Little Delta Bowhunters Sourdough Starter

Bowhunting and sourdough go hand in hand.  I'd like to share a little history I learned from an old post on a popular traditional archery forum on the internet.  

Likely you already know the name Fred Bear, and perhaps you know of his famous trips to hunt in the late 1950's at the Little Delta in Alaska immortalized in Glenn St. Charles novel "Bows on the Little Delta".  Fred made most of his hunts based from a old log trappers cabin owned by Dick McIntire there, and in 1964 Dick Mauch returned there with another group of hunters.  

Supposedly, McIntire had acquired the cabin and the sourdough starter from the old trapper who was running the trap lines on the Little Delta. No one knows how long the trapper had it, or what ingredients he used to start it.   He ran the trap line for many years and guarded his starter keeping it in the top of the flour sack in a ball of dough. Whenever he wanted to bake he would just dump water into the top of the flour sack and mix it in with the sourdough ball...always leaving a portion of the sourdough behind for later use. Once the old timers would get a good starter going, they would guard it carefully to keep it alive and use it indefinitely.  Dick brought this starter back and used it throughout the rest of their lives to make pancakes, waffles, and breads in their home and cabin.  Dick's sourdough bread became sort of famous to his many hosted guests and acquaintances.  

  Here is Fred Bear outside the trappers cabin:

Here Bob Kelly is in the Little Delta kitchen in 1959:

I wonder now if any of that starter survived anywhere amongst the bowhunting community? Though the yeast species change depending on the local environment and populations over time so it may not matter except to those who reminisce about bygone times.  

Starter had much utility to the pioneers and hunters because it was the way they could make bread rise without store bought yeast.  This, along with the bowhunting story above, made it interesting to me and I started a small obsession with all things sourdough.  

Making sourdough starter is easy enough.  All you need is flour, water and time.   When I first started trying to play with sourdough starter I made it from the water of boiled potatoes, but later found this was not needed to make some super active starter. 

Add about 1 cup of four to 1/2 cup of water. Then just cover lightly and let it sit.

This is a great site that describes in detail how to start, feed and maintain your starter.  

When baking frequently I keep my starter at room temperature and feed it a few spoons of flour daily.  When I am away or busy I just place it in the refrigerator and feed it weekly or so.  If I am really going to take a break, I can spread some thinly on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and dry it out into chips and keep that in a mason jar.  It is then easy to reconstitute in a day or two if needed by simply adding more flour and water.

 

 

The starter can then be used to make everything from pancakes, breads, rolls, English muffins, waffles, pretzels, etc.  

I plan to post some of these above recipes in the future here.