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Finally got my great-aunt's sourdough starter to work after a month of fails
I found her old recipe card from 1975, and the key was using bottled water instead of tap. The first real loaf came out of the oven last night, and it smelled just like her kitchen. Anyone else have a family recipe that took forever to figure out?
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hannah_fox7mo ago
Bottled water seems like a weird fix, honestly. Tap water works fine for most people, and it's way cheaper. That whole month of fails was probably just bad luck or something else in the recipe. Sometimes old family recipes are more about nostalgia than actually being good instructions.
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dakotacraig7mo ago
My grandma's biscuit recipe literally calls for "water from the east well" which dried up in 1973. I spent two years trying to figure out the mineral content before I just used Poland Spring and it worked. Sometimes the magic is just avoiding the chlorine from city pipes. What's in your tap water anyway?
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taylorhunt7mo ago
That's the real secret to so many old recipes. My great aunt's pie crust demanded "soft water from the rain barrel," and we went nuts trying to mimic it. Turns out she just meant don't use the nasty, iron-heavy stuff from their old pump. A basic filter did the trick. You can drive yourself crazy chasing ghosts in those instructions.
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