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My stubbornness about sourdough starter finally broke after a 3 day bake off
I spent the last 2 years insisting you have to start a sourdough starter from scratch or it's fake. My buddy Mike kept telling me I was being dumb about it, but I didn't listen. Last weekend at a community bake sale, I overheard this older guy explaining how he revived a 50 year old starter from his grandma by just feeding it for a week. He let me taste his bread and it was way better than anything I made in 6 months of babying my own starter. That conversation convinced me that old starters have way more complex flavor because the yeast populations are mature. So I caved and asked Mike for a bit of his starter that he got from a bakery. First loaf came out with a tang I never got before. Anyone else given up on the "must be wild" thing and just used a proven starter?
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abbyl491mo ago
Nah, half the fun is nursing your own starter into existence.
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Bet you never thought about how using a mature starter is actually more "wild" than your from-scratch one since it's been evolving with local yeast for decades instead of just catching whatever happened to float through your kitchen that week.
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