That's my new moniker - and quite honestly, despite it's potential similarity to being likened to "Crazy Cat Lady", I'm actually very proud of what one humble jar of flour and water has been able to accomplish in less than 4 weeks.
What started off as an experiment to see if we could make bread without commercial yeast, and pretend we were Laura Ingalls in Little House on the Prairie, has gathered a lot of steam and interest. It began with me running out of things to make with all my starter discard (I'll post recipes soon!), and answering the call of my friend, Tammy Graham, who loves sourdough, and was running out of yeast too. She was my very first sourdough starter adoptive parent, and I don't think anyone, least of all me, expected how many "kids" my Evie would end up adopting out. And the "Leaside Sourdough Collective", and its other offshoots, became a grassroots movement in self-sufficiency, community sharing, and well...sourdough...all of which would not have been possible without the wonderful people mentioned in this post, and so many others as well.
I started posting about my sourdough successes (and failures!) on my Facebook page. Sue Byford and Ted Stuebing, who run the South Bayview Bulldog, posted a great shout-out to me on April 15, about how I'd been adopting out starters to the neighbourhood (https://bayview-news.com/2020/04/local-lawyer-offers-sourdough-starter-to-quarantined-bakers.html), and suddenly, I was fielding so many requests for starter that I had to stop splitting batches every day...I was simply running low on flour, and there wasn't any to be had anywhere. Becky Allen White, a client of mine and one of the kindest souls you'll ever meet (check out her Facebook page, Community Kindness), among many others, were very aware of the sheer amount of flour involved to feed and split so many starters; several people coming by to grab starters would leave me large ziplock bags of flour, Becky left me cash to buy more, and two kind souls gave me full 5lb bags of flour from their own stashes. Jesse Sahdra, one of the owners of the Bagel House (he trained at St. Viateur's, and the bagels are seriously the real deal when it comes to Montreal bagels!) kindly and graciously gifted me with bags of flour from his own commercial kitchen, so I could continue baking and adopting out more starters.
Saliha Chattoo, a writer with Post City Magazines and their online presence, TRNTO.com, contacted me last week - and after a lovely phone interview (we are adhering to social distancing protocols after all!), her article about the COVID-19 (sourdough) bread culture, and how, at the time of print, I'd adopted out 117 jars of Evie's kids, went live on April 24 (by the way, as of today, that number is now 136 jars), with the result that in addition to neighbours from Leaside and Davisville Village looking for starters, I've started fielding requests from outside our little enclave! One lady is coming over to pick up a jar of starter from me and driving from Maple...she insisted she wants one of Evie's kids rather than start her own, and I'm ridiculously touched. Here's the link to that article here: https://trnto.com/toronto-bread-baking-collectve-shares-sourdough-starters
Who knew what great things one humble jar of flour and water could do, indeed.
Until next time....stay safe AND sane! XOXO