Sourdough

This month, I'm going to tell you how to make a sourdough "starter" that is really a living organism. Sounds creepy, but that's how the marvelous bread that is associated with San Francisco (largely because it was made and used during the California Gold Rush that began in 1849) is made. The sourdough bread in San Francisco tastes different from any sourdough anywhere else in the world, so if you've ever visited the city, don't think that I am going to tell you how to equal what they make there. Some say the difference in taste comes from bacteria in the Bay air. Some say it comes from the charm of the city itself. If you are careful about keeping your sourdough starter alive and happy, you will be able to use it for the rest of your life. I've eaten bread made from a starter that was first mixed in the early 1950s.

Get a glass jar that holds at least six cups (half a gallon is OK). The easiest way is to buy some juice at the supermarket. You're going to be storing this jar in your refrigerator for many years.

Combine all ingredients and beat them together in a bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and put it in a warm place for three days, uncovering and stirring twice each day.

After three days, fermentation will have happened, and you will have a living colony of yeast. Put it in the jar you bought and put it in the refrigerator.

I'm not going to give you any recipes for sourdough goodies, but they're not hard to come by. Basically, you will use a portion of your colony as the basis for any of a number of bread (and other kinds of) recipes. Just be sure of two things: (1) Use your sourdough not less than every two months. (2) After you use it, replace the volume you removed with an equivalent volume of water and flour mixed in equal parts, and let it sit out of the refrigerator for about a day to get the fermentation going again.