For Starters

About a month ago, the "Golden Heart" city Fairbanks, AK, celebrated the 60th anniversary of "Golden Days." It was a great taste of sourdough life and gave us many opportunities to be out in the community and learn more about why this town truly has a golden heart. However, that's just the intro to the saga which I am about to start. On Saturday of the Golden Days festival, the family went to a Kiwanis sourdough pancake breakfast in the parking lot of Sadlers Home Furnishings. We were joined at our table by a lovely local family whose father had been involved in cooking the pancakes for a number of years but this year was just running the cash register. During the conversation, the topic of sourdough was brought up. In this case it was the yeast not the eventual title. My wife mentioned that she was interested in learning more about sourdough by having and maintaining a starter. The family then told us the history of the starter that the Kiwanis use which includes one person maintaining it for the past 30 years, but he is not the first in the lineage of this sourdough. The yeast has been perpetuated for over 100 years! Wow. Of course when we had the lovely pancakes and the company we told them we would like some sourdough starter (they had it for sale). As we were finishing up eating and getting ready to go, the father (and grandfather) brought over a Styrofoam coffee cup with a lid and a set of directions. It was the yeast and we asked how much they wanted for it but they refused payment. I think they decided that we were sourdoughs in the making.

When we got home and read the instructions they were sorely lacking in my opinion. The whole thing was a mixture of parts and actual measures and statements like "then fill the bowl up to the line with starter." My 6 quart bowl doesn't seem to have a line and actually I'm not sure it's even 6 quarts or that I need to make 6 quarts of pancakes for my family of four.

That night we spent about two hours researching sourdough starter and feeding your sourdough only to discover about a hundred different methods and lots of conflicting information.  After much confusion, deliberation and research I just did it.

We found a mason jar (which originally held a very nice spaghetti sauce) and I tried the feeding directions that came with the hundred year old starter. We mixed it up and put it in the refrigerator.  Thus begins the saga of our sourdough starter.