Everyone I know is on a sourdough kick. My sister was talking some stuff she learned in a class, so I took these photos to show her what "waking up the starter" means to me.

When I took my starter out of the fridge and looked in the crock I saw a deep pool of hooch. It has been since Thanksgiving that I used it, and I may have put this batch in the fridge back in June or July 2018.

I take a heaping spoonful of the starter and...

...gently mix it with 1/2 cup of warm water and 1/2 cup of flour. Then I set it aside for 4 hours.

I feed the starter every 4 hrs when I am awake, until it is awake. When I sleep the yeast can sleep. Once I have 2 cups of starter in my bowl, I discard 1/2 and add 1/2 cup of water and 1/2 cup of flour again, maintaining the volume at around 2 cups. When the starter looks like this, it is ready to use.

I used the starter, baking a loaf of bread in my Dutch Oven.

Bread with butter, jam and cheese was yesterday's meal. Read the rest “I woke up my long refrigerated sourdough starter”

The biggest single improvement to my sourdough baking hobby has been using a pre-heated dutch oven. Read the rest “Using a dutch oven really improved my sourdough loaves”

Atlas Obscura just added an interesting new section on strange and wondrous foods, like salt-rising bread leavened with bacteria that cause gas gangene. Read the rest “Bread can be made from a gangrenous wound's bacteria”