When your pet is a fungus...
I was going to post this in Cooking, where I reported on the catching and early keeping of my pet when it happened, but realized today's post is not about cooking anything, and this is a better place for talking about the joy of keeping pets. ;) About two years ago, I was getting in baking whole wheat bread. It was becoming harder to buy unsweetened WW, and I was in a big pile of confusion, but went forward and bought a grain mill. So then I had to catch me some wild yeast. It's easy to do with rye, and many people start with musty grapes. It doesn't matter what you start with, the right yeast will fight for supremacy, and win out over other micro-organisms (though it might smell like decaying fish if there's a whole battlefield of dead interlopers in there). Still, I was determined to catch wild yeast off my good wheat berries.
I tried once, but it went right to moldy. I froze my wheat so the heat of the mill wouldn't kill so many of the fungi, and tried again during a heat wave, so that my whole kitchen was warm like a proofing box. It worked! It took a lot of care, a lot of cooing, extra feedings, and some adjustments, but I finally had a solid yeast colony. A really nice "sourdough starter". I called it "Wubby". (The "u" is the same as in "pudding".) That's all coming in and calling to it, "How you doin', Wuuuubbby?" Feeding it twice a day. Sometimes giving it pastry flour or some other thing when food got low. Changing its bed and cleaning up after it, and all the nice things one does for a pet.
Following that was lots of baking, creating of a delicious waffle recipe using the unfed discard (you take away half the starter when you feed it, or it'll get to be the size of a swimming pool in no time), and making more starters from the first. There's an unbleached white flour (King Arthur) starter, a whole wheat and a white levain starter (much dryer than regular), and a very wet and sloppy rye starter. They make lovely bread, feed us as we feed them.
After a starter is established, you can keep it in the fridge and feed it once a week, rather than twice a day. This is great! Soon Wubby, Wubby 2 and the Levain brothers, were happily dozing in the fridge until feeding day. You can also dry out starter and it will store for ages. There are starters that have been going for well over a century. It's also said that they're hardier when they're older. When it's hydrated, however, if it doesn't get fed, it starts to throw "hooch". This is actually alcohol. :) It's harmless, though an ugly gray color. Feeding and cleaning the jars and all takes a lot of water, so I started pushing the feeding times back when we got water restrictions, while still keeping them ready to use.
Still here? That all was the background. When Wubby was just a year old, I had a lot of difficulties land in my life. Suddenly, there was no time/energy/will for baking or even thinking about my pets. I did look in on them from time to time, kind of the Señor Wences style of pet keeping. "S'alright?" They were throwing hooch, but seemed otherwise fine, so they stayed there in their cozy fridge, until this week.
I have to say I was worried. They were hoochier than they looked from outside. The Levain bros. were too hard to deal with quickly, so I put them back in the fridge to fuss with later. It was Wubby that I was really worried about. Wubby 2, the white one, wasn't really all that hoochy, though very damp.
All that worry was for nothing. I removed the hoochy bits and fed them both their weights (as usual), then the next day I fed them about 3/4 weight with no discard. Within eight hours, the white one (Wubby 2) had doubled (doubling is the sign of good health and readiness for baking). Wubby, the whole wheat one was about half again as high from where it started. That just means he was hungrier and maybe having a time fighting all the new organisms from the freshly milled wheat. He's all bubbling and alive, though, so I'm no longer worried. After today's discard and feeding, Wubby 2 doubled after four hours, which is prime, so I divided again, fed, and put him in the fridge to doze a bit. Wubby is puffing up nicely, and should be all better in a day or two. Turns out it doesn't take a century to grow a really strong starter. I'm very proud of my Wubbys!
I love my yeast! I still coo to them. And what marvelous pets that let you shove them to the back of the fridge and pretty much ignore them for half a year until you're ready to deal. Good Wubbys!
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