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Comment by poulsbohemian | Hacker News Reader

I got some of this years ago - was a pretty good starter, but I'm not sure it is really anything different from whatever starter your neighbor might have available. If you don't have a neighbor or friend with a starter, years ago there was a thread on HN about people making their own starters with good success.

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I've made my own! This was 15 years ago or so, in Los Angeles. It was fun as a hobby project; I started a bunch, harvesting wild yeasts from my kitchen, outdoors, etc. A couple turned out pretty yummy, a couple were pretty funky. But recently I bought some dried starter from a well-respected line and have been blown away with how much better the starter we bought is compared to the wild harvested runs I tried. If a friend asked I would tell them it's really not worth it to use a wild strain unless your hobby is microbiology... If your hobby is baking, stick with a known-good starter.

> If a friend asked I would tell them it's really not worth it to use a wild strain unless your hobby is microbiology... If your hobby is baking, stick with a known-good starter.

I really agree with this, given my own experiences, but I will say some of the best bread I ever had came from a chef who started his own at a wilderness camp. Anyone who came out to camp, he would share it, but unfortunately mine went bad after a while.

Which one did you buy?

We got some during the pandemic. My wife went through the “make your own bread” phase with great enthusiasm. (And results!) We’d tend to Carl, our container of starter, and talk about how well it was doing. Then it trailed off and it’s gone to stater heaven. Pity.

I also started baking during COVID and now I'm obsessed. I wish it paid as well as software, I would do it full-time.

The only shipped starter that will ever make a difference is San Francisco starter and that's because there is a literal mutant bacteria in the culture that causes much higher lactic activity than normal. And it'll only make a difference if you use it straight.

All other shipped starters are just a shortcut to going to a local baker and asking for a donation (I've done this dozens of times, all over the world; when I've wanted a fresh/homemade loaf), or just spending a week's time and ~350g of wasted flour developing your own.

Who ships from SF?

Is there a bakery that sells? Boudin doesn’t as far as I know.

I’ve made my own starter a couple times. It’s really no big deal. Takes a couple weeks of waiting but maybe an hour of total time over that two weeks.

King Arthur has a recipe for those interested:

<https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog/2012/04/05/make-your-o...>

There's now quite a sourdough ... culture ... substantially invigorated after the Covid-19 pandemic (xkcd:2296), with books, podcasts, websites, vloggers, etc. I picked up much of my own baking knowledge through these (starting with a few YT videos, and progressing through my own experimentation and further research). I'm still going and just had a couple of slices of my latest batch with eggs.

Starters are startlingly resilient, though you can kill them off or spoil them, largely through heat or prolonged regret.

As any good sysadmin knows, good backups are essential. I'd restarted my batch from a pinch of dough that was proofing in the fridge after one inglorious encounter with a microwave and housemate. After that I dried and froze a batch (King Arthur covers this as well: <>), and a tablespoon of the frozen starter plus about a half-dozen feedings has it going strong again. (This differs from KA's recovery method, but worked.)

Drying another batch to freeze as we speak, can never be too sure ;-)

Using someone else's starter can help bootstrap the process, but your own environment's selective pressures and new sources of yeast, most of whice come from whole-meal flour, which is what you should use to start your own batch. Note that bleached white flour, whilst it can be used to bake or feed however much I'd advise against it, typically lacks any active yeast. I did do some baking with unbleached flour when that was all that could be obtained, and the results while poorer than with unbleached / whole-meal were still quite acceptable, just not my preference.

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