Yeast Mode

I know, everyone and their monkey are into sourdough these days. I had resisted because flour was hard to come by in the early days of the pandemic and our friend Bruce had beaten into my brain that starters need to be fed every day to remain viable and uncontaminated by unfriendly flora.

Two weeks ago Julian got an envelope from a company called zourdough.com. It contained a packet of freeze-dried starter and directions. He passed the envelope to me with these words: “Here you go. Have fun.” I dutifully followed the instructions on rehydrating and feeding the starter, which was named Wharf by the company. This starter lives up to Zourdough’s hype: It’s extremely frisky. Julian commented that the yeast must be breeding like bunnies. I reminded him that yeast reproduce asexually. (There are some situations where yeast cells do reproduce sexually, but we’re not talking mating rituals. Alcohol is involved, however, as yeast fermentation produces alcohol as an end-product.)

My first sourdough product was pancakes, which were well received. Last night I made an adaptation of sourdough onion caraway bread, from the King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cookbook. I didn’t use the caraway seed. The recipe called for a tablespoon of dry yeast along with the starter. I reduced that to a teaspoon because of the friskiness of the starter. In addition, rather than just scattering the onions atop the loaves, I mixed most of the onion into the dough before I shaped it into two large boules. The crust and crumb were quite tender for a sourdough loaf. Julian was pleased.

I normally don’t name cultures of unicellular organisms, but this one deserves its own name: Yeast Mode, as a nod to Seattle Seahawks past (and current?) running back Marshawn Lynch, aka Beast Mode. May Yeast Mode be as relentless as its namesake.