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Meet Buster II, my new Sourdough Starter

I've had a lot of time on my hands recently, so I finally decided to make a new starter.

By Daniel GoldmanPublished 4 years ago 5 min read
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This bread was the first loaf I that I made with Buster II, my new sourdough starter. Why Buster II? When I was going to college, I made a starter named Buster. I have no idea why I named them Buster honestly, except that I consider a sourdough sponge to be very much a pet.

What is Sourdough?

Modern sourdough bread often isn't sourdough bread at all. It's bread made with "soured" dough, much the same way that modern buttermilk is soured artificially, rather than through natural fermentation.

Sourdough breads are the earliest kinds of bread, as it took a long time before bakers learned about the nature of the microbes that produce bread and commercial yeasts were isolated. The starter itself is a symbiotic relationship between multiple types of microbes, including lactic acid bacteria (especially Lactobacillus bacteria) and yeasts, including Saccharomyces and Candida.

There's a lot of scientific information available on sourdough, including an entire journal issues dedicated to the topic, including various international symposia on sourdough. I found the article, "The sourdough microflora: biodiversity and metabolic interactions," especially interesting.

About Buster and Buster II

As I mentioned in the beginning of this article, I first made sourdough bread a number of years ago while I was in college. I still don't remember why I gave Buster that name, but I do consider these sponges to be pets.

In general, I'm very much obsessed with fermentation. I love fermented foods, and I love that I'm creating something that relies on a whole bunch of other living organisms. In many ways, I'm not making the end product. The microbes are.

Why did I get rid of Buster?

I never put them in the fridge, and so I had to feed them daily, which was a lot of work. It was fine when I was off in college, because it was part of my daily routine, but with a change of environment, I just didn't want to keep it going. Right now, I kind of wish I had. I missed the daily activity of feeding the sponge, and eating fresh baked bread.

Why did I decide to start Buster II?

I work from home, and I don't have a fixed schedule. So I never really needed to worry about that issue. But I also spent a lot of my time at restaurants and bars, in part because I was able to get a lot of writing done there. So I guess it's more accurate to say that I "work from bar." With everything that's been going on recently, I couldn't do that anymore, and so I was getting really bored. I figured it was the perfect time to start Buster II.

Making a Sourdough Starter

Making a sourdough starter is fairly easy. You take equal parts water and flour, mix it together, and let it sit. The next day, you remove half, and replace it with new water and flour. You keep doing this process over and over again, and after about a week to ten days, you have your starter. You have to use unbleached flour. It works by culturing yeasts, lactobacillus bacteria, and other beneficial microbes that are in the flour.

Once active, you'll start to see bubbles forming as the microbes go through the fermentation process and break down the flour. The liquid and solid components will often separate a bit, which is normal.

I did cheat however, as I did with Buster I. I used commercial yeast. Day one and two tasted just like regular yeast bread, and it'll probably take a few weeks or more before Buster II really can make proper sourdough breads. Right now, the sponge smells quite alcoholic and yeasty. But there are a few advantages that I consider for this method.

First, I don't really have to worry about the starter failing. With the traditional route, you could go a week only to have mold form because the lactobacillus et al. don't form properly before pathogenic microbes take hold. Second, you have to waste flour each day, splitting half the sponge while you wait for the starter to actually form. With this method, I'm making bread after 24 hours.

I'm Not Alone

When I posted a comment on Twitter about writing an article about sourdough, a fellow writer replied with the idea of writing an article about all the people who are looking into starting sourdough bread making for the first time. Unfortunately I'm not so much the interviewer type, and it would be difficult to find a lot of people to interview. I am however a data science type.

I recently finished writing an article about Google Trends and looking into search trends for stress related terms. I decided to use the same approach here. I can't use the trend data to figure out how many people are making sourdough, or how many are doing it for the first time, but I can say this: searches for "sourdough" are over 300% higher than they were a month ago!

What's Ahead for Buster II?

I'll end this article on a short discussion about future plans, for Buster II. Obviously there's bread, and lots of it. Sourdough is also great for pancakes and waffles, and I'll be using Buster II to make both. However, if I'm feeling really adventurous, I might try using Buster II to make beer.

Bread and beer are closely related. They both rely on grains, water, and yeast. The earliest beers, like with sourdough, were fermented using wild yeasts and microbes. Today, naturally fermented beer is known as lambic beer, and it fills a whole category. The lactic acid fermentation gives these beers a more acidic character, which I personally love.

Since a sourdough sponge is essentially a collection of wild microbes that can ferment grains in a way that's safe for us to consume, I figure the starter can be useful for making lambic ales. I've heard of a few people trying it, but I've still have a lot of research to do.

Further Reading

I have a master index on Medium, and a whole list of subindices, including one on food and alcohol. I'll start building one on Vocal over time as well.

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About the Creator

Daniel Goldman

Visit my homepage. I am a polymath and a rōnin scholar with interests in many areas, including political science, economics, history, and philosophy. I've been writing about all of these topics, and others, for the past two decades.

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