In an interview aired on NPR’s Morning Edition today, a call center worker at King Arthur Flour, technically a “Baker Specialist,” was asked, among the 18,000 contacts made in April, what was the top question aspiring bakers had for the hotline helpers.
” ‘Why isn’t my sourdough starter working?’ ” Maggie Perry replied with a laugh, adding that calls and emails to the Baker Hotline were up a whopping five times from a year earlier!
If it’s true that misery needs company, then it should be satisfying knowing that, from all my previous attempts at making a sourdough starter, I’m definitely not alone in feeling like an utter failure in the sourdough-bread-making department. It’s just too bad that it took a national stay-at-home lock down for it to be realized.