ID Tell us what you need
  1. Home
  2. Stories
  3. the starter
the starter

The sourdough starter that's been alive since 1849

A San Francisco bakery says it has kept the same sourdough starter alive since 1849.

Watch it in Bahasa Indonesia →

Share this story WhatsApp X Facebook LinkedIn

The real story

A sourdough starter is a living team: wild yeasts make the gas that lifts the bread, and lactic acid bacteria make the sour taste. One of those bacteria was even named after the city where it was identified, Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis. Feed it flour and water and the colony keeps going indefinitely, which is why starters get inherited like heirlooms.

Boudin Bakery was founded in San Francisco in 1849 by Isidore Boudin, a baker from a French family, during the Gold Rush. In the 1906 earthquake and fire, the story goes, Louise Boudin rescued the mother dough in a bucket. Prospectors in California, and later in the Klondike, carried starters everywhere and kept them close to their bodies in winter so they wouldn't freeze. That's how 'sourdough' became a nickname for a seasoned miner.

What the narrator says

Tap a line to jump to it.

The facts we checked

  • A sourdough starter is a living culture of wild yeast and bacteria, kept alive by feeding it flour and water
  • Starters can be kept alive for decades and passed down; a San Francisco bakery says its starter dates back to 1849
  • Gold-rush prospectors (California, later the Klondike) carried starters with them, kept them warm against their bodies, and were nicknamed 'sourdoughs'

Sources

We checked every number and date on screen before the video was made.

Made by teodolist studio

Want a series like this?

Need videos like this for your brand or school?

We made all 240 of these, in English and Indonesian, from one script each. We make story series for brands, schools and channels.

Tell us what you need How storybook videos work Videos for schools

More stories like this

0:59 the mould Penicillin: the mouldy dish that changed medicine 0:59 the statue Why the Statue of Liberty is green (and why she was almost painted) 1:05 the volcano Krakatau 1883: the loudest sound in recorded history 1:01 the duck How 28,800 lost rubber ducks mapped the ocean (1992) 0:50 the footprint Why the first footprint on the Moon is still there 1:03 the mechanism The Antikythera mechanism: a 2,000-year-old computer from a shipwreck

← All stories Next story: The sinetron zoom: Indonesian TV drama's most dramatic move →