I have been trying out a number of different ideaès in my Preserving Food without Freezing or canning, the one that I am currently working on is how to preserve your sour dough starter, now they are giving the example so that you do not have to keep baking bread that its a back up, I on the other hand, are looking at it as a way to preserve my own special sourdough starter flavor and also for travel, this would give you a way to pack out your sour dough in a more controlled manner.

As for who have ever tried to catch a wild yeast now, it is NOT just as simple as mixing water and flour and letting it ferment, you will end up with something, but its very much a guessing game on if you will like the flavour of your sourdough.. however either by being given a start or by being lucky enough to have caught a strain you do like, having a way to perserve it is a excellent idea.

So here is the test, you add just a little extra flour to a good starter, just enough to be able to make small balls about the size of a hazelnut in the shell and you then need to dry them, you can use the sun, or the warm spot on a wood stove or by the gentle heat of cental home heating, allow to dry until the balls have hardened, they must be dry all the way though, (my first batch seemed hard until I cracked them open, and they were still damp inside)

At this point, you can grind the balls into a powder and store it in a clean dry jar in a cool dark place, and it is said to last for up to 3 months, I will let you know if that is the case.

To use again, you take out tbsp worth of the dried sour yeast powder, add water and flour and let it sit for a couple days to get going, this allows you to reset the perferred flavour and yeasts you like working with..

This is something that I hope will work just as well after a month as it says, as I typically head out west to spend time with family at least once a year, and I have lost my good starter a couple times as it was not used or feed while I was gone.

If you give this a try, please report back on how it worked for you with your starter, and how long it took to get it back, so far mine only takes two full days and is ready for use on the third.

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