Sourdough bread is totally a thing now.
Some adventurous home cooks have baked sourdough bread for years, but a side effect of panic-buying during the pandemic has led to a new sourdough renaissance among less-experienced bakers. Along with toilet paper, flour, beans, and rice, yeast has been a hard-to-find commodity at grocery stores around the United States.
Most home-baked breads require yeast (or an alternative recipe), but sourdough bread is a special case. Sourdough is “made by the fermentation of dough using naturally occurring lactobacilli and yeast” (thanks, Wikipedia), and what this means for layman bakers is that once you have a sourdough starter, you can keep making sourdough bread—no fresh yeast required, as long as you can keep your starter alive.
Unfortunately, making a sourdough starter isn’t always easy. Just ask my husband, who tried—and failed—to make sourdough bread. Twice.
Sourdough fail #1. Initial rating: 3/10 
Revised day two rating: 1/10
My husband’s first attempt produced a loaf (sort of), although it didn’t really rise, and it was hard and chewy on day one—and completely inedible by day two. His second attempt was even more of a fail. The second starter turned sour (in a bad way) before he made it to the baking stage.
Fortunately, Super Awesome People™ with sourdough starters are coming to the rescue! Take chef Johanna Hellrigl for example. Last fall, Hellrigl created a sourdough starter using flour, water, and an apple from an orchard in the northeast of Italy which reminded her of her Italian family. On March 27th, Hellrigl offered to share her sourdough starter with interested D.C. locals who were willing to pay it forward by supporting initiatives to help out-of-work restaurant workers and restaurants shuttered by the pandemic.
When the Washington Post published a story about Hellrigl on April 25th, she had already shared her starter more than 500 times, with another 100 locals on her waiting list. Reporter Kristen Hartke interviewed several recipients of Hellrigl’s sourdough starter who are using their pandemic downtime to “feed” their offshoot starters and experiment with beginner-friendly recipes like Hellrigl’s recommended banana sourdough pancakes.
Similar to a house plant, sourdough starters need regular care and must be kept alive with daily “feedings”. With proper cultivation, starters can produce loaf after loaf of sourdough bread, and Hellrigl’s original starter can beget generations of future loaves, if the recipients of her offerings keep paying it forward by sharing their own starters with friends and neighbors—and the world.
For more sourdough starter updates, follow Johanna Hellrigl on Instagram at chefjohnannahellrigl.