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Comment by DanAndersen | Hacker News Reader

Speaking of fermentation, I recommend that anyone who enjoys bread has a a sourdough starter. It's one of those things where a tiny investment of time (a few minutes per day, or less if you're storing an already-started starter in the fridge) makes for a large payoff of great-tasting bread.

This is probably the simplest and easiest guide I've found, and it's the one I've used to greatest success: http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/11/how-to-make-so...

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Where I live it's named an `Herman' cake or bread. You are supposed to cut it into four parts and distribute three of it to friends or strangers and restart the thing with the remaining part. It's kinda fun. Kids love it :).

That's a neat concept! I might do something like that among my family this year -- I've been looking for a fun, frugal/minimalist approach to Christmas gifts.

I've found the rise time of starters to be too unpredictable. These days I make my bread with a small (1/2 tsp or so) amount of yeast, but let the sponge grow overnight. Results in very tasty bread that rises on my schedule.

One thing that I missed the most after coming to US was sourdough bread. I couldn't stand this sweet, sponge-like "bread" that was available here. I didn't have to use fermentation starter in Poland, because there you can get all kinds of fermented foods straight from the store. The explosion of taste I had after I tried my own-made sour bread is beyond means of expression available to human race.

If someone in bay area would like to try baking their own bread, but they don't want to grow the fermentation starter from scratch, let me know, I can share mine. it's based on whole-grain flour, and it's pretty stable (6 months old now!).

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