madbaker | San Francisco culture, madbaker version

After the cleaners threw out my starter, I thought I'd try the flour-and-water trick. First I cleaned out the crock thoroughly and repeatedly; it's unglazed pottery, so I wanted to get rid of any soap residue or other potential contaminants. To test this I tried flour and water with dry yeast. It bubbled and stayed that way over several days, so I figured I was good. Threw that out, because after all I wanted real Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis. I mixed flour and water and let it sit, refreshing a few times per day.

I got bubbles pretty quickly! Lots of small bubbles. It tasted sour. Yay! So after four or five days (which is a good amount to get full yeast development) I baked with it.
And I got...bricks. Bah. I'm making some chard bread pudding with it today, because it will still work for that and croutons.

Fortunately, at the Meat & Greet (aka cow retirement party) I begged a couple spoonfuls of starter from Rosie, who uses hers every day. I fed it yesterday and it's got lovely large yeasty bubbles. It isn't that sour... but right now I'll take yeast over sour, thankyouverymuch. I probably should try baking a loaf this week, but we've got way too much bread in the fridge right now. I can't bring myself to throw away the bricks and we don't have farm animals to feed it to.