The Yeast and I

New Year’s Resolutions? Not for me. With one exception:

I have only one New Year’s Resolution that I have kept faithfully for over 25 years: no more yeast starters.  Some new beginnings bubble up and beg to be fed and nurtured. The sheer neediness grows until you sense a loss of control.

Before Facebook and whole grain cereal, a neighbor gave me a tasty cinnamon coffee cake.  A simple enough gesture.  However, before the treat was handed over, a jar of gelatinous muck was thrust into my hands, along with a recipe card for “Friendship Cake.”  A curious name because the explicit instructions for the care and feeding of the yeast starter were not a friendly process.

Being a law-abiding Midwestern woman, I accepted the goop and the challenges implicit in it. Directions were specific:

1. Stir daily for three days.
2. Feed the bubbling blob sugar, milk, and white flour.
3. Rest on day four.
4. Repeat steps 1-3 once more.
5. Bake and share day. This was not a suggestion.  Failure to use the starter would cause it to explode all over the kitchen counters, ooze down the cabinets, and onto the floor where the dog could eat it and track it all over the house.   I learned the hard way that baking day was mandatory.

This was not all that was required, however.  This friendly starter came with built-in guilt.  On baking day, I was to remove two cups of the glop and give it to two “friends” with my carefully typed-up (pre-computer) directions and recipes.  An additional cup of stuff was to be left behind on the counter to grow, and the final blob was ready to create the “Friendship Cake.”

The first time I baked the cake, my family nodded in approval after tasting the moist sugar bomb.  After days of scorn over the growing mess in the Mason jar on my counter, I felt vindicated.  I imagined myself as a 19^th-century woman nourishing my family by growing my own yeast starter and sharing the treasured secret with friends.

But I soon tired of the stress of the starter: feeding, stirring, sharing and baking on days I barely had time to throw tater tot hotdish together.  Quickly, I ran out of friends willing to accept a cake and a jar of demanding starter.  My attempts to share this living treat were met with more latent hostility than friendship.   My neighborhood was already saturated; every house on our block held a jar of white stuff percolating in the kitchen.

At work, I tried to pass it along to an unsuspecting secretary, but apparently, this was not her first starter opportunity.  In case anyone else would consider accepting this hungry mixture, I left it in the break room.  But without care and feeding, it exploded into a stringy mix reminiscent of grade school paste.

There was nowhere to turn; now, it was just me and the yeast.  Bake and Share Day turned into baking nightmare day.  Instead of one treat, I had to bake three items from the limited recipes.

Soon, cinnamon cakes were stacking up on the counters and filling the freezer.  Even my sugar-crazed kids met the treats with unnerving nonchalance, saying things like, “Again?”   I resented the neediness of the sticky muck.  It should have arrived with a warning or adoption papers.  A puppy would have been less trouble.  Why did I feel compelled to keep it alive?  My house plants weren’t treated as well, yet somehow, I felt responsible for the bubbly, gaseous substance.

One day, after seeing the numbers on the bathroom scale rise to yet another high, I decided to eliminate this menace.  Of course, I couldn’t throw it away – waste is not in my vocabulary.  Then again, neither is “waist.”  Instead of holding back the required cup to continue to grow the starter, I rebelled and made up the entire batch.  And I was free… well -as soon as we could devour four more cinnamon coffeeecakes.

For a few weeks, I avoided the neighbor who had “gifted” me with the living, bubbling muck.  But then I realized that I hadn’t promised to be responsible for it forever, and besides, I was not her first choice for sharing this culture.  When I did encounter her, while trying to walk off my added girth, she asked how I was enjoying the yeast starter.  I thrust my shoulders back and admitted that I had used it up.  She arched her eyebrows mockingly, but I noticed a wry smile as she turned away.