![]() One reason Buckingham thinks it’s become so popular is because making a sourdough starter from scratch is a “crapshoot.” Sourdough is a naturally fermented type of bread, so it relies on having robust wild yeast in the atmosphere and on the grains to kick-start fermentation. The starter’s legend travels primarily by word of mouth, both in-person and online. Though the preservation society exists solely to fulfill requests for Griffith’s starter, Buckingham said it hasn’t ever promoted its cause. Once bakers receive the dried starter, they can follow instructions on to revive it. And because there are so many requests right now, she’s expediting envelopes that include a donation. The whole process takes about a week, Buckingham said. RECIPE: Denver baker demystifies baking sourdough bread at altitude That person spreads the starter onto wax paper, dries it out and then breaks it into pieces and grinds them up into a grainy mixture to mail prospective bakers. Buckingham then mails the envelopes to a “grower” in the Pacific Northwest who keeps a healthy, active starter. She collects the mail and ensures each envelope is adequately filled out and stamped. “I even got a request from Ukraine in 2022 right before the attack (by Russian troops), some person in Kyiv,” Buckingham said.īuckingham is just one volunteer in a nationwide network of people known as “Carl’s friends” who continue to share his starter. The most common international destinations include Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany, Buckingham said, but she’s hard-pressed to recall countries besides China and Russia she hasn’t mailed to. ♬ club penguin ice fishing theme song – julie on the internetĪs of 2023, the society had mailed nearly 65,000 baggies of dried starter to bakers across the globe. ![]() It caught traction in the early internet forums of the 1990s, where the starter not only earned a reputation for its vitality but also built a virtual community of like-minded bakers who exchanged tricks of the #sourdough #sourdoughbread #sourdoughstarter #sourdoughtok #sourdoughclub #sourdoughforbeginners #sourdoughbaking In later years, Griffith was known for sharing his dried starter with anyone who sent him a self-addressed and stamped envelope. Because he was cooking over a campfire, Griffith baked bread in a Dutch oven that he buried in the firepit, he wrote. Griffith, who was born in 1919, first learned to use the sourdough starter at age 10 while setting up a homestead in southeastern Oregon. The Oregon Trail was a more than 2,000-mile wagon route that pioneers used to traverse the country west to the Oregon Territory, which included present-day Oregon and Washington. The starter had been his family for many generations prior, reportedly traveling west with his ancestors from Missouri along the Oregon Trail in 1847, according to a brochure Griffith penned in 1996. The sourdough starter belonged to the late Carl Griffith, a native Oregonian who inherited the living heirloom when his parents died. It’s easy to see the allure of baking with such an illustrious artifact. “This week, we have well over 1,000 requests coming in. In a typical winter, Buckingham fields between 30 and 150 weekly requests.īut in January, a video about the starter and its ties to the Oregon Trail went viral on TikTok, causing “an unbelievable flood” of mail, Buckingham said recently while parsing through envelopes. When Buckingham relocated to Greeley in mid-2022, so too did the mailbox and its regular cadence of envelopes from hopeful bakers. In 2000, Mary Buckingham volunteered to be the keeper of a special mailbox where breadmakers anywhere in the world could send a self-addressed stamped envelope and receive in return a free sourdough starter with a claimed lineage to the historic Oregon Trail. Friday, February 9th 2024 Home Page Close Menu
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