Dish: Everything You Know About Sourdough Is Wrong, Says Master Baker Lionel Vatinet

Many years ago, I took my child to a playdate. The hostess, another kid’s grandmother, served us warm, homemade cinnamon rolls. When I raved over how incredibly delicious the roll was, she explained that, instead of yeast, she’d made them with sourdough starter. 

Completely ignorant of the care and keeping of a sourdough starter, I asked for the recipe. The procedure she’d used to make this treat shocked me. 

She explained that a starter is a living colony of wild yeast (which replaces store-bought yeast and will make your breads rise) and other bacteria. It must be fed with flour and watered daily. It must never get too hot or too cold, too hungry or too thirsty. She’d been doing this to keep her starter going for forty years.

“What a crazy person! Who in their right mind would ever go to such ridiculous lengths and tie themselves to a crock full of microbes?” I wondered aloud on the drive home, not giving it a second thought.

Ten years later, I decided to revisit sourdough. I did lots of research. Rather than feeding the starter every day, I learned about dough hibernation, where it’s stored in the refrigerator until three days before baking, taken out and fed daily until ready to use, then re-refrigerated. 

But first, I needed a starter. To make one from scratch, I mixed flour and water, fed it daily, and fanned it to expedite the introduction of wild yeast. Yeast, and the other strains of bacteria necessary to make sourdough, are naturally occurring in the air around us. The aim is to get a large enough colony going to act as a leavener. After about three months of feeding and fanning, I finally had living sourdough. 

It lived in an old soup crock on my kitchen counter, and I fed it daily. Then, when I made bread, or pancakes, or waffles, I’d remove some (depending on the recipe, usually a cup to a cup-and-a-half) from the crock and replace what I’d used with daily feedings. Occasionally, when I didn’t use up enough by cooking, I’d discard a cup or two. But at this point I was finding so many sourdough recipes to experiment with, I had no need to stash it in the chill chest for hibernation.

After my kid left for college, I didn’t cook with the starter as much, so I started refrigerating it. As time went on, it seemed to weaken. I became obsessed with it. I lost sleep, fixated on it, and shed tears. My sourdough baby was fading, and I didn’t know what to do. It was in decline.

Last week, I met with La Farm Bakery’s owner and master baker, Lionel Vatinet. Prior to our meeting, I took my sourdough starter out of the refrigerator. It looked rough. It didn’t have sourdough’s characteristic tangy, slightly boozy aroma, and the texture was more slimy glue than bubbly batter.   

I was hoping Vatinet would impart his years of sourdough knowledge and help me rescue my starter.

Vatinet uses a starter for his delicious La Farm breads, such as his signature sourdough boule and, my favorites, buckwheat and Carolina Gold rice breads. I pictured a starter that had been around since the time of Marie Antoinette. I was hoping to be lucky enough for a glimpse, maybe even a whiff of 250 years of French breadmaking history.

I ask my first of nineteen questions: “How old is your starter, and did you bring it from France?”

“Americans are the best at marketing,” Vatinet says in response, laughing. He explains that romantic stories about ancient sourdough strains sell lots of bread but mean nothing. That age has no bearing on flavor. “The more sourdough in the bread, the sourer the flavor will be—that’s it. Nobody can taste a slice and tell you how old the starter was.” 

I ask his opinion about supplementing bread dough with yeast. Vatinet gestures in a particularly Gallic manner, explaining that leavening is used to make the dough rise—how you get there is immaterial. And when it comes to yeast, both dry and fresh are acceptable. He’s more interested in the amount used and preventing waste.  

I ask about refrigeration. That got a rise out of him. “How would feel if you were put in the refrigerator?” he asks. Turns out, a starter is not meant to be so cold. Action slows, then stops, so it turns in upon itself, and starving, it begins consuming itself. 

Whoops. 

“What if you’re going out of town?” I ask.  Start a new one, he replies.

“It takes only ten days to make a new starter. If you need it faster, ask someone who has a sourdough starter—a friend, neighbor, or bakery—for some.” He gestures to the tip of his thumb, continuing. “That’s all you need. Each day, feed it a quarter cup each of flour and water. You’ll have enough for baking in three to four days.”

I tell him about my own ailing starter and ask him how to save it. He says six words that change everything. When I hear them, I feel as if a huge, stressful boulder has been lifted from my shoulders. 

“We kill ours all the time. Just make a new one.” 

I went home with the worry and anxiety washed away. I’m not sure what happened, but the next morning my starter had transformed. It was lively, frothy, and as healthy looking, and smelling as it’s ever been. It now lives in a small jar out on the counter, stress-free and happy. That makes two of us.

Related: See “The Sourdough Project Wants to Figure Out How Colonies of Yeast and Bacteria Create the Tangy, Bubbly Bread.” Contact us at food@indyweek.com.