Round One
The contestants: Kevin Bakin, Kyra Breadwick, and Sosie.
Silly me. I thought that I was going to do one round of this and have a definitive answer as to which of my starters is my favorite.
I do not. I like them all.
I promise I am not trying to start yet another blog about sourdough. Plenty of folks have already done that far better than I ever could. It’s just that it’s been rainy and gross here for weeks, so among my efforts to combat seasonal depression I bake bread and I do yoga. The bread makes me feel warm and happy and the yoga keeps me from gaining six hundred pounds from all of the warm and happy bread. I have my three starters, two acquired through family friends (Kevin and Kyra) and one grown right here in my own kitchen (Sosie!), but I have never baked all three side by side under relatively controlled conditions. I say “relatively” because my kitchen is the size of a postage stamp, and therefore not conducive to rigorous adherence to scientific method. But as I have previously postulated, this ain’t rocket science, so I busted out all three and got to feeding.
Some peeps pour off their hooch (the liquid that forms at the top of the starter if you don’t feed it for awhile), I do not. I let my starter(s) come to room temperature before I feed them. Very often, they begin bubbling as they warm and reabsorb most or all of that hooch. Even if they don’t, I stir it right back in.
Once they were all fed I tucked them away in a warm corner to rise. Within a couple of hours I realized my first mistake. Kevin was bubbling away while Kyra and Sosie acted like they had spent the previous evening entertaining Jose Cuervo. I had fed all of them within a few days prior to this “experiment,” but I had not fed them all on the same day. I have previously claimed that it is not necessary to feed your starter every day, and this is true. If you plan on doing a fairly regular amount of baking, it does pay to feed your starter every day. But if you are an occasional baker (as I usually am) your starter will withstand far more neglect than purists would have you believe. My sister and I have both left our starters unattended for months and they come back just fine. We even brought one back that hadn’t been fed in years. If you don’t feed regularly, just be aware that you may have to feed it more than once to revive it, so factor that extra time into your schedule. I managed to get them all on the same page by moving Kevin to a cooler spot so he could chill while the ladies got their act together. They caught up quickly.
It’s amazing to me that each starter produces such a totally unique finished product. I made all three with the same recipe – one that I’ve been using for a few months as I’ve been playing around with hydration. Speaking of hydration, do not be scared. It is simply the ratio of water to flour in the dough. Higher hydration means a more open crumb (meaning those nice bubbles that are a sourdough signature) while lower hydration will have fewer bubbles (good for toast and sandwiches). It also affects the overall texture and crust, but again, it’s not scary. Higher hydration does mean MUCH stickier dough that can be a wee bit challenging to work with. Easy enough to avoid – just lower the amount of water. The recipe I’m using is not considered “high hydration;” it’s on the high end of medium. But it’s as high as I’m currently willing to attempt, because going any higher requires more of that rigorous attention that scares a lot of folks away from ever even trying to make sourdough. And that’s not my jam.
In the end, my less-than-scientific scientific experiment served to prove that all three starters make damn good bread. Kevin is the least sour but remains the sturdiest; if I ever have the cojones to try a true high-hydration recipe, he will be my guy. Kyra is just so darn lovely all around. She has a texture that is to die for. It’s spongy and light and and chewy and the crust is downright magical. I’m not much of a French toast person, but I have the feeling Kyra would make fabulous french toast (just the thought of this stuff as French toast is making me rethink my position on French toast). And then there is Sosie. Sosie is my superstar when it comes to sourness – truly born and bread (I apologize; I couldn’t help myself) in the Bay Area. She, however, doesn’t hold her shape as well when I boost the water levels. I’m not sure what that’s about – probably more of the aforementioned rigorous attention. I’ll save that for Round Two.
