I was at the library in Portland and saw a baking book from 1972.

I was looking for a new bread recipe and pulled this old book off the shelf. The whole section on sourdough was just two pages, and it said to feed the starter with potato water. My grandma used to say that too, but I never knew it was a common old method. It made me wonder how many other old baking tricks we've forgotten. Do any of you still use tips from really old cookbooks?

3 comments

3 Comments

cameron_owens493mo ago

That potato water trick actually works, my starter loves it lol.

tessa_kelly3mo ago

Isn't it wild how we keep rediscovering old methods that actually work better? I see this everywhere now, not just baking. People are fixing clothes instead of tossing them, growing food, using simple cleaners like vinegar. It feels like we're circling back to what our grandparents knew, because that stuff was cheap, worked well, and didn't create a bunch of waste. Makes you wonder what other simple fixes we've traded for something complicated and expensive.

tessa3942mo ago

Oh wow, @tessa_kelly you're totally right about the vinegar thing. I switched to that for cleaning last year and my house smells like a salad bar now, but at least it's cheap. My grandma also used potato water for her starter, and I remember her having a jar of it in the fridge that she'd feed every Sunday. I tried that method a few months ago and my starter died within two weeks. Turns out I forgot the part where you don't leave it in the back of the fridge for a month and wonder why it's moldy. So maybe some tricks are better left to people who aren't me.