Starter dough ( I assume this is sourdough) is a type of bread dough you make, and then it doesn’t get baked until it’s grown a certain amount. Then, you take out about half, and continue growing the sourdough starter.
So, I think the idea here is that she isn’t taking care of her sourdough starter, (you have to punch it down every so often to keep it from getting too big and overflowing the bowl), it’s gotten too big, escaped the fridge, and become ‘out of control’.
And they DO get big if you take care of them, and they can last a long time.
I don’t think that (dough) “mother” is relevant here, I just think her starter has evolved to become a higher (or lower†) life form.
P.S. † – Given the yeast and fermentation processes involved, one would think that it should have been able to produce its own alcohol.
P.P.S. @ Maggie – You are absolutely right about the “starter”, my comment above was only referring to the alternative term “mother”.
@Kilby, I never knew it was also called ‘mother’.
P.S-I’ve never made sourdough starter, but I’ve read about it.
Is sourdough starter even still a thing? Was big early in the pandemic.
Anyway, some of my favorite beers have been referred to as liquid bread.
Is sourdough starter even still a thing? Was big early in the pandemic.
You mean, is it still a hipster reference for cartoonists to employ? Or are you seriously wondering if the 10,000 year old art of bread-making is still a thing? Fire pits wear big earl on in the pandemic, too; is fire still a thing?
larK: of course I meant it as a hipster reference. Should I have capitalized Thing? Or put it in “quotes”? Or escaped it with a \sarcasm tag? I won’t even comment on fire pits wearing big earl ;-) Fire will always be a thing.
@ SMB – I think the spike in popularity of starter during the pandemic was largely driven by the scarcity of commerical yeast.
P.S. @ larK – The Wiki article that I linked @2 mentions that the Boudin Bakery has been (tending and) using the same sourdough starter for 150 years (the bakery’s own website says “since 1849”, which would be 174 years).
Small world slash fun fact: I grew up in the neighborhood of the Boudin Bakery at 10th and Geary. Even closer to my personal favorite, the late lamented Larraburu at 3rd and Geary. And, I got into the sourdough starter thing early in the pandemic. Never could get the bread quite right, but mmmm the blini.
Yeah, I got what I deserved posting grumpy…
Sorry Swimming Man Burning.
I usually associate “mother” with vinegar.
I usually associate βmotherβ with vinegar.
So tell it to your analyst!
I’ve seen it called bread mother, but yes, I think of it as starter or sourdough starter. I’ve got a starter I’ve had for …10 years? More? The person who gave it to me claimed it came to California with her great(x?)-aunt, around 1849. It’s lovely. I almost never make bread (and I’ve never made blini…hmmm) but I regularly make waffles (King Arthur Flour overnight sourdough waffles). Delish! And that’s from the discard – proper handling* means much more discard than “live” starter, so there’s lots of recipes for using it.
Take x amount of starter; add the same amount, by weight, of water and flour. Next time you feed it, scoop out the same amount and ‘discard’ the rest – so there’s 2x amount of discard to starter. I keep it in a jar in the fridge and (try to) use it up before it takes over. If you just keep feeding the starter with the same amounts of flour and water as starter, it gets very big very fast (you need to do that if you want to bake with it and you normally keep a very small starter, as I do – 1/1/1 ounce (so 3 ounces after feeding)).
larK: no big, it’s all in fun :-D
I thought sourdough became popular during the pandemic because it was something to do. :-)
One of my brothers started a bread-making business after retiring from school-teaching. He used a lot of sourdough. They’ve now retired from that.
JJ: I don’t remember the details, but I used the discard in the blini. I concocted a mashup of recipes I found online.
The last time I remember reading about blinis would have been in the Nero Wolfe detective novels! π
Mitch, just fyi: blini is plural. The singular would be blin. Blini are a thing :-D
Thanks, SWB! I actually had the correct plural typed at first, but decided to override it because I didn’t trust that first impression. π€·π»ββοΈπ
In Mitch’s defense, I think I would have added the S, too. Even Wikipedia ignores the etymology, citing “blini” as a singular form: “A blini (plural blinis or blini, rarely bliny; Russian: Π±Π»ΠΈΠ½Ρ pl.), traditionally also called a blin (a form not even mentioned in some English dictionaries)…”
I’ll take my Russian grandmother’s word for it:
“Blin is one, blini is many.
Pirozhak is one, piroshki is many.”
(Etc.)
So,
Arnold Horzhak is one, Arnold Horshki is many…
Comics I Don't Understand 
Starter dough ( I assume this is sourdough) is a type of bread dough you make, and then it doesn’t get baked until it’s grown a certain amount. Then, you take out about half, and continue growing the sourdough starter.
So, I think the idea here is that she isn’t taking care of her sourdough starter, (you have to punch it down every so often to keep it from getting too big and overflowing the bowl), it’s gotten too big, escaped the fridge, and become ‘out of control’.
And they DO get big if you take care of them, and they can last a long time.
I don’t think that (dough) “mother” is relevant here, I just think her starter has evolved to become a higher (or lower†) life form.
P.S. † – Given the yeast and fermentation processes involved, one would think that it should have been able to produce its own alcohol.
P.P.S. @ Maggie – You are absolutely right about the “starter”, my comment above was only referring to the alternative term “mother”.
@Kilby, I never knew it was also called ‘mother’.
P.S-I’ve never made sourdough starter, but I’ve read about it.
Is sourdough starter even still a thing? Was big early in the pandemic.
Anyway, some of my favorite beers have been referred to as liquid bread.
Is sourdough starter even still a thing? Was big early in the pandemic.
You mean, is it still a hipster reference for cartoonists to employ? Or are you seriously wondering if the 10,000 year old art of bread-making is still a thing? Fire pits wear big earl on in the pandemic, too; is fire still a thing?
larK: of course I meant it as a hipster reference. Should I have capitalized Thing? Or put it in “quotes”? Or escaped it with a \sarcasm tag? I won’t even comment on fire pits wearing big earl ;-) Fire will always be a thing.
@ SMB – I think the spike in popularity of starter during the pandemic was largely driven by the scarcity of commerical yeast.
P.S. @ larK – The Wiki article that I linked @2 mentions that the Boudin Bakery has been (tending and) using the same sourdough starter for 150 years (the bakery’s own website says “since 1849”, which would be 174 years).
Small world slash fun fact: I grew up in the neighborhood of the Boudin Bakery at 10th and Geary. Even closer to my personal favorite, the late lamented Larraburu at 3rd and Geary. And, I got into the sourdough starter thing early in the pandemic. Never could get the bread quite right, but mmmm the blini.
Yeah, I got what I deserved posting grumpy…
Sorry Swimming Man Burning.
I usually associate “mother” with vinegar.
I usually associate βmotherβ with vinegar.So tell it to your analyst!
I’ve seen it called bread mother, but yes, I think of it as starter or sourdough starter. I’ve got a starter I’ve had for …10 years? More? The person who gave it to me claimed it came to California with her great(x?)-aunt, around 1849. It’s lovely. I almost never make bread (and I’ve never made blini…hmmm) but I regularly make waffles (King Arthur Flour overnight sourdough waffles). Delish! And that’s from the discard – proper handling* means much more discard than “live” starter, so there’s lots of recipes for using it.
Take x amount of starter; add the same amount, by weight, of water and flour. Next time you feed it, scoop out the same amount and ‘discard’ the rest – so there’s 2x amount of discard to starter. I keep it in a jar in the fridge and (try to) use it up before it takes over. If you just keep feeding the starter with the same amounts of flour and water as starter, it gets very big very fast (you need to do that if you want to bake with it and you normally keep a very small starter, as I do – 1/1/1 ounce (so 3 ounces after feeding)).
larK: no big, it’s all in fun :-D
I thought sourdough became popular during the pandemic because it was something to do. :-)
One of my brothers started a bread-making business after retiring from school-teaching. He used a lot of sourdough. They’ve now retired from that.
JJ: I don’t remember the details, but I used the discard in the blini. I concocted a mashup of recipes I found online.
The last time I remember reading about blinis would have been in the Nero Wolfe detective novels! π
Mitch, just fyi: blini is plural. The singular would be blin. Blini are a thing :-D
Thanks, SWB! I actually had the correct plural typed at first, but decided to override it because I didn’t trust that first impression. π€·π»ββοΈπ
In Mitch’s defense, I think I would have added the S, too. Even Wikipedia ignores the etymology, citing “blini” as a singular form: “A blini (plural blinis or blini, rarely bliny; Russian: Π±Π»ΠΈΠ½Ρ pl.), traditionally also called a blin (a form not even mentioned in some English dictionaries)…”
I’ll take my Russian grandmother’s word for it:
“Blin is one, blini is many.
Pirozhak is one, piroshki is many.”
(Etc.)
So,
Arnold Horzhak is one, Arnold Horshki is many…