reduced number of yeasty critters right at the start. After a smaller feed or two (without discarding) you will see enough activity that you can then go right ahead and carry on “as normal”.
Thank you so much for stopping by, and for your words of advice – your directions for reviving starter are a little clearer (at least to me) than the book’s, and I really appreciated that you took the time to share them. I’m approaching this like most – as a total newbie. I’m hoping folks can learn from my experiences, one way or another.