Yeast Commitment

This week at work we interviewed a guy big on fermentation in. Kevin Mathieson is the baker at Art-Is-In Bakery and he came in to talk about his sour dough starter. If I understand starters properly, they’re a medium to promote wild fermentation of yeast. You mix together some flour, water and a little salt or sugar and then let the lump of dough "capture" wild bacteria in the air. The starter ferments and then you use scoop out a few spoonfuls everytime you make bread. The baker we spoke with talked on-air about how using starter makes bread more flavourful – adds a tang to breads (And his baguettes are definately delicious).
Starters are fascinating to me because of the commitment they require. They’re divas. You must feed it flour each day (some bakers up to three times a day) at the same time each day. The water you feed it should always be at the same tempture. They also need cleaniness. You’re supposed to use clean, clean utensils when feeding it. I haven’t read Kitchen Confidential (it’s on my reading list) but apparently Anthony Bourdain writes about a baker in New York who goes on heroin benders for the weekend but still has the presence of mind to phone other chefs in the city and tell them to "Feed the Beast".
Then I learned that Stu at work has had a starter going for the past eleven years. He told me this as he was about to bite into his vegan tofu sandwich. I got to try some of his bread. Stu offered to share with me a bit of his starter. My immediate thought was oh god, that’s too much responsibility for me. And that was pretty revealing. It got me thinking about the responsibilities in my life, and I realized there are not that many. I rent. I car-share rather than own. I think my relationship with my goldfish has been the biggest level of commitment I’ve had to anything. Funny how a sourdough starter can get you thinking about whether you are where you want to be in your life. It’s kind of like when a friend tells you he or she has just bought a house and you start measuring in your head whether you should also be house-hunting.