10 years ago I received my batch of Oregon Trail Sourdough Starter from Carl Griffith. The story goes that this starter had been in his family since the mid 1800s. The starter came as a dried product, something I hadn’t realized could be done to a sourdough starter till then. Following Carl’s directions the starter came to life in a jar on my kitchen counter. Within a couple of days I was eating my first loaf of mildly sour, very delicious homemade sourdough bread.

Never wanting to run out of this newly found treasure, I dried some of the starter, again following Carl’s directions. FF 10 years, and I still have dried and frozen starter waiting for activation. Not the original product of course, I replenish my dried starter every couple of years or when I think of it. How much of the population is Carl’s original and how much is local beasties I don’t know. I do know that I love the idea of growing something that, given the proper (very minimal) care, will be around long after I have passed on.

Historically I have raised my starter on commercial bread flour. Recently I have been trying to eat more whole grains and decided to see how my starter would do on whole wheat. So far so good. I pulled out about 1T of dried starter/flour mix from the freezer 3 or 4 days ago. I feed on a 24 hour schedule a ww flour/water mix. Last night after reading one of Peter Reinhart’s books I decided to add a little wheat malt I had in the cupboard. I’ve used the malt previously when activating my wine yeast and by the looks of the photo the 1/2 tsp I fed to the colony last night was well received. While I have yet to try a ww loaf with this starter, the taste so far is nice and sour but not overkill. I will start a sponge tonight and hope to try my first ww loaf this weekend.