Hello everybody.

We are back and off to the race as well.

Maybe we're not off to the races, we're baking, we're baking stuff, right?

Yeah, we already did the Derby show.

We're not off to the races on this one,

right.

But if you missed last week's episode, don't forget to go back because

you might learn how to make sure a zucchini could help you in a burglary

or solving a crime case, the purpose behind bars because of that zucchini.

Yeah, here.

They're all powerful.

I love it.

Love

you are right, but today we're diving into the almighty, sourdough . Yeah.

and it was, it was created by accident.

The simplest thing you can think of.

Flour and water has created a craze that is, international to make sourdough, and

it has a very interesting history and you find out just randomly sometimes.

People in your orbit?

You know, my PR person from my restaurant, she's a sourdough

maker and perfected one apparently

I would never be one of those.

I buy my sourdough.

I tried.

I tried to make sourdough

you Bless you.

I.

but it's really hard.

It's not easy to perfect

it's like mastering an art though, I mean, it's like the violin.

You practice, you practice, you practice, and eventually it starts sounding

good or it starts coming together.

And so there's all kinds of steps but you know what?

I wanna be a scientist.

I think this is so fun in 2020.

The guy who invented an Xbox.

I barely know what that is, but it's kind of one of those game things or something.

I don't know.

My grandchildren probably

know.

Unearthed, a 4500 year old piece of pottery, scraped off its yeast.

I love that.

And looking at hieroglyphics, that's writing on in like, symbols and stuff

on, cave walls and followed a recipe there and made bread, sourdough bread.

And it was sweeter and richer than what we have today, but it

survived Yeast is an amazing thing.

And yeast is all around us.

That's what they tell us.

That's why sourdough tastes different in every kitchen, in every community,

because it picks up not only the flour and water and all this stuff that starts

happening in sciencey kind of ways, and then it picks it up everywhere from us,

Stuff that's floating around in the air.

Right.

You never know what's going on.

I'm gonna tell you one little story because I thought this

was kind of interesting that, during the pandemic, well.

2013 or so, there was a woman in Australia who had her sourdough

starter and, You know, there's something about breaking bread

that brings us together, right?

so she took her sourdough starter, dehydrated or dried it

out because that's an easier way

you can do that.

Yes, you can buy it that way.

King Arthur Flower sells it that way too.

But anyway, So she dries it out and she sends it to a friend.

Now this dried sourdough starter has managed to make it around the world

and it has now been named Twinkle.

we have a blogger that writes about it and twinkle the sourdough starter

is floating around out there,

legend, sourdough, the legend.

You know, you bring up an interesting point because this

stuff has been in generations.

I mean, there's famous family stories about their sourdough being handed down.

Handed down.

There was one, story about a gentleman whose great-great-great,

like a million greats, grandmother was on the Oregon Trail.

And he inherited her starter.

But here's the interesting part, Nancy, and since you've tried it before, you

know a little bit more about how it comes together, but it's never really old

because you have to keep replenishing it,

right?

You feed it and you throw away.

Some of you dis, let me say discard.

some of it and maybe use it for something else like cookies and stuff like that.

But it regenerates you know, people I think in their mind

might think this is this just old thing that constantly lives on.

It does, but it has to be replenished, which is a little bit different.

You know,

it's

really kind of old and new.

Yeah.

If you bake it all, you know, it is worth trying and experiment, experimenting

with because it's kind of fun to see.

How this, bread bakes up differently than others.

And of course then you've gotta do it in, a dutch oven type of thing.

And of

course I went crazy with the Dutch oven.

Lemme tell you, a Dutch oven is nothing more than a pot that has a dome lid.

And that's it.

And the reason why it's important to have something like that is

because the moisture stays in there and you get that nice crusty to it.

by the way.

I just have to tell you, Nancy, that does not sound fun to me.

Okay.

I will buy mine from Boden's out of San Francisco for $17,

for two big round things.

That's how I'll get my sourdough,

Well, when we were in San Francisco, for a conference, we went to Bodens

because of course it's sourdough.

My dad loved, talked about sourdough and Bodens and San Francisco and his

years back in, I guess it was World War ii, and then when he got married

with mom and the stories go on and on.

Dad was a great storyteller.

But anyway, so Bob and I go to Boden's.

I did not like it.

It's real.

I

know.

Sacrilegious, right.

It has a, a tang to it,

it's really, it's, it's a very, sour iss not the right word.

It's, I, it's hard to describe.

It's kind of a bittery.

It's, I don't know.

It's,

Oh, I can't wait to taste it.

yeah, it's kind like the inside of a shoe.

It's kind way I think about it.

It's like, not that I've eaten the inside of a shoe, but you

know, we've ever smelled sneaky, stinky sneakers, I would say.

It probably tastes

Hey, gotta tell you a funny story about took a group of local

mayors from the state of Kentucky.

We were in a conference and we went to a restaurant in Phoenix or

some place, big time place, and it was an Indian restaurant.

So I. Forgive me, Indian restaurant fans.

but this one mayor starts eating this meal that we had ordered,

kind of a community meal.

And he said, I don't like this at all.

It tastes like a wet dog.

Smells.

Is this the sourdough?

no, it was just a meal in an Indian restaurant.

So

anyway, you can't take the Kentucky out of a mayor.

You can take the mayor out of Kentucky.

But anyway,

You've got some stories about how the Egyptians figured out the whole

Oh yeah.

You know, first of all, starting, colonized by wild yeast and bacteria.

I was intrigued by that.

Wild

Yeha Wild East.

Get your ponies going.

Crack that whip

cracking the whip on wild yeast because I think why they call it that, even

though you can use ordinary flour, that was really interesting to me.

You can use your King Arthur, you can use any kind of flower

' cause it has that potential.

Somewhere encased in that flower mixed with water, which is an

amazing scientific thing to me.

It starts releasing all this bacteria and it creates all this bubbly stuff

that shows you that it's alive.

Right?

But what is also interesting about it is how closely it, mirrors what

the Egyptians figured out because they liked making beer, right.

Yep.

Egyptians.

and so it sort of started out that way in Egypt and that really led to the

level of raising it up to a new level of not just being some ancient weird thing

And all this stuff starts happening is that they would start using it symbiotic

ways with their beer making process.

And that's how brewer's yeast developed.

And that's a particular strain of yeast, but they would use some of the

sourdough Pour it in the big vats that they make beer in, which is interesting

'cause I've seen big vats where they make bourbon and other spirits.

But yeast plays a role in all of that So you had brewer's, yeast,

and then you also develop later on Baker's yeast, which is different.

It's a single source yeast, which makes it really highly efficient for most of

the breads that most people eat today.

Although, I have to tell you, sourdough is really gaining, nearly everyone is

on the lookout for great sourdough bread.

and there are people who claim that it has health benefits.

they say it's more digestible.

For instance, if you're gluten sensitive, not, celiac, but gluten

sensitive because it's a biological complicated kind of set of scientific

experiments, whereas commercial yeast.

Yields the bread we have.

and it's more efficient for mass production, I like my wonder bread balls,

I don't know if anybody does that, but you roll 'em up in balls and they're just

real soft and porous and all of that.

good stuff.

Bird Ball Fights.

Wonder bread ball fights.

We have a story about that in our book,

yeah, we do.

so anyway, and then at some point.

FARM.

It's foam for making beer making or whatever the FARM stands for.

Something

like

don't know what the A stands

I know, I thought I had it written that.

Anyway, so that started being used in sourdough recipes.

And then when Baker's yeast came along in the 19th century, it was a game changer.

And that's when we kind of, as a society moved and trended toward, Commercial

breads, but in the meantime, you had San Francisco in the Gold Rush in Alaska.

You had prospectors in California and Alaska who kept their starter

in little containers around their neck and slept with it

to keep it from being stolen, and These miners would use this

sourdough.

Who did you sleep with tonight?

I slept with my yeast.

My, My, sourdough,

Sorry, Sally

they, call the,

the,

Bob?

old timers, you know, Bob.

Oh, Bob.

Bob's our muse.

Oh, my Bob, anyway, they refer to them as sourdoughs To this day, the natives.

old time

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

yeah.

Well to this day, not even just the old miners, but the

um, you know, the gold rush.

When did that happen?

That was about 1898

I should know.

I had a, I guess it was a great, great grandfather who was a California 49 er

I bet he had sourdough around his neck.

Like, yeah, I, he think he brought his wife eventually, but

Yeah, that's where you got all that wildness.

yes.

Yes.

Mr.

Bowden Bakery has a 220 3-year-old starter and it's considered the

gold standard for sourdough bread.

It's survived, changed rem morphed, reconstituted over

and take my.

years, and there's still selling it

Amazon.

it smells And tastes like wet dog

in, in her

And it smells like, yeah,

Yeah.

. But it is a very cool little shop, so I have to say that that's kind of fun.

but even still, so, sourdough, It's kind of a, I don't call it a fad,

I think it's something that's gonna be here around for a long time.

Especially if they made it, was it back in, was it the guy found it

from the recipe from 4,000 years ago.

but even still, it seems like every farmer's market you go

to, there's a sourdough maker.

And we bought some not too long ago locally, and cause I'm always curious

about the different flavors that people do or things that they added add to it.

And this one was a lavender

sourdough.

Lavender.

It was beautiful.

It, so I had to try it.

Right.

Does it taste like lavender?

I'm not even sure what lavender tastes like, although I have had

it in other things, but you would think it would taste purple, right?

Or like flowery,

but it whatever purple tastes like.

But,, but it didn't, it didn't really have any particular flavor and we just

sort of let it sit in the refrigerator for a while and eventually, I cut it

up And roast it into croutons, which it was delicious, but it didn't keep the

color, that purple color after making the croutons because they brown in the oven.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That is an, a side use of sourdough bread, and that's what a lot of people who have

sourdough mishaps, and those are common as you're in the early stages of sourdough.

And you probably have experienced some of that, where they come

out flat as a pancake and people joke that they use them.

Use them as Frisbees.

I haven't had that

Practical, you can cut 'em up and make croutons, right?

lots of butter and soak 'em in butter and

then roast 'em up, so, yep.

But that in gets too big.

All those are fermentation issues.

I mean, Nancy, I know it like takes like, what, how many hours

it takes days.

to make sourdough.

It's really, I was looking at a recipe, early this morning before we recorded,

and I was, somebody's got a recipe.

I actually put it in the show notes because I thought it was interesting.

They actually put the whole video of how to do it for a beginner.

I. It really is getting the percentage of moisture or water in there properly.

' cause if you don't have enough, it gets, you know, flat and goy.

And if you have too much, well, I'm not sure what happens.

I would think if you had too much, it would probably do the same

thing, but it's, you've gotta have the right hydration they call it.

to get that crust.

It's unique to each individual kitchen, what it's going to be like

And I would think in even your mood, right?

Because I don't know about you.

I cook something and I'm in a good mood.

It comes out great.

I come cook something.

I'm predominantly baking.

If I bake something, I'm in like a crummy kind of mood.

It

doesn't, it's just not as good.

I probably, I don't pay as much attention to

Which, gets us back to why people are doing it.

one, it tastes different.

my daughter-in-law, for instance, can't eat any sugar.

It triggers her migraines and the only bread she can eat is sourdough.

Now why?

I don't know.

I don't know if that's science of some kind.

It doesn't have sugar, but she refuses to eat any other kind.

Just the kind that has flour, water, salt.

If you look for just those ingredients, if you buy it commercially, which I

always will, you should find that kind.

and they sell it, and probably it's not the same as Boudin's.

may even be better because then you're not Nancy.

Right.

Of course.

Our friend Sylvia who has, Fred Bread, her evolution of her sourdough.

I watched that and tasted it, and it has.

Made a transformation from the early days to where it is today.

And she gave me a loaf of garlic,

a one of parmesan and one with olives in it.

That was so delicious.

but Fred Bread has come a long way since day one.

And speaking of, I think we should take a break so we

I know,

about,

gotta correct you on one thing

okay.

said Sylvia Lovely.

It's Sylvia France.

France.

lovely.

Will never be selling any sourdough.

sorry, sorry.

Sylvia, France, SBI versus Sylvia.

So, yeah.

But Fred Bread and Sylvia, France in St. Pete, Florida.

she's a, a dear friend and I apologize for that.

But hey, you know, everybody's got a blooper, so we'll be right back with a

little bit more of, a yeasty endeavor.

Tuned.

So, Celia, we have a, a, a lot more to talk about on sourdough, but

before we really start going about that, I wanna share this story about

MASH that you told me about, and I don't remember the episode, but

I went back and I listened to it.

We'll put a, a link to that in the show notes as well but it was, the TV show Mash

Yes, beloved show.

And it was Winchester,

Winchester Winchester the third.

but Winchester.

Is going through a And you know, if you know the show, you know that

he never went through a crisis.

He was arrogant,

he was,

stiff upper lip.

He was a

Different.

Yeah.

And he was having a existential crisis about who he is and death and all of that,

surrounded by death with the soldiers.

And he went in to see a soldier who was dying.

And he said to him.

Tell me, what do you see?

And the young man responded in a very weak voice.

I smell my mother's bread.

He smelled his mother's bread as she was baking it.

and it was so moving because Winchester began to weep.

It wasn't what he saw.

It was that smell of bread.

And if anybody knows it's chocolate chip cookies, you know, the realtors

tell you to bake something.

There's just something about that aroma,

it was beautiful.

but very interesting on how food plays such an important

part in our lives from birth.

right to that final moment.

And that was such, I wonder how the writers came up with that.

If anybody experienced that.

And it's called I smell bread

I would have to reach out.

and, and ask, find out who the writers are in MASH and, uh, especially that episode

Mm-hmm.

if anybody would share that story with us.

How did they come up with that story?

It captured that whole idea of bread you break bread, you make deals over bread,

it's as much as social connection and that's what sourdough is by the way.

they think one of the reasons people have really turned to it, with gusto

is the whole sense of community.

There are.

Sourdough clubs.

Right.

Facebook groups, and and the Oregon Trail guy.

He makes his available free to people.

And there's a library, by the way, you like going to the library, go to

Of course.

the sourdough library.

we've got close family friends in Belgium.

I'll have to ask

her because she's not a baker.

Do you have a Do have you ever been to the sourdough library?

I

don't think of sourdough in Belgium.

Do I think of

chocolate and cookies

I know.

don't.

think of,

must have cut 'em a deal, But it's that connection and, and as we know

from Family Tree food and stories, connection to heritage, it's growing.

That desire, that desire for connection, and a creativity,

like you said, you might fail.

It's like a little microcosm of life, right?

gonna eventually succeed if you keep working at it

And it's okay.

You know what's, really nice about this?

especially if you've never tried it.

First of all, if you've never made a sourdough starter, I would highly

recommend you at least try doing so it's, I. It's water and flour and you

just let it sit on your counter and nothing's gonna happen for a couple of

days, and all of a sudden it's a alive, you know, it's like Frankenstein, right?

You know,

Yeah.

this thing starts bubbling growing and it's truly, it's fun and it's amazing.

It's a great thing to do with kids or grandkids or just yourself,

just to have a side diversion.

Not like we do need some side side diversions to just keep us.

Laughing and on our toes,

right?

Every day.

But it's kind of fun to see what happens and then to experiment.

Because why not?

I think that's part of, just part of everyday life.

If we don't take the time to experiment

And try things, even if we fail, it's okay.

But, I wonder if Sally, I wonder, not Sally, I wonder if

Dolly Parton makes sourdough.

'cause she's apparently a big cooker, right?

Yeah.

Dean or any of those kind of

I'm sure Paula Dean does.

Yeah, but Sally, that's, I keep on one calling Sally, but Dolly

Parton, she's apparently like a big hoo-ha cook on the side.

She loves to cook for people, but I

One, one fun.

Name people name their sourdoughs.

They're starters, I mean, you've got, it sinks living.

You know, it's like your pet, your dog

Mine was named George after, my father-in-law.

'cause he talked too much sometimes.

Doy Parton.

Don't you love that?

Doy Parton, Parton.

Anyway, there was someone who's done that.

So if you look at like a chart, leavening that's rising takes, eight to 24 hours.

Flavor, tangy, stretch, and fold.

You don't need it, right?

stretch and fold.

That sounds like who?

It sounds like Farrah Fawcett exercise or

Jane Fonda exercise

and maybe there's something to that.

Who,

stretch and fold.

that?

It's life right in action, right in your

kitchen.

stretch and fold.

Oh, so you have all kinds of, famous sourdough starter

names, and stories behind them.

you have the Oregon Trail guy, and you know what the other thing too,

Nancy, what we are into is storytelling.

So by naming them and going back in history and discovering them.

You create stories because there's a story surrounding why anybody ever did that.

The 4,500 year old yeast off the pottery,

It becomes part of your family.

Now, a, I've got a story, my dear friend Laura Brown and Laura doesn't cook.

She's Italian.

By who?

What Italian doesn't

cook.

Right.

Person would go, yeah.

No, not, not pasta, nothing.

No.

She's got this little contraption, European contraption.

It's like a tabletop cooker thing.

And it tells you, you know, what to add at what time to how much to do it.

and it cooks like a meal for her.

So I guess it's, it's kind of like, an automatic, TV

dinner maker, I would call it.

It's probably the

wrong thing to call it, but right, I'll have to find out what it is

and, and send you the information, but the one thing she does make

from scratch is a sweet sourdough.

It is amazing.

It's, you thought it was sour, right?

It's not.

It's almost a sweet cake.

Now if anybody's

wow.

sweet bread, it's delicious.

It's like, um.

Does, does she add sugar to the

There's some sugar to it, not a lot of

sugar and.

I thought she made it in this contraption, but she doesn't.

But it takes her four days to make it, which

I didn't realize Four days.

but, and it's sort of a, a light cakey kind of texture.

it's quite a gift to get.

They're huge and they're gorgeous and you stick 'em in the freezer

and she packs 'em all up and anyway, usually get two from Laura and she

had given her sourdough starter to a friend who went down south once.

And the sourdough starter almost didn't make it, but it came back to life.

But moving the wet sourdough from one region of the country that

we said earlier to another region can be a very delicate process.

She wouldn't give me anything, so I'm kind of like not happy.

But, that said, the one thing that Laura can make is amazing sourdough.

sourdough . Yeah.

some interesting ones.

The Bavarian Black Death Sourdough Starter.

That sounds ugly, doesn't it?

Circa 400 years old.

It's said to have.

Originated around 1633 in.

Oberammergau Germany.

I brutalized that shortly after the Black Death and it was passed down

through a single family for nearly four centuries, and it's prized

for making Bavarian black bread.

Oh.

I don't think a Bavarian blacked as a sourdough thing, but you know,

you use sourdough with cookies and brownies and cakes and it's

really the discard that people use.

I'll figure that one out.

But I don't think they taste much different.

I've had them, but anyway

Yeah.

It even, emerges in a Christian lot of people some of the stories

blur the line history and legend.

Historian Christians don't know exactly what that is, doesn't matter.

Claim the fair starter descends from the tears and blood of Christ

handed down by the apostles.

That's a myth and, uh Guess what?

What bread do you served

Well, it was probably flatbread.

'cause it was unleavened bread,

Yeah, yeah, So it wasn't sourdough?

Crackers.

It wasn't bread, it was crackers.

Yeah, Yeah, yeah.

how do you make unleavened bread?

You don't let it ferment.

You don't let

anything happen.

a matza cracker type of thing.

Right.

yeah.

yeah.

yeah.

So anyway, well I thought that was interesting 'cause you

know, it's very prominent in

Right.

is the breaking of bread

and, bread is a universal kinda language, love language,

right?

I wonder how that came about.

The idea of breaking bread together, Maybe it was the last supper kind of thing.

We'll have to reach research that

one and dig into

that,

a friend Ed once said, I wanna break bread with you.

when we first got to know each other, and I thought, I'm kind

of strange, like, do I care?

but, it was her way of I wanna share and get to know you in, a more

personal kind of, friendly kind of way.

And I think it's a lovely way of bringing people together in more of a community,

It's a huge part of it.

right.

It's

how you share and how you nourish one another.

And food and bread is a way to do

that, at least in the simplest form is doing it with bread.

So

So, if you're gonna spend four days doing something, you better find a

community to share that

I better like you because no soup for you.

on that

note,

there's a lot about sourdough that we

don't know and a lot that we do know, but it's still an experimentation.

And

remember, every meal has a story and every story is a feast.

And if nothing else, it's certainly got a sourdough, hopefully sitting

somewhere on your table with a good lopp of butter and oil and

garlic and everything else that goes with it.

an olive oil gal. Mm,

Right.

before we go, please remember we love you guys and we'd really

love to hear your stories.

You can do that at podcast family tree food stories.com.

You can also go there to share, like tell us your stories, but do subscribe

to the show so that you can get the

quickest update on Every Thursday and we'll see you

and hear you at the next show.

Take care.

Bye-bye.