Hi, food friends,
With temperatures in Atlanta starting to dip below boiling, I tackled a task this week that has become a bit of a fall ritual: resurrecting my sourdough starter.
I don’t bake much in the summer because our old, small house gets hot enough as it is. If I really feel the need to make sourdough bread in hot weather, I’ll sometimes bake it in an old cast iron Dutch oven in my Big Green Egg on the deck.
But when things cool down, I really enjoy making sourdough. It warms up the kitchen, makes the house smell amazing and it works great as a hostess gift during the holidays.
The only problem is that I first must reinvigorate my dormant starter, a process that is — to put it frankly — disgusting. During the several months that I leave my sourdough starter in the fridge, the magical little microbes that make bread rise continue to slowly digest the flour and water in their jar. The mixture becomes dense, gluey and very smelly. It takes several feedings for the starter to regain its fresh, healthy scent, and cleaning the old storage vessel requires elbow grease and a strong stomach.
I know there are more palatable ways of preserving sourdough starter, which I might try out, but I had to laugh a little about this gross little fall ritual I’ve stumbled onto. Reviving my starter is a chore that pays off in the long term; I see plenty of delicious toasts and gourmet sandwiches in my future, and I look forward to giving lots of bread away. But as I held my nose and measured out my unbleached flour and filtered water earlier this week, I realized it was the first time I felt like autumn had officially arrived.
Do you have any seasonal food rituals? What happens in your kitchen that makes it really begin to feel like autumn?
You can reach out to me directly at henri.hollis@ajc.com with tips, thoughts or questions for the AJC’s food and dining team.