I got into sourdough by asking one question too many, and now I have a new one.
Before you could buy yeast in a packet, someone had to feed a starter every day, through cold winters, house moves, even wars. Was that one person's job? Did families hand a starter down like a recipe, or borrow from the baker down the road when theirs died?
Would love to hear about any time or place you know something about.
Borrowing from the baker down the road when your own starter died sounds like the most realistic answer to me, a starter is easy to share and hard to keep alive alone. I bet the feeding fell to whoever baked most days, and it never got written down because it was just part of the morning. Curious what turns up here.
In a lot of places it wasn't a starter at all. People bought barm, the foam skimmed off brewing beer, from the brewery nearby.
Sourdough is older than most countries. So who kept the starter alive through winters, moves and wars, and did people pass it on like an heirloom?