Flexibility

I'm delighted to report that I'm still stubbornly slogging along with sourdough. I make it regularly, and use it in other recipes that call for "discard," even when I don't need to discard. 

I've joined a number of Facebook groups to help expand my knowledge. Many members are very militant about their bakes. They will only phrase their recipes in percentages, which is absolute gibberish to me. Or they will rattle off a stream of instructions in sourdough terminology that makes the whole process sound rigid and inaccessible. 

But the more I work with it, the more I realize how flexible sourdough baking really is. There isn't only one way of doing things. Nearly every attempt is delicious, even if it isn't pretty. 

There was a post put up on one of the groups, where another believer in flexible sourdough baking explained why you don't need to be so rigid. 

For instance, those who abide by the rigid group insist the starter has to be "fed," and then to "double" before use in baking, and maybe it should "float" as well. But he explained that it's not necessary. Sourdough starter is full of microbes, and while they will certainly ferment the dough faster if they are "active," they will do the job even if cold straight from the fridge. It'll just take a little more time. 

One day I tried it—I used cold, unfed starter from the fridge, and the resultant bake had the same taste and texture as if I had fed the starter and let it double. 

In general, I think we are less likely to try to tackle something new because we think that there is only one way to do it. It seems daunting, then, if there is only one, highly complicated method. 

I was thinking of those baby sleep training books, how they proclaim that their system is fool-proof, that it works on ALL BABIES EVERYWHERE. But how can that be true? All babies are different. All mothers are different. Different strokes for different folks. 

There is, rarely, only one way to get to a certain result.