ham, sourdough

WTF?

Blasphemy! 

Someone in Saudi Arabia has searched and found this ham sandwich on sourdough:

The sourdough is from a Northwest starter that I bought from a vendor on eBay. I think. I still have it around in thick putty form. It is a very good culture. It went into its storage bag white and over time as it languished turned the whole bag icky brown.

But also, WTF about this? 

Germany, land of the original hotdog looking at my hotdog over and over. This hotdog gets looked at way more than it deserves. The site is not all that well visited, but this hotdog page is among the top viewed pages from all over the world. I have no idea if viewers are interested in homemade buns, or what. I do not understand this at all. They're looking at this photo.

The bun is not sourdough, just regular fast bread.

Recently I revitalized an old Maui culture. It took much longer than I anticipated and that made me fear it had died in putty form, languishing for years in the crisper. 

I also collected fresh Denver culture and that also took longer to activate than I expected. 

I baked with them both, and they both turned out fine. I kept the Maui, put it back in the refrigerator, and discarded the Denver. Collected Denver culture from outside again, one quickly overnight, another slowly over a week. So, two new Denver cultures.

The new Denver collected overnight was taking longer than expected by the heat of a 100W lamp. Then yesterday I realized it had actually cooked inside the jar. Oops. Just like an Easy Bake oven. After days of lamp treatment and discouraged I discarded that one too. Now I am cultivating the third Denver culture, the ugly one, the one that's been out on the terrace for a week with the hope of having some rain fall into it. I gave up on rain. Even though every single day there's been this:

Today it's been like this all day but no rain. It can be seen falling right out of the clouds but evaporating before hitting the ground. Weird.

So now the new Denver ugly culture is cultivating by the warmth of 40W fluorescent light under a towel, a makeshift proofing box. 

Along with a previous Denver culture that had been frozen as flakes. The frozen one is showing no signs of life yet, The ugly Denver collected for a week is starting right up bubbling. I can tell the ugly gross one is going to be spectacular. 

The Denver culture that was frozen, I think, was collected in winter and has its own unique characteristics that are cold-anured. Cool fermentation hardly affects it at all. Does not slow it down. It too is spectacular once it gets going. It just keeps right on rising inside a cold refrigerator. I think that is the one. I did not specify on the label. If not then there is yet another in putty form.

The Maui culture was put back in cold storage while I collected new Denver culture. Now it is taken out again and revitalized again and it sprang back to life in just a few hours. It is an especially virile complex culture eager and ready to go. 

So, presently I am cultivating three separate sourdough cultures, Maui, revitalized from near death, Denver, frozen for years, and new Denver, collected over a prolonged period to become gray and ugly with foreign bits blown into it, tiny bugs and such undesirable things as tiny flower petals and rotten fruit. I also had peaches that ripened so far they began to self-ferment so I nicked off a small wedge of soggy peach and threw that into the jar as well. All that together will make for one heck of a regional culture. That will be the one I keep active, most likely. 

They're a pain in the butt. One alone is a pain in the butt, three is not worth the trouble. Two will be brought to full bubbling activity, used, and shut down and stored again, leaving just one of them active. I think I already made my choice.

There are other cultures too that are languishing. Those need to be revitalized the same way and re-stored. Or else give up on keeping collections.

Then, by way of curiosity, I double checked on Sourdough International for instructions on how to activate their sourdough cultures. Come to find out I misremembered, it takes three days to activate their freeze-dried collections and not 24 hours as I was recalling their process. That whole time I was thinking something was dreadfully wrong with my cultures, I was mistaken, they were behaving normally. And in the case of Denver gross out culture that I ceased waiting for rain even though it looks like it is going to pour any minute, behaving quite abnormally fast. 

Over time, I bought several starters from Sourdough International and each one I tried is excellent. I have no explanation for why mine are still not around while others that I collected myself here and there are still around stored in various forms, dry, putty, and frozen. I do not know how I managed to allow them to perish. Carelessness, I suppose. I do recommend them. It is a very reliable company and their prices are reasonable. The owner is nice. When I wrote to him directly about the S.African culture failing to lift 100% whole wheat flour, his responses were careful and thoughtful. 

Incidentally, that Sourdough International S. African culture is outstanding, the flavor extraordinary. But then so is Denver sourdough when made into whole wheat loaves. The affect is very similar. It's just that the loaves cannot be 100% whole wheat flour or else the loaves turn out like bricks. The yeast cannot lift the weight and microscopically the husk bits slice the gluten molecules. Still, the result cannot be matched by anything you could ever buy from a bakery. Bread that extraordinary simply does not exist for sale. Even as bricks and cut exceedingly thinly as dense deep rye bread is sometimes cut for tiny sandwiches, it is totally worth it. But now I have a new trick up my sleeve. A new way of baking, a whole new approach by a wet-dough and clay cloche method. The trick as the S. African fellow who collected his culture states is to bring up the culture trained on whole wheat to begin with. The organisms that prevail in the culture will be geared toward whole wheat. It can still be used for white flour and for rye flour and combinations of those, but it will be trained on whole wheat, and the whole wheat itself contributes significant flavor, in combination with sourdough culture it is out of this world.