It's aliiiiiiiiiiiiive

I have embarked upon a wild adventure.

No, I'm not climbing mountains or traversing cliffs barefooted or scuba-diving in the Marianas Trench.  Think more like wild as in organisms--growing organisms.  I started a sourdough culture!

I have fond memories of my mother experimenting similarly with wild yeast and bacteria in the form of a wide-mouthed quart jar with a hinged lid and strawberries on the sides that smelled funny and contained a thin, watery liquid.  The jar would sit in the back of our fridge for weeks at a time, and then sometimes Mom would pull it out and wake up the starter, then use it to make bread.

Since buying Peter Reinhart's book The Bread Baker's Apprentice, I have taken my whole bread-baking obsession to a new level.  The type of bread with the most patience and time requirements, though, had remained elusive--how to justify taking more than a week to make a loaf of bread when there was physiology and neuroscience to study?  I resolved to wait until this summer to give it a go, with the hopes that once I have my starter made I, too, can keep my own little kitchen chia-pet in the back of the fridge.

Reinhart's method started with whole wheat flour and pineapple juice, and I'm now at the point where I've fed the little bugger for a few days running.  I'm almost at the barm stage now, which is sort of like the leveled-up version of the seed culture and will itself get fed and watered until it's ready to be used in bread-making.

Stay tuned for pictures and updates!  Hopefully I'll get to bake some bread over the long holiday weekend.

Love,
Lindsey