NorthWest sponge final feeding

The NorthWest sourdough sponge outgrew the largest bowl within a few hours so was transferred to a larger plastic storage tub. By the next morning it produced sufficient alcohol to hydrate the stiff sponge to a loose wet sponge that expanded and spread flattening evenly across the bottom of the storage container. By 7:30 am it looked like this. You can see it's a few inches deep.


It had been fed exponentially in eight to twelve hour increments. The intent was to feed it four cups of water this final official feeding but upon visual calculation it would have expanded beyond the capacity of the new container based on the expansion it has already shown, therefore, it was fed only three cups of water and enough AP flour plus home-milled wheat and spelt mixed to produce a stiff sponge. It will be allowed minimal expansion then set outside to retard and to ferment. During this period the texture and taste uniquely characteristic to the NorthWest culture will become apparent. Then, a few days from now, it will be returned to the warmth and comfort of the heated building and slightly refreshed with a small amount of new flour and lightly kneaded to redistribute the yeast. Collectively the organisms will go nuts in a desperate attempt to make the most of their improved and unchallenged condition while it lasts. Brilliant survivalists, they are. They're so predictable. The freshly fed sponge presently looks like this. I'll have to be quick, though, this stuff is fast.

In Anthony Bourdain's wickedly funny Kitchen Confidential the author details one psychopath baker "virulent snail," Adam Real-Last-Name-Unknown, (NY and Provincetown restaurants hire a lot of illegal residents) whose bread is a gift of God but whose starters include rotting grapes, fermenting red peppers, soggy buckets of mushroom trimmings all decomposing into noxious black sludge. By comparison Bourdain's own little jar of starter is gentile, as are mine. Bourdain describes how he can assess the present emotional state of his kitchen help by their attentiveness to their charges. Adam's sponge was much larger than this shown here, a quantity needed to supply bread for a successful restaurant and required much closer attention than I'm willing to provide, but I was delighted to learn Adam referred to his sourdough sponge as the Bitch, because it was a control on his life by being so demanding having to be continuously transported up and down steps to regulate its temperature, all several hundred pounds of its unwieldy uncooperative globular form. When Adam neglected the Bitch, which would require immediate intervention, that meant something seriously wrong was happening with Adam Real-Last-Name-Unknown.

By comparison, the demands my own sponge makes of me are minimal.