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Sourdough StarterDecember 08, 2006 This morning I "freshened" (aka "doubled") my sourdough starter. My sourdough starter lives in the fridge, in a funky glass container -- it's got a lip (I guess it's actually a pitcher) and the top half overhangs the bottom. If this container were a house, it would be a garrison colonial. Sourdough starter really does live. It's not like cheese or milk, that once upon a time came from a living thing, or like broccoli, that lived and grew before it was picked; it's certainly not like meat, which is by definition dead. If left long enough, milk and broccoli go bad; if not fed, sourdough starter will die. It's more resilient than some people think: the person who gave me mine advised a diet of sugar, flour, and water. Sugar, I discovered, made the starter hyper: it would froth out of its container and make a big mess. Ever since my starter has thrived on flour, milk, and water. The milk isn't required either, but flour and water seems too spartan a diet, so the liquid I feed it is usually half water and half milk. My sourdough starter doesn't cry when it needs feeding. It does start to look aged and to smell a little too pungent, like some kinds of cheese. If not stirred regularly, its top grows crusty and comes to resemble its close cousin, dried yeast. I've had my starter for more than 23 years. It was given to me in my D.C. days by a lesbian poet who has since become pretty well known, at least in lesbian and poetry circles; it came to her from other lesbians living on the land in, I think, Tennessee. My starter connects me to those worlds, and to all the other starters with their own ancestries and legacies. It's like fire in the days before matches: if yours went out, it was often easier to trudge through dark, snowy woods and get hot coals from a neighbor than to start your own. Whoever denied coals to a neighbor whose fire had gone out might be condemning a whole family to death. When I had an oven, I doubled my starter regularly to make bread with; "use a cup, save a cup" was the rule, and my starter was used to regularly that it rarely got crusty. These days I only use it to make pancakes; though I like my pancakes, they're not a staple the way bread is. Some days keeping the starter alive seems foolish, like a handed-down ritual whose purpose has been lost. Some weeks I barely remember it's there. This morning I was embarrassed by how neglected it looked. I poured and scraped it into a ceramic bowl (sourdough doesn't take kindly to metal), added flour, warm water, and milk, and whisked it for two or three minutes. Now it's resting on the counter, covered with a kitchen towel. By midafternoon it'll be bubbly around the edges; by early evening it will have risen a couple of inches up the side of the bowl. I'm always afraid that this time I've let it go too long, but my starter is hardy, and tolerant too. It's looking as if I might have an oven again in the not-too-distant future, in which case the doubling will once again be a practical thing, not so much an act of faith.
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