Doughy Delights
(Page 2 of 8)
March/April 2008
MaryAnna Clemons
To increase the amount of starter, place your container in a warm, draft-free location, like the inside of a pilot-ignited gas oven, the top of the refrigerator or a nice warm cupboard. Be prepared to feed and stir the new starter daily with equal parts flour and water. When the batter is bubbly and you detect a slight sour smell, it’s ready to use, or you can store it in the fridge for later.
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Keeping Starter Active
To keep your starter active, feed it once a week or at least every two weeks. I let my starter come to room temperature, discard half of it (or use this half for a recipe of pancakes, bread or biscuits), then feed it equal parts flour and water. Stir well and put back in the fridge.
160-year-old starter
If you want to consume a bit of history and help keep it alive, obtain a sourdough starter sample from Carl’s Friends (www.CarlsFriends.org), a group of people who continue to maintain a bread-making brew that traces its beginnings to an 1847 wagon trip on the Oregon Trail. It turns out that Carl T. Griffith’s great-grandmother created the starter in 1847 as she journeyed (and cooked) along the Oregon Trail from Missouri to Oregon. She kept the starter going as did subsequent ancestors until Carl passed away in 2000 at age 80. But the starter was far from lost because for years Carl had carefully dried and mailed it to anyone who asked and included a self-addressed and stamped envelope with their request. Today, the Carl’s Friends organization continues that tradition.
Carl wrote that he learned to cook with his great-grandmother’s starter in a Basque sheep camp on his family’s homestead in the Steens Mountains of southeastern Oregon when he was just 10 years old. He made his bread in a cast-iron Dutch oven over in-ground coals and covered with dirt (the same way many chuckwagon enthusiasts still cook).
When I received my dried starter and reactivated it, the instant tang of sourdough greeted me like an old friend.
Once revived, I put my 1847 starter to use for a batch of no-knead bread using a traditional recipe that I modified just a bit. I put my (well-seasoned) cold Dutch oven in the oven and warmed them both together. Then, I literally poured my no-knead recipe into the hot Dutch oven, covered it and baked it.
The smell permeated the house; children and husband hovered about wondering what was baking. We got our “real” butter ready and after letting the bread cool for about 10 minutes, we cut into the loaf. It was a bit flat, but the holes were nice and big. The crust was the best part, just chewy enough to give texture, but not so chewy to cramp the jaw while eating it.
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