A summer of non-academic pursuits: "Feed the bitch...feed her or she'll die!"

...as immortalized in Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, I have decided to undertake the overzealous task of creating a mother starter for later attempts at making pain au levain, Poilâne-style miche and proper-San Francisco sourdough - of course it should be more properly called Novelty sourdough, as the levels of Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis (I do not kid, the bacteria is named after the City by the Bay) the will be lower than if I made this in SF. 


But I digress. The basic idea behind a mother starter is that you capture wild yeast and bacteria, naturally occurring in the air, and begin to create a starter bit of dough that will be used to impart a complex, sour flavor (through the creation of alchohol, CO2 and acids) and provide the leavening. After its creation, the mother starter can be kept alive, indefinitely, in the refrigerator through regular additions of flour and water - thus Andy's middle-of-the-night call for Tony to "feed the bitch." The romantic notions of creating a mother starter from the air of home, that can be brought with me in my wanders, is quite comforting. (Let's just hope I don't accidentally kill it!) 


Guiding me in this experiment is Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day. He devotes an entire chapter to "Sourdough and Wild Yeast Fundamentals" - which cuts right to the heart of this overly-intellectual food geek. 


So we begin:

Day 1: 
Preparing the seed culture: bread flour and pineapple juice (to prevent the growth of the nasty bacteria leuconostoc)

Day 3: 
Seed Culture, Phase 2: Adding more bread flour and pineapple juice (and crossing my fingers that fermentation will begin soon)

 ...to be continued.