It’s Doughvember on the internet this month, and it’s encouraged me to try some MAD SCIENCE!

I have attempted to make my own bread in the past, but not a single loaf has turned out the way I would have hoped. My french bread came out dense and rock hard (though quite tasty when microwaved with some butter), my focaccia flat and flavorless.

But now, I’m getting serious. I am on day three of making my own sourdough starter from scratch! There are tons of great recipes for this online, but the one I have decided to go with is posted at the wonderful food blog: Pinch My Salt.

Seems easy enough so far, and not as smelly as I thought it would be, but today I had a bit of a dilemma. The recipe calls for splitting the starter in half, then taking the second half and dumping it or giving it to a friend to take care of before ‘feeding’ the remaining half. So I split my starter today, and decided to keep the second half in another jar. I named them Bubbles and Fred.

Then I realized that I would have to split the starters again tomorrow, and then twice the next day, and twice the day after that. If I kept all of those halves, I would have 64 finished sourdough starters! I don’t have that many jars! I now understand why they say to discard those halves, but it won’t make it any easier. What will poor Bubbles and Fred think?