With Covid-19 chasing people into their homes and self-isolation, I have read and heard from many sources that folks are taking up hobbies that they had long neglected or never before considered. I am one of these people. I got a new pet. Her name is Jane, and she is my wild yeast sourdough starter.

I have never much liked store-bought sourdough, usually finding it too strong and pungent for my palate, although Raven loves it. However, I was a batch of bread away from running out of yeast, so I knew I had to do something. Running off to the store every few days to grab a loaf of bread or a few more eggs or another gallon of milk as each one became needed was suddenly dangerous. So, with store runs to be limited to once every two weeks if at all possible and four people in the house to feed, I was likely to need to make my own bread before I could get back to the store. Lacking store-bought yeast, I decided that I would need to catch my own and care for it until it was needed. I suddenly understood the usefulness and importance of sourdough starter. As long as I take good care of Jane, I will have all of the yeast that I need.

Now, you might argue that I will also need flour, and of course I will. I had two bags of flour from a trip to Costco though, so I wasn’t terribly worried. On her last trip to the store my Mom managed to score a 25lb bag of flour as well (it was either that or a 2lb bag, which wouldn’t last me more than a batch or two of bread and with 4 people to feed it wouldn’t last long). So we are set. I have flour, and I have Jane.

Jane is two weeks old now, and I named her the day after I started her in the thinking that having a name would make me feel more responsible for keeping her fed and healthy. I have tried to make sourdough starters before, and they all died, but none of them had names. I named Jane for the author of the bread book whose instructions and proportions I followed to create her. Jane also has a nice literary history of both characters and authors, which appealed to my English Major sensibilities. I just realized this afternoon that she is Jane . . . Dough. Jane S. Dough. Jane Sour Dough. During her formative days I just kept adding to Jane, never discarding. Then I used her to make my first ever sourdough loaves. Not bad, although they both split badly around the base. Maybe more steam in the oven next time?

This bake depleted Jane down enough that I just started rebuilding her again. I have finally gotten to the point that her jar is full again and I was looking at other recipes to try, and most of them talk about using just some of the starter to set up the beginning of the bake, reserving a few ounces to keep the starter going, and discarding the rest.

Here is Jane (left) and Daughter of Jane (right). Daughter of Jane is approximately 4 hours old in this picture and already growing nicely. I did not trust the whole idea of using only a few ounces of what was a full jar of sourdough starter to add to a cup of flour and half a cup of water as a “feeding” and discarding or using the rest, so I just started a new jar to try it and see what happened. That way if Daughter of Jane didn’t work out, I wouldn’t lose two weeks of work and good growth from the starter I had made. If Daughter of Jane does work out – and it very much looks like she will – I will need to start baking tomorrow morning and do some research to find things beyond bread that I can make with “discarded” sourdough starter. I might even trust the “feeding” process and go back down to just one jar of starter.