The Sourdough Wars

had had to close down a few years back. It was the old story—a small family business that expanded too fast, hit a recessionary period, and got in too deep. A few years after it went bust, the elder Martinellis—Peter’s parents—were killed in a mudslide. Every San Franciscan knew the story.
    “Oh, come on,” said Kruzick. “There must have been a house or something. Stocks and bonds, maybe.”
    “No stocks, no bonds. My sister got the house.”
    “Didn’t you get anything?” Kruzick can be unbelievably obnoxious, but somehow he gets away with it.
    “Sure I did. I got the starter.”
    “Huh?”
    “When my folks closed the bakery, they never gave up the idea that they’d be able to reopen it some day. So they had the starter frozen. You know what cryogenics is?”
    “Sure,” said Kruzick. “It’s like in
Sleeper
, when Woody Allen dies and has himself frozen. Then he thaws out in the next century or something.”
    Peter shrugged. “That’s what they did with the starter. Got a cryogenics firm to freeze it, just in case. At that time, there
were
some stocks and bonds. Dad thought he could sell them and borrow some money, maybe get some investors.” He shrugged again. “But he never got it together.”
    “So you got the starter.”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, what’s that?” Kruzick is from New York and harbors pockets of ignorance.
    “It’s what you need to make sourdough,” said Rob. “San Francisco’s unique sourdough French bread,” he continued, “is the stuff of myth and legend. Yet the Martinelli loaf, with its familiar thick, dark crust and chewy, fragrant interior, was the acknowledged pride of San Francisco bakeries, a legend unto itself.”
    “Hey,” said Peter, “I remember that. That’s what the
Chronicle
said when the bakery closed.”
    “I know. I wrote the story.”
    “But what’s the starter?” said Kruzick.
    Rob went on quoting himself. “Sourdough first surfaced during the Gold Rush of eighteen-forty-nine. Perhaps the forty-niners brought it with them; maybe they developed it here. No one knows for sure. Some say the city’s cottony fog gives the bread its sour taste; some say there’s a certain yeast that grows only in San Francisco. But one thing is certain—you can’t make it from scratch. You have to have sourdough to make sourdough.”
    “I think,” said Kruzick, “I’m catching on.”
    Rob nodded. “A mixture of flour and water called the mother sponge, or the mother sour, is the starter you need before you can bake your bread. Each bakery ‘builds’ its starter several times a day by adding more flour and more water to a portion of it, which must then rise and rise again. Each rising takes seven hours. And then the loaves are popped into the oven.”
    “So what’s so special about this dough sponge?”
    “It’s just one of those ineffable things,” said Mickey. That was the way she usually handled Kruzick—by using words he couldn’t understand.
    “It is indeed,” said Rob. “The bread’s only as good as the mother sour.”
    “So is there a special yeast?” said Mickey. “Or what?”
    “It’s said that the old-time bakers used to make the loaves by shaping the dough in their armpits,” said Rob. “And that’s what gave it its special flavor.”
    “Oh, quit teasing us.”
    “Well, there
is
a special yeast.” He was talking like himself again. “It’s called
Saccharomyces exiguus
, but you can find it lots of places. The Italians use it to make
panettone
, for instance. It’s the reason the bread takes so long to rise—it’s what scientists call a poor gasser.”
    “But if they have it in Italy,” asked Chris, “why can you only get sourdough in San Francisco?”
    “Ah, because you also need a bacterium that really is found only around here. It’s called
Lactobacillus sanfrancisco
. During the long rising, a sugar called maltose is formed. The bug works on the maltose to form two acids—seventy percent lactic and thirty percent acetic, which gives the bread its sour taste. Other bacteria won’t produce that much acetic acid, and other yeasts won’t tolerate that much. So you need both to make sourdough.”
    “So, Peter,” said Kruzick, “you gonna start a bakery?”
    Peter shook his head. “I’m lousy at business. Listen, I’m a starving actor. I live on what I make from commercials.”
    “How about if the theater paid you a salary?”
    “Ever since the state funds got cut, the theater can’t even pay for