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Sourdough: Living Truths, History, Stories - Sweet & Sour · Family Tree Food Stories

• 0:00
  Hello everybody.
• 0:01
  We are back and off to the race as well.
• 0:05
  Maybe we're not off to the races, we're baking, we're baking stuff, right?
• 0:09
  Yeah, we already did the Derby show.
• 0:10
  We're not off to the races on this one,
• 0:12
  right.
• 0:12
  But if you missed last week's episode, don't forget to go back because
• 0:17
  you might learn how to make sure a zucchini could help you in a burglary
• 0:21
  or solving a crime case, the purpose behind bars because of that zucchini.
• 0:26
  Yeah, here.
• 0:26
  They're all powerful.
• 0:27
  I love it.
• 0:28
  Love
• 0:28
  you are right, but today we're diving into the almighty, sourdough . Yeah.
• 0:33
  and it was, it was created by accident.
• 0:35
  The simplest thing you can think of.
• 0:37
  Flour and water has created a craze that is, international to make sourdough, and
• 0:44
  it has a very interesting history and you find out just randomly sometimes.
• 0:48
  People in your orbit?
• 0:50
  You know, my PR person from my restaurant, she's a sourdough
• 0:53
  maker and perfected one apparently
• 0:56
  I would never be one of those.
• 0:58
  I buy my sourdough.
• 1:00
  I tried.
• 1:00
  I tried to make sourdough
• 1:02
  you Bless you.
• 1:02
  I.
• 1:03
  but it's really hard.
• 1:04
  It's not easy to perfect
• 1:06
  it's like mastering an art though, I mean, it's like the violin.
• 1:10
  You practice, you practice, you practice, and eventually it starts sounding
• 1:13
  good or it starts coming together.
• 1:15
  And so there's all kinds of steps but you know what?
• 1:17
  I wanna be a scientist.
• 1:18
  I think this is so fun in 2020.
• 1:22
  The guy who invented an Xbox.
• 1:23
  I barely know what that is, but it's kind of one of those game things or something.
• 1:27
  I don't know.
• 1:27
  My grandchildren probably
• 1:28
  know.
• 1:29
  Unearthed, a 4500 year old piece of pottery, scraped off its yeast.
• 1:34
  I love that.
• 1:35
  And looking at hieroglyphics, that's writing on in like, symbols and stuff
• 1:40
  on, cave walls and followed a recipe there and made bread, sourdough bread.
• 1:45
  And it was sweeter and richer than what we have today, but it
• 1:48
  survived Yeast is an amazing thing.
• 1:51
  And yeast is all around us.
• 1:53
  That's what they tell us.
• 1:54
  That's why sourdough tastes different in every kitchen, in every community,
• 1:58
  because it picks up not only the flour and water and all this stuff that starts
• 2:02
  happening in sciencey kind of ways, and then it picks it up everywhere from us,
• 2:07
  Stuff that's floating around in the air.
• 2:08
  Right.
• 2:09
  You never know what's going on.
• 2:10
  I'm gonna tell you one little story because I thought this
• 2:12
  was kind of interesting that, during the pandemic, well.
• 2:16
  2013 or so, there was a woman in Australia who had her sourdough
• 2:20
  starter and, You know, there's something about breaking bread
• 2:23
  that brings us together, right?
• 2:25
  so she took her sourdough starter, dehydrated or dried it
• 2:29
  out because that's an easier way
• 2:31
  you can do that.
• 2:32
  Yes, you can buy it that way.
• 2:34
  King Arthur Flower sells it that way too.
• 2:36
  But anyway, So she dries it out and she sends it to a friend.
• 2:40
  Now this dried sourdough starter has managed to make it around the world
• 2:45
  and it has now been named Twinkle.
• 2:48
  we have a blogger that writes about it and twinkle the sourdough starter
• 2:52
  is floating around out there,
• 2:53
  legend, sourdough, the legend.
• 2:55
  You know, you bring up an interesting point because this
• 2:58
  stuff has been in generations.
• 3:00
  I mean, there's famous family stories about their sourdough being handed down.
• 3:04
  Handed down.
• 3:05
  There was one, story about a gentleman whose great-great-great,
• 3:08
  like a million greats, grandmother was on the Oregon Trail.
• 3:11
  And he inherited her starter.
• 3:13
  But here's the interesting part, Nancy, and since you've tried it before, you
• 3:16
  know a little bit more about how it comes together, but it's never really old
• 3:21
  because you have to keep replenishing it,
• 3:23
  right?
• 3:24
  You feed it and you throw away.
• 3:26
  Some of you dis, let me say discard.
• 3:28
  some of it and maybe use it for something else like cookies and stuff like that.
• 3:32
  But it regenerates you know, people I think in their mind
• 3:35
  might think this is this just old thing that constantly lives on.
• 3:39
  It does, but it has to be replenished, which is a little bit different.
• 3:43
  You know,
• 3:44
  it's
• 3:44
  really kind of old and new.
• 3:45
  Yeah.
• 3:45
  If you bake it all, you know, it is worth trying and experiment, experimenting
• 3:49
  with because it's kind of fun to see.
• 3:51
  How this, bread bakes up differently than others.
• 3:54
  And of course then you've gotta do it in, a dutch oven type of thing.
• 3:58
  And of
• 3:58
  course I went crazy with the Dutch oven.
• 4:01
  Lemme tell you, a Dutch oven is nothing more than a pot that has a dome lid.
• 4:05
  And that's it.
• 4:06
  And the reason why it's important to have something like that is
• 4:09
  because the moisture stays in there and you get that nice crusty to it.
• 4:13
  by the way.
• 4:13
  I just have to tell you, Nancy, that does not sound fun to me.
• 4:16
  Okay.
• 4:16
  I will buy mine from Boden's out of San Francisco for $17,
• 4:21
  for two big round things.
• 4:23
  That's how I'll get my sourdough,
• 4:24
  Well, when we were in San Francisco, for a conference, we went to Bodens
• 4:27
  because of course it's sourdough.
• 4:29
  My dad loved, talked about sourdough and Bodens and San Francisco and his
• 4:33
  years back in, I guess it was World War ii, and then when he got married
• 4:37
  with mom and the stories go on and on.
• 4:40
  Dad was a great storyteller.
• 4:41
  But anyway, so Bob and I go to Boden's.
• 4:44
  I did not like it.
• 4:46
  It's real.
• 4:47
  I
• 4:47
  know.
• 4:48
  Sacrilegious, right.
• 4:50
  It has a, a tang to it,
• 4:52
  it's really, it's, it's a very, sour iss not the right word.
• 4:56
  It's, I, it's hard to describe.
• 4:58
  It's kind of a bittery.
• 5:00
  It's, I don't know.
• 5:01
  It's,
• 5:01
  Oh, I can't wait to taste it.
• 5:02
  yeah, it's kind like the inside of a shoe.
• 5:05
  It's kind way I think about it.
• 5:07
  It's like, not that I've eaten the inside of a shoe, but you
• 5:10
  know, we've ever smelled sneaky, stinky sneakers, I would say.
• 5:13
  It probably tastes
• 5:14
  Hey, gotta tell you a funny story about took a group of local
• 5:18
  mayors from the state of Kentucky.
• 5:20
  We were in a conference and we went to a restaurant in Phoenix or
• 5:23
  some place, big time place, and it was an Indian restaurant.
• 5:26
  So I. Forgive me, Indian restaurant fans.
• 5:29
  but this one mayor starts eating this meal that we had ordered,
• 5:33
  kind of a community meal.
• 5:34
  And he said, I don't like this at all.
• 5:36
  It tastes like a wet dog.
• 5:38
  Smells.
• 5:40
  Is this the sourdough?
• 5:42
  no, it was just a meal in an Indian restaurant.
• 5:44
  So
• 5:45
  anyway, you can't take the Kentucky out of a mayor.
• 5:47
  You can take the mayor out of Kentucky.
• 5:48
  But anyway,
• 5:49
  You've got some stories about how the Egyptians figured out the whole
• 5:52
  Oh yeah.
• 5:54
  You know, first of all, starting, colonized by wild yeast and bacteria.
• 5:59
  I was intrigued by that.
• 6:00
  Wild
• 6:01
  Yeha Wild East.
• 6:03
  Get your ponies going.
• 6:04
  Crack that whip
• 6:05
  cracking the whip on wild yeast because I think why they call it that, even
• 6:10
  though you can use ordinary flour, that was really interesting to me.
• 6:13
  You can use your King Arthur, you can use any kind of flower
• 6:16
  ' cause it has that potential.
• 6:18
  Somewhere encased in that flower mixed with water, which is an
• 6:22
  amazing scientific thing to me.
• 6:24
  It starts releasing all this bacteria and it creates all this bubbly stuff
• 6:29
  that shows you that it's alive.
• 6:31
  Right?
• 6:32
  But what is also interesting about it is how closely it, mirrors what
• 6:37
  the Egyptians figured out because they liked making beer, right.
• 6:40
  Yep.
• 6:41
  Egyptians.
• 6:42
  and so it sort of started out that way in Egypt and that really led to the
• 6:46
  level of raising it up to a new level of not just being some ancient weird thing
• 6:50
  And all this stuff starts happening is that they would start using it symbiotic
• 6:54
  ways with their beer making process.
• 6:57
  And that's how brewer's yeast developed.
• 6:59
  And that's a particular strain of yeast, but they would use some of the
• 7:02
  sourdough Pour it in the big vats that they make beer in, which is interesting
• 7:07
  'cause I've seen big vats where they make bourbon and other spirits.
• 7:10
  But yeast plays a role in all of that So you had brewer's, yeast,
• 7:14
  and then you also develop later on Baker's yeast, which is different.
• 7:17
  It's a single source yeast, which makes it really highly efficient for most of
• 7:21
  the breads that most people eat today.
• 7:24
  Although, I have to tell you, sourdough is really gaining, nearly everyone is
• 7:28
  on the lookout for great sourdough bread.
• 7:31
  and there are people who claim that it has health benefits.
• 7:34
  they say it's more digestible.
• 7:36
  For instance, if you're gluten sensitive, not, celiac, but gluten
• 7:40
  sensitive because it's a biological complicated kind of set of scientific
• 7:45
  experiments, whereas commercial yeast.
• 7:48
  Yields the bread we have.
• 7:50
  and it's more efficient for mass production, I like my wonder bread balls,
• 7:54
  I don't know if anybody does that, but you roll 'em up in balls and they're just
• 7:57
  real soft and porous and all of that.
• 7:59
  good stuff.
• 8:00
  Bird Ball Fights.
• 8:01
  Wonder bread ball fights.
• 8:03
  We have a story about that in our book,
• 8:04
  yeah, we do.
• 8:06
  so anyway, and then at some point.
• 8:09
  FARM.
• 8:10
  It's foam for making beer making or whatever the FARM stands for.
• 8:14
  Something
• 8:14
  like
• 8:14
  don't know what the A stands
• 8:16
  I know, I thought I had it written that.
• 8:18
  Anyway, so that started being used in sourdough recipes.
• 8:21
  And then when Baker's yeast came along in the 19th century, it was a game changer.
• 8:25
  And that's when we kind of, as a society moved and trended toward, Commercial
• 8:30
  breads, but in the meantime, you had San Francisco in the Gold Rush in Alaska.
• 8:35
  You had prospectors in California and Alaska who kept their starter
• 8:39
  in little containers around their neck and slept with it
• 8:42
  to keep it from being stolen, and These miners would use this
• 8:46
  sourdough.
• 8:47
  Who did you sleep with tonight?
• 8:48
  I slept with my yeast.
• 8:50
  My, My, sourdough,
• 8:52
  Sorry, Sally
• 8:53
  they, call the,
• 8:55
  the,
• 8:55
  Bob?
• 8:56
  old timers, you know, Bob.
• 8:57
  Oh, Bob.
• 8:58
  Bob's our muse.
• 8:59
  Oh, my Bob, anyway, they refer to them as sourdoughs To this day, the natives.
• 9:04
  old time
• 9:05
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 9:06
  yeah.
• 9:06
  Well to this day, not even just the old miners, but the
• 9:10
  um, you know, the gold rush.
• 9:11
  When did that happen?
• 9:12
  That was about 1898
• 9:14
  I should know.
• 9:15
  I had a, I guess it was a great, great grandfather who was a California 49 er
• 9:19
  I bet he had sourdough around his neck.
• 9:21
  Like, yeah, I, he think he brought his wife eventually, but
• 9:25
  Yeah, that's where you got all that wildness.
• 9:28
  yes.
• 9:28
  Yes.
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  Mr.
• 9:29
  Bowden Bakery has a 220 3-year-old starter and it's considered the
• 9:34
  gold standard for sourdough bread.
• 9:35
  It's survived, changed rem morphed, reconstituted over
• 9:40
  and take my.
• 9:41
  years, and there's still selling it
• 9:42
  Amazon.
• 9:43
  it smells And tastes like wet dog
• 9:45
  in, in her
• 9:45
  And it smells like, yeah,
• 9:47
  Yeah.
• 9:48
  . But it is a very cool little shop, so I have to say that that's kind of fun.
• 9:51
  but even still, so, sourdough, It's kind of a, I don't call it a fad,
• 9:56
  I think it's something that's gonna be here around for a long time.
• 9:58
  Especially if they made it, was it back in, was it the guy found it
• 10:02
  from the recipe from 4,000 years ago.
• 10:05
  but even still, it seems like every farmer's market you go
• 10:08
  to, there's a sourdough maker.
• 10:10
  And we bought some not too long ago locally, and cause I'm always curious
• 10:15
  about the different flavors that people do or things that they added add to it.
• 10:18
  And this one was a lavender
• 10:20
  sourdough.
• 10:22
  Lavender.
• 10:23
  It was beautiful.
• 10:24
  It, so I had to try it.
• 10:25
  Right.
• 10:26
  Does it taste like lavender?
• 10:27
  I'm not even sure what lavender tastes like, although I have had
• 10:30
  it in other things, but you would think it would taste purple, right?
• 10:32
  Or like flowery,
• 10:33
  but it whatever purple tastes like.
• 10:35
  But,, but it didn't, it didn't really have any particular flavor and we just
• 10:39
  sort of let it sit in the refrigerator for a while and eventually, I cut it
• 10:42
  up And roast it into croutons, which it was delicious, but it didn't keep the
• 10:46
  color, that purple color after making the croutons because they brown in the oven.
• 10:50
  Yeah.
• 10:50
  Yeah.
• 10:51
  That is an, a side use of sourdough bread, and that's what a lot of people who have
• 10:56
  sourdough mishaps, and those are common as you're in the early stages of sourdough.
• 11:01
  And you probably have experienced some of that, where they come
• 11:03
  out flat as a pancake and people joke that they use them.
• 11:06
  Use them as Frisbees.
• 11:08
  I haven't had that
• 11:08
  Practical, you can cut 'em up and make croutons, right?
• 11:12
  lots of butter and soak 'em in butter and
• 11:15
  then roast 'em up, so, yep.
• 11:16
  But that in gets too big.
• 11:18
  All those are fermentation issues.
• 11:20
  I mean, Nancy, I know it like takes like, what, how many hours
• 11:25
  it takes days.
• 11:25
  to make sourdough.
• 11:26
  It's really, I was looking at a recipe, early this morning before we recorded,
• 11:29
  and I was, somebody's got a recipe.
• 11:32
  I actually put it in the show notes because I thought it was interesting.
• 11:34
  They actually put the whole video of how to do it for a beginner.
• 11:38
  I. It really is getting the percentage of moisture or water in there properly.
• 11:44
  ' cause if you don't have enough, it gets, you know, flat and goy.
• 11:47
  And if you have too much, well, I'm not sure what happens.
• 11:50
  I would think if you had too much, it would probably do the same
• 11:52
  thing, but it's, you've gotta have the right hydration they call it.
• 11:55
  to get that crust.
• 11:56
  It's unique to each individual kitchen, what it's going to be like
• 12:00
  And I would think in even your mood, right?
• 12:03
  Because I don't know about you.
• 12:05
  I cook something and I'm in a good mood.
• 12:07
  It comes out great.
• 12:07
  I come cook something.
• 12:09
  I'm predominantly baking.
• 12:10
  If I bake something, I'm in like a crummy kind of mood.
• 12:14
  It
• 12:14
  doesn't, it's just not as good.
• 12:16
  I probably, I don't pay as much attention to
• 12:18
  Which, gets us back to why people are doing it.
• 12:21
  one, it tastes different.
• 12:22
  my daughter-in-law, for instance, can't eat any sugar.
• 12:25
  It triggers her migraines and the only bread she can eat is sourdough.
• 12:29
  Now why?
• 12:30
  I don't know.
• 12:30
  I don't know if that's science of some kind.
• 12:32
  It doesn't have sugar, but she refuses to eat any other kind.
• 12:35
  Just the kind that has flour, water, salt.
• 12:38
  If you look for just those ingredients, if you buy it commercially, which I
• 12:41
  always will, you should find that kind.
• 12:44
  and they sell it, and probably it's not the same as Boudin's.
• 12:47
  may even be better because then you're not Nancy.
• 12:50
  Right.
• 12:50
  Of course.
• 12:51
  Our friend Sylvia who has, Fred Bread, her evolution of her sourdough.
• 12:55
  I watched that and tasted it, and it has.
• 12:58
  Made a transformation from the early days to where it is today.
• 13:01
  And she gave me a loaf of garlic,
• 13:04
  a one of parmesan and one with olives in it.
• 13:07
  That was so delicious.
• 13:09
  but Fred Bread has come a long way since day one.
• 13:11
  And speaking of, I think we should take a break so we
• 13:14
  I know,
• 13:15
  about,
• 13:15
  gotta correct you on one thing
• 13:16
  okay.
• 13:17
  said Sylvia Lovely.
• 13:19
  It's Sylvia France.
• 13:20
  France.
• 13:21
  lovely.
• 13:21
  Will never be selling any sourdough.
• 13:24
  sorry, sorry.
• 13:25
  Sylvia, France, SBI versus Sylvia.
• 13:27
  So, yeah.
• 13:28
  But Fred Bread and Sylvia, France in St. Pete, Florida.
• 13:32
  she's a, a dear friend and I apologize for that.
• 13:35
  But hey, you know, everybody's got a blooper, so we'll be right back with a
• 13:38
  little bit more of, a yeasty endeavor.
• 13:42
  Tuned.
• 13:44
  So, Celia, we have a, a, a lot more to talk about on sourdough, but
• 13:49
  before we really start going about that, I wanna share this story about
• 13:53
  MASH that you told me about, and I don't remember the episode, but
• 13:56
  I went back and I listened to it.
• 13:58
  We'll put a, a link to that in the show notes as well but it was, the TV show Mash
• 14:04
  Yes, beloved show.
• 14:06
  And it was Winchester,
• 14:08
  Winchester Winchester the third.
• 14:10
  but Winchester.
• 14:12
  Is going through a And you know, if you know the show, you know that
• 14:15
  he never went through a crisis.
• 14:16
  He was arrogant,
• 14:17
  he was,
• 14:18
  stiff upper lip.
• 14:19
  He was a
• 14:20
  Different.
• 14:20
  Yeah.
• 14:21
  And he was having a existential crisis about who he is and death and all of that,
• 14:25
  surrounded by death with the soldiers.
• 14:28
  And he went in to see a soldier who was dying.
• 14:30
  And he said to him.
• 14:31
  Tell me, what do you see?
• 14:33
  And the young man responded in a very weak voice.
• 14:36
  I smell my mother's bread.
• 14:39
  He smelled his mother's bread as she was baking it.
• 14:43
  and it was so moving because Winchester began to weep.
• 14:46
  It wasn't what he saw.
• 14:47
  It was that smell of bread.
• 14:49
  And if anybody knows it's chocolate chip cookies, you know, the realtors
• 14:53
  tell you to bake something.
• 14:55
  There's just something about that aroma,
• 14:57
  it was beautiful.
• 14:58
  but very interesting on how food plays such an important
• 15:01
  part in our lives from birth.
• 15:04
  right to that final moment.
• 15:05
  And that was such, I wonder how the writers came up with that.
• 15:10
  If anybody experienced that.
• 15:11
  And it's called I smell bread
• 15:14
  I would have to reach out.
• 15:15
  and, and ask, find out who the writers are in MASH and, uh, especially that episode
• 15:19
  Mm-hmm.
• 15:20
  if anybody would share that story with us.
• 15:21
  How did they come up with that story?
• 15:23
  It captured that whole idea of bread you break bread, you make deals over bread,
• 15:28
  it's as much as social connection and that's what sourdough is by the way.
• 15:33
  they think one of the reasons people have really turned to it, with gusto
• 15:37
  is the whole sense of community.
• 15:39
  There are.
• 15:40
  Sourdough clubs.
• 15:41
  Right.
• 15:42
  Facebook groups, and and the Oregon Trail guy.
• 15:45
  He makes his available free to people.
• 15:48
  And there's a library, by the way, you like going to the library, go to
• 15:51
  Of course.
• 15:52
  the sourdough library.
• 15:53
  we've got close family friends in Belgium.
• 15:55
  I'll have to ask
• 15:56
  her because she's not a baker.
• 15:57
  Do you have a Do have you ever been to the sourdough library?
• 16:00
  I
• 16:00
  don't think of sourdough in Belgium.
• 16:02
  Do I think of
• 16:03
  chocolate and cookies
• 16:04
  I know.
• 16:05
  don't.
• 16:05
  think of,
• 16:06
  must have cut 'em a deal, But it's that connection and, and as we know
• 16:09
  from Family Tree food and stories, connection to heritage, it's growing.
• 16:14
  That desire, that desire for connection, and a creativity,
• 16:18
  like you said, you might fail.
• 16:20
  It's like a little microcosm of life, right?
• 16:22
  gonna eventually succeed if you keep working at it
• 16:25
  And it's okay.
• 16:26
  You know what's, really nice about this?
• 16:28
  especially if you've never tried it.
• 16:30
  First of all, if you've never made a sourdough starter, I would highly
• 16:35
  recommend you at least try doing so it's, I. It's water and flour and you
• 16:41
  just let it sit on your counter and nothing's gonna happen for a couple of
• 16:44
  days, and all of a sudden it's a alive, you know, it's like Frankenstein, right?
• 16:49
  You know,
• 16:50
  Yeah.
• 16:50
  this thing starts bubbling growing and it's truly, it's fun and it's amazing.
• 16:55
  It's a great thing to do with kids or grandkids or just yourself,
• 16:59
  just to have a side diversion.
• 17:01
  Not like we do need some side side diversions to just keep us.
• 17:04
  Laughing and on our toes,
• 17:05
  right?
• 17:05
  Every day.
• 17:06
  But it's kind of fun to see what happens and then to experiment.
• 17:10
  Because why not?
• 17:11
  I think that's part of, just part of everyday life.
• 17:14
  If we don't take the time to experiment
• 17:15
  And try things, even if we fail, it's okay.
• 17:18
  But, I wonder if Sally, I wonder, not Sally, I wonder if
• 17:21
  Dolly Parton makes sourdough.
• 17:22
  'cause she's apparently a big cooker, right?
• 17:24
  Yeah.
• 17:24
  Dean or any of those kind of
• 17:26
  I'm sure Paula Dean does.
• 17:27
  Yeah, but Sally, that's, I keep on one calling Sally, but Dolly
• 17:31
  Parton, she's apparently like a big hoo-ha cook on the side.
• 17:34
  She loves to cook for people, but I
• 17:36
  One, one fun.
• 17:37
  Name people name their sourdoughs.
• 17:40
  They're starters, I mean, you've got, it sinks living.
• 17:43
  You know, it's like your pet, your dog
• 17:45
  Mine was named George after, my father-in-law.
• 17:47
  'cause he talked too much sometimes.
• 17:49
  Doy Parton.
• 17:50
  Don't you love that?
• 17:51
  Doy Parton, Parton.
• 17:53
  Anyway, there was someone who's done that.
• 17:54
  So if you look at like a chart, leavening that's rising takes, eight to 24 hours.
• 18:01
  Flavor, tangy, stretch, and fold.
• 18:04
  You don't need it, right?
• 18:05
  stretch and fold.
• 18:07
  That sounds like who?
• 18:08
  It sounds like Farrah Fawcett exercise or
• 18:10
  Jane Fonda exercise
• 18:12
  and maybe there's something to that.
• 18:14
  Who,
• 18:14
  stretch and fold.
• 18:16
  that?
• 18:17
  It's life right in action, right in your
• 18:19
  kitchen.
• 18:21
  stretch and fold.
• 18:24
  Oh, so you have all kinds of, famous sourdough starter
• 18:27
  names, and stories behind them.
• 18:28
  you have the Oregon Trail guy, and you know what the other thing too,
• 18:32
  Nancy, what we are into is storytelling.
• 18:36
  So by naming them and going back in history and discovering them.
• 18:40
  You create stories because there's a story surrounding why anybody ever did that.
• 18:45
  The 4,500 year old yeast off the pottery,
• 18:48
  It becomes part of your family.
• 18:50
  Now, a, I've got a story, my dear friend Laura Brown and Laura doesn't cook.
• 18:54
  She's Italian.
• 18:55
  By who?
• 18:56
  What Italian doesn't
• 18:57
  cook.
• 18:57
  Right.
• 18:57
  Person would go, yeah.
• 18:58
  No, not, not pasta, nothing.
• 19:00
  No.
• 19:00
  She's got this little contraption, European contraption.
• 19:03
  It's like a tabletop cooker thing.
• 19:05
  And it tells you, you know, what to add at what time to how much to do it.
• 19:08
  and it cooks like a meal for her.
• 19:10
  So I guess it's, it's kind of like, an automatic, TV
• 19:13
  dinner maker, I would call it.
• 19:15
  It's probably the
• 19:15
  wrong thing to call it, but right, I'll have to find out what it is
• 19:20
  and, and send you the information, but the one thing she does make
• 19:23
  from scratch is a sweet sourdough.
• 19:26
  It is amazing.
• 19:27
  It's, you thought it was sour, right?
• 19:29
  It's not.
• 19:29
  It's almost a sweet cake.
• 19:31
  Now if anybody's
• 19:32
  wow.
• 19:33
  sweet bread, it's delicious.
• 19:35
  It's like, um.
• 19:36
  Does, does she add sugar to the
• 19:38
  There's some sugar to it, not a lot of
• 19:40
  sugar and.
• 19:41
  I thought she made it in this contraption, but she doesn't.
• 19:44
  But it takes her four days to make it, which
• 19:46
  I didn't realize Four days.
• 19:48
  but, and it's sort of a, a light cakey kind of texture.
• 19:51
  it's quite a gift to get.
• 19:52
  They're huge and they're gorgeous and you stick 'em in the freezer
• 19:55
  and she packs 'em all up and anyway, usually get two from Laura and she
• 19:59
  had given her sourdough starter to a friend who went down south once.
• 20:03
  And the sourdough starter almost didn't make it, but it came back to life.
• 20:06
  But moving the wet sourdough from one region of the country that
• 20:09
  we said earlier to another region can be a very delicate process.
• 20:13
  She wouldn't give me anything, so I'm kind of like not happy.
• 20:16
  But, that said, the one thing that Laura can make is amazing sourdough.
• 20:20
  sourdough . Yeah.
• 20:22
  some interesting ones.
• 20:23
  The Bavarian Black Death Sourdough Starter.
• 20:26
  That sounds ugly, doesn't it?
• 20:28
  Circa 400 years old.
• 20:30
  It's said to have.
• 20:31
  Originated around 1633 in.
• 20:35
  Oberammergau Germany.
• 20:37
  I brutalized that shortly after the Black Death and it was passed down
• 20:41
  through a single family for nearly four centuries, and it's prized
• 20:44
  for making Bavarian black bread.
• 20:47
  Oh.
• 20:48
  I don't think a Bavarian blacked as a sourdough thing, but you know,
• 20:51
  you use sourdough with cookies and brownies and cakes and it's
• 20:55
  really the discard that people use.
• 20:57
  I'll figure that one out.
• 20:58
  But I don't think they taste much different.
• 21:00
  I've had them, but anyway
• 21:01
  Yeah.
• 21:02
  It even, emerges in a Christian lot of people some of the stories
• 21:06
  blur the line history and legend.
• 21:09
  Historian Christians don't know exactly what that is, doesn't matter.
• 21:12
  Claim the fair starter descends from the tears and blood of Christ
• 21:16
  handed down by the apostles.
• 21:18
  That's a myth and, uh Guess what?
• 21:20
  What bread do you served
• 21:21
  Well, it was probably flatbread.
• 21:23
  'cause it was unleavened bread,
• 21:24
  Yeah, yeah, So it wasn't sourdough?
• 21:26
  Crackers.
• 21:27
  It wasn't bread, it was crackers.
• 21:28
  Yeah, Yeah, yeah.
• 21:29
  how do you make unleavened bread?
• 21:31
  You don't let it ferment.
• 21:32
  You don't let
• 21:33
  anything happen.
• 21:34
  a matza cracker type of thing.
• 21:35
  Right.
• 21:36
  yeah.
• 21:36
  yeah.
• 21:36
  yeah.
• 21:36
  So anyway, well I thought that was interesting 'cause you
• 21:39
  know, it's very prominent in
• 21:40
  Right.
• 21:41
  is the breaking of bread
• 21:43
  and, bread is a universal kinda language, love language,
• 21:46
  right?
• 21:46
  I wonder how that came about.
• 21:47
  The idea of breaking bread together, Maybe it was the last supper kind of thing.
• 21:51
  We'll have to reach research that
• 21:53
  one and dig into
• 21:53
  that,
• 21:54
  a friend Ed once said, I wanna break bread with you.
• 21:56
  when we first got to know each other, and I thought, I'm kind
• 22:00
  of strange, like, do I care?
• 22:01
  but, it was her way of I wanna share and get to know you in, a more
• 22:05
  personal kind of, friendly kind of way.
• 22:08
  And I think it's a lovely way of bringing people together in more of a community,
• 22:12
  It's a huge part of it.
• 22:13
  right.
• 22:14
  It's
• 22:14
  how you share and how you nourish one another.
• 22:17
  And food and bread is a way to do
• 22:19
  that, at least in the simplest form is doing it with bread.
• 22:22
  So
• 22:22
  So, if you're gonna spend four days doing something, you better find a
• 22:26
  community to share that
• 22:27
  I better like you because no soup for you.
• 22:30
  on that
• 22:30
  note,
• 22:31
  there's a lot about sourdough that we
• 22:33
  don't know and a lot that we do know, but it's still an experimentation.
• 22:37
  And
• 22:37
  remember, every meal has a story and every story is a feast.
• 22:41
  And if nothing else, it's certainly got a sourdough, hopefully sitting
• 22:44
  somewhere on your table with a good lopp of butter and oil and
• 22:49
  garlic and everything else that goes with it.
• 22:51
  an olive oil gal. Mm,
• 22:52
  Right.
• 22:53
  before we go, please remember we love you guys and we'd really
• 22:57
  love to hear your stories.
• 22:58
  You can do that at podcast family tree food stories.com.
• 23:02
  You can also go there to share, like tell us your stories, but do subscribe
• 23:07
  to the show so that you can get the
• 23:09
  quickest update on Every Thursday and we'll see you
• 23:12
  and hear you at the next show.
• 23:13
  Take care.
• 23:14
  Bye-bye.