by: Nalina Cherr

This summer has been full of new friends, beautiful sunsets on lake Mendota, and midnight pancakes. But in the midst of life, there is death. I’d like to take a moment to reflect upon the past year and the friend no longer with us. 

Yeast Witherspoon was a start-up sourdough starter. She began life as a mason jar full of flour and water, left on a windowsill wearing only a damp dishrag. She quickly flourished under the care of her foster parents, who will be here called Sarah and Sara, until her adoption into the hands of her mother, here called Sarra. Though she wouldn’t call her mother neglectful, Witherspoon noted in her autobiography that she spent “days, sometimes even weeks in the refrigerator,” and that, “sometimes, I longed for a spoonful of even whole wheat flour.” 

Despite her lack of attention, or perhaps because of it, Witherspoon flourished, showering her community with pancakes, bread, and even crumpets. Her friends remember her as “bubbly, an effervescent personality, constantly changing, but always slightly sourfaced, with an acetic tang of longing running through her soul.” Her soul is now at rest. On June 16, 2025, Witherspoon was found dead in her jar, under a peaceful layer of foul hooch, drowned in her own acidic respiratory products. 

But her legacy lives on in the jars of others. Witherspoon is survived by her biological mother, Flourencia, daughters Breanda and Fidough, and grandchildren, Jerry “Shmoo-py” Seinfeld and Thumbalina.

If you want to honor Yeast Witherspoon’s legacy and try your hand this summer at raising your own starter, it’s easy. Just follow this simple recipe adopted from the trailblazing fermentation book by Sandor Ellix Katx, Wild Fermentation:

Tips on maintaining your sourdough:

That liquid on top of my starter:

If you start to notice a clear or dark liquid on top of your starter, that means it’s hungry! Your microbial colony has chomped through all the sugars in the flour and is drowning in its own respiratory products (including ethanol and acetic acid). This liquid is often referred to as “hooch.” If the hooch is clear or pale and translucent, simply mix it back into the starter and feed as usual. If the hooch is dark, or if there is any visible fuzz or crop circles etc., it’s probably better to pour off the top and try to revive what’s left with another feeding. Please note: Starters are pretty hardy, so even if it looks pretty dead it’s worth giving it another round of flour. They’re usually just being dramatic.

Temperature:

Sourdough gets its sour flavor from yeast like Saccharomyces Cerevisiae (AKA brewers and bakers yeast) as well as bacteria like – These microbes eat the sugars in flour and as a side product of metabolism, poop out sour flavors like acetic acid. If your sourdough starter is eating through sugars faster than you’d like, you can slow down the microbes by putting them in a cold environment, like the fridge. Just make sure you don’t leave it hungry in there too long, and feed it before you try to cook with it.

The float test:

If you’re wondering when to cook with your sourdough starter, see if it passes the float test. Put a dollop of starter into a cup of water. If it floats, the microbes are creating enough CO2 bubbles to keep it afloat, and the starter is ready for baking.

Discard: 

To keep your starter manageable, it’s wise to “discard” about half of the starter before feeding it. If throwing away flour and microbes makes you unhappy, there are a lot of discard recipes out there (pancakes! crackers!). You can collect discard in the fridge until you’re ready to use it, or hand it out to friends and family so they can have their own starters.