It was one of those impromptu off-Reecer Creek meetings of the Reecer Creek Rod, Gun, Working Dog & Outdoor Think Tank Benevolent Association. (As you recall, such meetings happen whenever two or more gather in the name of “outdoors.”) The primary agenda item seemed to be outdoor meals and summer breakfasts. It got me thinking about something I once said that even surprised me.
At another of these impromptu gatherings a decade ago, the discussion on the floor was long-term outdoor buddies. We shared names of our outdoor “family” members, and allowed as how those outdoor connections outlasted the drama and turmoil which sometimes drives us to our knees in bewilderment. In fact, we agreed, those relationships with family and adopted outdoor family often help us to maintain our balance as the world shifts under our feet.
We were on the verge of downright sappy, when Toot cleared his throat. “Okay,” he asked me, “who is your oldest, best, most dependable ever outdoor buddy?”
I turned to him without even thinking. “Uh, my sourdough starter… Yeah. It was old when I got it, and it has stood by me for outdoor breakfasts, lunches, dinners and backpack food since the 60s. Yup. My sourdough.” That being a final word on friendship, the meeting adjourned.
An old Alaska gentleman brought my starter to Seattle around 1900. He passed some of the culture on to a young couple in 1915, telling them he had no idea how long it had been since an old miner handed him a crock of it. My folks got it in 1960, and passed some on to me in 1965. I just tell folks that my particular sourdough culture is at least 140 years old.
Everyone needs a cooking specialty – a tasty meal that no one can, or would, duplicate. For decades, mine has revolved around that sourdough. Few mornings start better than a seat at a table with overflowing stacks of melt-in-your-mouth sourdough pancakes and waffles nestled among jars of homemade chokecherry, blueberry, current, peach and raspberry syrups. Somewhere on the table will be plates of home-cured and smoked antelope ham or hand-made breakfast sausages of deer, elk or antelope. From time to time, we bring in a handful of friends for such a “sourdough feast.” These breakfasts are almost legendary – if I do say so myself.
We have handed out sourdough bread, biscuits, cornbread and cobbler. Sourdough-breaded game cutlets and sourdough cake and doughnuts have been scarfed-down by people who weren’t even hungry. I love my sourdough.
Over the years, I’ve picked up dozens of small crocks to fill with starter and pass along (with the sourdough’s pedigree and a couple recipes) to various souls in need of a specialty. People get attached to that long-living culture of natural yeast; the sourdough becomes family.
There is an infinite variety of fine old starters in the world, with a good number here in Paradise. (One in Roslyn makes the finest bread you ever munched over a poker game.) There are also several new starters with happy owners who captured natural yeast locally. The world is full of people willing to share, ways to start your own and recipes for everything with which you would feed your family. Just check the library or web, or contact me.
Each starter is unique – depending on the natural yeast captured – and will fall along the spectrum from really sour to almost sweet to the nose and tongue. I’ve tried dozens across the U.S. and remain very happy with mine, which is remarkably mild, with a sourness easily controlled with the clock.
Summer mornings are the perfect occasions to prepare family and community feasts from your very own starter.
Many odes and essays have been written to celebrate the wonders of sourdough, including some to my own. Brad Johnson, the editor at the south of Denver daily paper for whom I first wrote this weekly column in the 1980s, did a remarkable piece about how my lively, bubbling sourdough overwhelmed the town of Castle Rock. Poems written in celebration of my high-country sourdough elk-camp pancakes, while often inappropriate for a family paper, are creative, reverent and exuberant. Now and then, there are outbursts which carry us back to the joy and nurturing of parents.
It is always a special moment, I think, when we pause to celebrate old, old friends.
