Posted on 05/16/2018 3:37:39 AM PDT by Winniesboy
Ione Christensen’s starter, one of the oldest strains around, is being added to a collection in a Belgian ‘library’ with 84 samples from 20 countries
Every Saturday night for the last sixty years, Ione Christensen has followed the same routine to prepare waffles for breakfast the following morning: she measures out two cups of flour and two cups of warm water, then she reaches into her fridge to bring out her sourdough starter.
“It’s a family pet, if you will,” she said from her home in Canada’s Yukon territory.
Like any pet, the starter needs to be constantly fed – in this case, with flour and water.
But the spongy blend of wild yeast and bacteria has far outlived any ordinary pet: at 120 years, the sourdough is much older than Christensen, who is 84.
Earlier this month, Christensen baked for a new guest: Karl De Smedt, a Belgian baker, who scours the globe for new sourdough strains to add to his “library” in Belgium.
So far, the collection in the town of St Vith contains 84 samples in refrigerated glass jars from 20 countries, including Mexico, Greece and Japan. De Smedt’s archive is meant to both showcase geographically diverse varieties of yeast and preserve a growing collection for future generations to study.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
The cultures are much more tolerant of neglect than is commonly realised. I often leave a glass jar with a couple of spoonsful at the back of the fridge for a month or more without attention. It looks pretty sad then, but after a day or two back at room temperature and a small feed, it always comes to life again.
Dreadful! I can see that you are still in mourning. :(
A clean fridge lasts but for a moment, but a sourdough starter is forever.
That sourdough went up San Juan Hill with Teddy.
Yum! I love home made bread and especially sourdough.
True that.
Of course, I think I can get it online.
But it’s the swagger of that trapper that can’t be reproduced.
Someday......
“... and we LIKED it!”
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