Day 0: Wanting, Needing

Technically I'm on day 7, but didn't think of keeping a log of my experience until last night. So I will recreate days 0-6 from memory in backdated entries.

Before I get into the daily logs, here's a little bit of introduction. Basically, I'd like this blog to be a record of what precisely happens with my experiences with sourdough. I've made a loaf once before, after successfully capturing wild yeast (Dover, NH Sourdough... hm), but the bread was not so sour and definitely not so tasty. Quite bland with unpleasantly bitter undertones. I was also at a stage in the sourdough learning process where I didn't realize the crazy dynamics involved, with a loaf being nearly unpredictable due to the multitude of factors involved that lead to that perfect, wondrous creation. Temperature, consistency, ingredients, time, and sheer willpower (in no specific order) are probably the top five issues to consider, but maybe I'll change my mind with experience.

Sourdough born out of the air on 5th Street

So after failing (in my mind) with the Dover breed of sourdough captured in my home office (wow that sounds so much more professional than it is), I abandoned my wild yeast starter and studied other, simpler methods of cooking food. I've only been actively cooking for a year or so now, so I have a lot of ground to cover, and sourdough, it seemed, could wait. But I was still curious about it, and whenever I had the chance I ordered sandwiches with sourdough bread or snagged a boule at a bakery. I did my best to eat slowly, so I could really figure out what it was that made my favorite food writers drop to their knees and pray to the gods Lactobacillus and Saccharomyces exiguus (science!). I tried several different preparations beyond a basic sandwich, from just ripping chunks off and chomping the soft flesh of the bread like a beast, to delicately toasting slices and spreading a bit of butter on the surface, nibbling and savoring each clenching of my jaw, every gulp of the sweet-salty-sour-umami that makes sourdough what it is.

Sourdough, I think, is where the difference between want and need is blurred. On the one hand, a person could feasibly go through a lifetime without bread. There is no inherent need for it, and folks seeking peace through low-carbohydrate diets are perhaps living at least acceptable lives with some form of happiness. But for me, after having some really great bread, a tugging, pulling WANT grows and grows until it becomes something new. It's more than just a craving, like one might have for a Pop-Tart or a Hawaiian pizza. And after what I've smelled and tasted, I hesitate to keep it classified as a simple, greedy desire. It doesn't have the unpleasantness of greed, but rather, it is the resolution to the most basic of conflicts: hunger. And we all need to eat something, so why not the most fulfilling, delicious thing humankind has been lucky enough to figure out?

As you can see, I found through my onslaught of bread eating the benefits of the effort required, and with a little encouragement taken from John Thorne's section on sourdough in The Outlaw Cook, I decided to order an already captured culture from Ed Wood's site, sourdo.com. I went with the recommended culture for beginners, which comes all the way from New Zealand.

A wheat culture and a rye culture from New Zealand

This is where the adventure begins. As of the time of this writing (6ish days after starting the activation process), I have yet to actually reap the benefits of my efforts, but with a little luck, I hope to be tasting my second sourdough (and my first delicious sourdough) sometime tomorrow afternoon. But maybe something happened in these past few days that would indicate otherwise...