And somewhat related to the post below....

My wife has a sourdough pot. For those who don't know, sourdough requires it's own special bacteria in order to get that taste that's so famous. Normal bread just uses yeast and that's it. Sourdough uses yeast AND the special bacteria.

For those who are now going "EEWWWWWW!", stop it. Bacteria isn't just something that gives you an ear infection, OK? Have you ever had yogurt? Bacteria. Bread? That's yeast, which is a bacteria. Beer? Wine? Whiskey? Any other alcohol?

Yep. That's created by bacteria.

So anyways, back to the sourdough pot. Unlike regular yeast, which can be dried and stored for months at a time, sourdough requires a nice warm wet environment in which to live. You can't dry it out, so you have to have a container of live active cultures if you want to bake any sourdough bread. That's what the wife has.

Now, she's going to be baking for Christmas. Lots and lots of bread and rolls, and since she's got the sourdough pot, it'll all be sourdough bread. So she's getting the pot ready to use. You have to take part of the sourdough culture out and put it in the bread mix in addition of yeast, so you have to replenish it, right? Or, in my wife's case, built that sourdough pot up to the point where you can use up 75% of it and still have enough left over to keep it going.

So it's at this point that I point out that an exploding sourdough pot does not a clean stovetop make.

Nothing quite let's you know that there are living things in there like watching the flour and bacteria mix actually bubble like it was a boiling pot. That's the by-product of the bacteria, after all. CO2 and alcohol. When it's just a small pot, like we normally keep, you see a few bubbles suspended in the pot, but until we got this thing growing I have never seen it actually boil.

Not that I'm bothered by it, other than having to clean the stovetop. No, I'm more just amazed at what we as humans are able to to with our food. Bacteria, folks. Cool as hell.

I guess the whole point of this post is to just let you know that my wife kicks so much ass that she keeps a sourdough pot in the kitchen in order to bake fresh sourdough bread. Yeah, I'm bragging. I admit it. Whaddyagonnado?