Is everyone baking sourdough without me?

My sister sent me this tweet today, which made me I laughed out loud:

Ok I understand everyone is freaking out but why are ALL of you baking sourdough.

— Jessica Ellis (@baddestmamajama) March 23, 2020

This past weekend, I baked my second loaf of Broken Leg Sourdough.  When I was laid up that first week after surgery, one of the first things I did in my drug-addled haze was order an Alaskan sourdough starter.  I had tried making my own sourdough starter 2-3 years ago and ended up throwing it out when we moved into the house.  It was a fine first attempt but also pretty mild and easygoing, not qualities you’re looking for when you are baking sourdough.  You want a sourdough like a Tasmanian devil - always hungry and very aggressive.   After reading more about sourdough, part of which came from this Robin Sloan novel aptly titled Sourdough, I learned that certain areas of the world have really good sourdough starters due to the wild yeast and bacteria in those regions.

I went on etsy - my current favourite place to find anything kitchen-related - and ordered here.  Four days after surgery, I hobbled into the kitchen and began feeding my starter.  I didn’t use any special flour or water - just plain ol’ AP flour and tap water.  And this starter is hungry.  From the third day onward, the starter - let’s call him Broken Leg or BL for short - would eat up anything I fed him within hours.  BL’s gotten so hungry that I take him out to feed him (and bake) once a week and put him right back in the fridge, lest he start reaching goopy arms out and grabbing everything in sight.

First sourdough loaf

When your leg is broken or when you’re housebound and all of a sudden have all the time in the world, sourdough is a perfect project.  It makes only moderate demands on your energy and requires mainly time.  So far, I’ve done all of my bakes in a Staub dutch oven and they’ve turned out perfect each time.  I’ve used this no-knead Food52 recipe.  There are others that call for all types of different flour (bread flour is preferred, I think), however when you are in a quarantine and also haven’t gone to the grocery store in over a month, you’ll make do with AP flour and this recipe works just fine with that.  Semi pro tip: If you don’t know it’s done, even if the outside is browned and crispy, you’re looking for an internal temperature above 200 degrees F.  We use our meat probe to make sure the bread is baked through.

Since all our foreseeable futures have quite a bit of home time, I encourage you to try sourdough, or just baking bread in general especially if you haven’t had the time or patience for it before.  The scent of fresh baked bread wafting through the air will lift the most dour of moods.  Or Bryan's theory that everyone’s baking sourdough because watching bread rise is actually an event nowadays.