Searching for sourdough starter in SF? Check the telephone pole

San Francisco residents have found a clever solution around spending the time making their own starter: sharing sourdough starters via common areas around the city. Sourdough starters have been popping up on telephone poles and trees. less San Francisco residents have found a clever solution around spending the time making their own starter: sharing sourdough starters via common areas around the city. Sourdough starters have been popping up on ... more Photo: Blair Heagerty / SFGate Photo: Blair Heagerty / SFGate Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close Searching for sourdough starter in SF? Check the telephone pole 1 / 8 Back to Gallery

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It seemed like a silly moment of levity, when in the midst of a global pandemic, a generous individual in the Bernal Heights neighborhood decided to thumbtack baggies of sourdough starter to a telephone pole to help his bread-baking neighbors.

"FREE SOURDOUGH STARTER," the attached sign read. "His name is 'Godrick.'"

And yet, it is perfectly emblematic of the times we are in: stuck indoors, trying to remain productive, perhaps taking on a new hobby or two. Making sourdough bread, it seems, is at the top of the to-do list for many people at home — but those new to the breadmaking game seemed to be stuck at the first step.

Where do I find a sourdough starter?

The sourdough starter is now part of a new baking economy built on neighbors gifting and bartering for items, trading things low in stock at stores, but plentiful in neighbors’ cupboards and larders. While the idea of taking any food or ingredients tacked to a pole may have seemed unsafe or gauche six weeks ago, now it takes on a different light. As neighbors start to depend more on one another for various things — from a safe distance, of course — the move to distribute starters now seems to translate into a new level of caring for neighbors, as the shelter-in-place cooking lifestyle takes on weird twists and turns.

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Godrick’s caretaker/owner, David Reber, said in a recent interview with Hoodline that his post asking neighbors whether they were interested in a sourdough starter was more popular than he expected. His starter was already thriving well into the stay-at-home mandates in the city, as he had started Godrick just as news coverage was covering the increase in COVID-19 numbers in Italy.

“When I have to ride out the apocalypse, I wanted to bake really good bread,” he told Hoodline.

And it seems that Reber — or Godrick, depending on how you look at it — has started a movement. There’s now even a Google Map displaying where to find bags of Godrick or Godrick’s descendents, so potential breadmakers can pick up their own starter. As of the March 31 interview, Reber guessed that he had shared 20 bags of starter with his neighbors.

But there are certainly questions: 1.) is it safe to use a bag of sourdough starter, and 2.) how viable is the starter after hanging on a telephone pole for hours, or even days?

After viewing a photo of the telephone pole distribution method, Acme bread founder Steve Sullivan wrote to me, "The answer to [how long those starters would safely last outside] depends on several factors relating to the starter’s condition before being portioned out and hung up on the pole, as well as how warm it gets on the pole.

Photo: Blair Heagerty / SFGate San Francisco residents have found a clever solution around...

"Generally, if the starter is abused through over-fermentation or getting too warm or sitting too long between refreshments, one can find out pretty quickly whether an adequate yeast population remains (to resuscitate it) by refreshing it once or twice a day for successive days," he continued.

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The photo of the telephone pole had already made its way to Andrew Janjigian, senior editor at Cook’s Illustrated and a bread expert who lives in Boston. When asked how long a starter could keep in outdoor conditions, he guessed about two days.

"Given that it's pretty cool in San Francisco generally, I think the starter would keep fairly well, like a couple of days easily. I wouldn't worry too much about it,” Janjigian said by phone to SFGATE. "Some people were like, 'Oh, don't do that now. That's a perfect way to move virus around,' which I doubt is really an issue. But yeah, the starter itself I think would survive.

"It's kind of an oddball way of moving it around," he added, "but it would work."

But, as Janjigian reminded me, starter itself isn’t difficult to make, it merely takes patience and time — generally two weeks. Ultimately, the process of raising your own Godrick from scratch could also help with understanding the bread process better, he said.

"The biggest benefit [of making your own starter] is that in order to get it from zero to usable, you gain understanding. It's as simple as that," Janjigian said. "It's not like a packet of yeast: You open it and dump it into a flour and make a loaf of bread. Yeast are microbial husbandry. You really have to care for [starters], and understand what it likes and what it doesn't like. And when you do that over a period of time and go from it being something that's sort of sickly seeming or not very pleasant smelling, to something that is recognizable as something that would leaven bread, you're suddenly becoming a sourdough baker in a way."

Janjigian acknowledged, however, that there are some obvious benefits from picking up a starter from a neighbor or bakery.

"The disadvantage to starting from scratch is that it takes a while to get to something that will leaven a loaf of bread," Janjigian said. "You can make a starter [from scratch] that starts to do what you want it to in about two weeks time. … Ones that are more like a month or two months old are gonna just be more vigorous and do a better job. For a new baker, it can be kind of discouraging to have spent all this time making something and then make a loaf of bread and it's still kind of heavy and think, 'Oh, something is wrong.' ... Getting one from somebody else means that you have the benefit of all the time it's already been living and cared for."

If you’re interested in making your own starter, Janjigian is currently documenting his most recent starter via the online hashtag #quarantinystarter (along with several others). His method uses a smaller amount of water and flour than most starter recipes, the latter of which is in higher demand than usual at grocery stores since the stay-at-home orders. His article on the project is over at Cook’s Illustrated and can be found here, and you can follow along with his breadmaking adventures over on his Instagram account, @wordloaf. If you're still looking to find a starter from another baker, the Hoodline article with Reber has some local suggestions on where you can find it.

Dianne de Guzman is a Digital Editor at SFGATE. Email: dianne.deguzman@sfgate.com