Bringing my sourdough starters back from the grave

we've been missing this

If you thought my nearly one-year hiatus from the blog was long, you haven't heard about my nearly five year break from making sourdough.

The last time I blogged about sourdough, it was May of 2011, my very first mother's day.

http://thebreadmaiden.blogspot.com/2011/05/mother.html

My last substantive post about sourdough starter was here, back in 2009:

http://thebreadmaiden.blogspot.com/2009/05/sourdough-starter-troubles.html

If you peeked at that last post, you'll see part of the reason why I waited so long to get back into working with a starter, even though I've continued to bake bread with commercial yeast.

For one thing, it's a living organism.  Unlike commercial yeast which is dormant until activated by liquid, starter is alive and needs to be fed once a day for several days before it can be used.

Because it takes two to three days for a starter to get nice and active, then another day to rise a dough and bake, it requires knowing you will have a chunk of time to bake on the starter's schedule.  Bread with commercial yeast generally rises consistently, evenly, and takes about the same time, all the time.  So you can plan the bread baking around your schedule.

A starter is its own animal.  It is fussy.  It is messy.  It has a learning curve.  And if something goes wrong, it's one more part of the bread baking process that you need to troubleshoot.

But I think it's time.  I'm at a pretty good spot with Little Bread Boy and Little Bread Baby, where I might have a chunk of time here or there to feed the starter or bake the bread.

That said, these starters have been sitting in my fridge for the past five years, and who knows if they will come back.  Will they rise again after three days?  We'll just have to have faith.  Taste and see!

For The Science Behind...sourdough starter, check out this post.