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One of the best things about baking, dear friends, is this little paradox:  You can learn enough to have control over what seem to be baffling processes.  You can learn the why and the how, why this works, why this doesn't, whether or not you can fix something that has gone wrong, how to fix it if you can.  You don't have complete control over the process; there are too many variables outside the baker's hands and brain for complete control, but you can learn as much as you can to improve your odds of success.  Yet, even when you know why things happen the way they happen, it is still a wonderful thing to see them happen.  You mix flour and water and let it sit for a few days, with additional feeds of flour and water, and eventually you can raise a loaf of bread with it; it is life at its most basic and atavistic, but when you see your bubbling leaven, your rising dough, your finished bread, it still feels like you have pulled a fast one on the universe.  It feels like a magic trick.

Consider this:  On Monday night I woke my starters up from their yearlong hibernation.  I had no guarantees that this would work.  The rye starter had the consistency of wet cement.  The white starter had a scary layer of gray hooch sitting atop a substance with the consistency of wet clay.  I didn't know how long, if at all, it would take for the starters to wake up; if, once awakened, they would be strong enough to work; if they worked, would they taste as I remembered, appley, sweet and tart, or had their time in the fridge killed those flavors forever?

Those pictures were taken on Monday night.  I poured the hooch off the white starter, threw away a portion of both starters, refreshed both of them with extra flour and water (all-purpose flour for the white starter, pumpernickel flour for the rye).  I did this twice a day for three days.  By the end of the third day, the white starter was so active that the yeast supply actually managed to exhaust itself by the end of the 12-hour feed period.  If I had my own bakeshop, I would be feeding that one on an 8-hour cycle.  I felt less optimistic about the rye starter, which seemed to resist all my tender efforts; then on the morning of day 4, there it was, risen like a shot midway up the container, a network of a few million bubbles suspended therein.

On Thursday night, I did a little math.  In order to have finished bread ready for Saturday afternoon, the day that bunni, who put in the original bread request, was to arrive for our day-long Bruce Campbell movie marathon, I would have to mix the final dough, and get it in the refrigerator for its overnight fermentation, right after work on Friday.  This would mean mixing the levain (the sponge used to raise the dough, made from flour, water, the white starter and a bit of the rye starter) on Friday afternoon around 2 p.m.  As I mixed everything together in the caff at the office, I wondered if, as vigorous as the starters were, if they would have what it takes to provide a good rise.    Dear friends, I worry too much.

From there, it was a short trip to the final dough, kneaded, left to rest for 20 minutes, kneaded again and bundled off to the fridge:

The next morning, it was only a question of getting the risen dough out of the fridge and letting it come to room temperature,

scaling and shaping the dough into one-pound rounds,

letting them proof, firing up the oven, slashing, misting and baking, et voila.  I don't know what makes me prouder, my funny little breads, or the starters that made them possible.  Look at what a difference a week makes. 

A postscript:  Many of you, both here on this page and via e-mail, have asked if I will share the recipe for the sourdough starters.  I will certainly be glad to do so, but I think it only fair to warn you:  Some of my instructions might seem a bit, well, quirky.  This is not to give the impression that the starters are fussy, or hard to make.  On the contrary, they're a doddle, but there a few things that will make them easier to manage.  Specifically, there are three things:  a scale, a thermometer, a willingness to learn baker's math.  The last two are optional but extremely useful; the scale, though, is key.  I do not think it's a frill to bake by weight.  Kitchen scales have come down considerably in price over the past ten years; I promise you that once you are used to the scale, figuring how much your cups of flour and sugar weigh, you will see a quantum leap in your baking.  If, after reading this, you have decided that I am too insane to help you, I will not be offended, really I won't.