DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Last Fall I tossed my sourdough starter in favor of a fresh culture, made from scratch without raisins, in hopes that the new culture would create more-sour breads. I’ve now made dozens of loaves with the new culture, and I have to conclude that the experiment failed. My current breads are no more sour than last year’s, and no amount of adjustment of flour type, hydration, proofing and rising times, retarding, or malting makes any difference.

This is not to say my sourdough breads aren’t any good; they’re actually better than they’ve ever been, with great crunchy crusts and creamy interiors, thanks to a slow elaboration process, a brotform, oven steam, and my own special technique, a twist on autolyse that I’ll write about another time. But as good as the texture is, the flavor just isn’t sour.

The untested variable is the starter itself. I’m not sure whether the wild yeasts I’ve been using came from the local environment, or if they were introduced to the culture from the wholegrain flours I made it with… the experts tend to disagree on how an initial culture gets going. But it wasn’t working for me in any case, so I sent away for a culture that is guaranteed to be different, and guaranteed to be sour: the “original” San Francisco sourdough, as bred by Ed Wood of sourdo.com.

A packet of powdered, dried starter arrived in the mail last week, and I quickly rehydrated it and set it out to ferment. Mr. Wood provides a clever idea for building a proof box on the cheap, so I was able to easily establish a reliable 85 degree environment for the activation phase.

It was immediately apparent that this culture is A Lot Different than my ‘local’ starter. Whereas my starter is nearly odorless, this frothing slop exudes a staggering odor, capable of detection across the room. As my wife put it, “that stinks like cheese!” This is partly due to keeping the goo at 85 degrees, of course.

The first loaf goes into the oven tomorrow. I’m trying not to get my hopes too high, because everything I know about bread-baking indicates that the first batch is unlikely to be as strongly flavored as subsequent batches. Also, I suffered a brain-fart during the elaboration process and mixed in too much water, diluting the starter. But still… it’s exciting.