Don't Name Your Sourdough Starter After a Dead Queer Magician
Back in November, I acquired a sourdough starter from one of my trans brothers who works in a health food restaurant in my area. I really had no idea what I was getting myself into.
The first people I showed my new baby off to was two of my friends from the first witchcraft server where I found true community. One of them, Cindy, was the first person to make me realize that people commonly named their starters. "I suggest Aleister Doughly," she said.
I was like, COOL!!! That's great. I can even make a song to that when feeding the starter to the tune of The Beatles' Eleanor Rigby: "Aleister Doughly/taking his feed/feeling real neat."
Learning how to care for this starter was an uphill battle. It had sat in my friend's fridge and was underfed so I had to heal it up first. I didn't do this properly because I first decided to wing it when it came to feeding instead of doing the whole scale and measure discard/flour and water mixture process. Even after properly submitting myself to the daily labor, I couldn't figure out for a little while why the resulting bread tasted like bland shit. I was about to give up on the whole adventure because I was really frustrated.
But then, plot twist!!! My friends Rogue and Calliope from the Hermetic House of Life server were like, "You know that Aleister was likely genderqueer, right? Like, he preferred to be called Alice when he bottomed. When he and Israel Regardie fought, Regardie would call him that to piss him off."
To which I responded, "Oooh that means my starter can be bigender like me!" So I started calling it Alice as well.
"Alice Doughly/taking her feed/feeling real neat."
Around this time, I finally figured out that the reason why my sourdough starter wasn't peaking after 4 to 6 hours—as is standard—was because my housemate and I don't use the heating system in our apartment. Between all of this coming together, Alice suddenly became the HeLa of sourdough starters. In fact, I need a new kind of help, and more people to eat my sourdough bread, because feeding her and making her into dough is wreaking all kinds of chaos in my kitchen.
More and more I have been calling her Alice rather than Aleister and I swear to gods, nothing can stop her. Not even putting her in the fridge! Most starters calm the hell down if you put them there for awhile, and between that and my cold apartment I should need to boost her after taking her out, but nope! As soon as she's fed, girl goes on a rampage.
Maybe Crowley is laughing at me from beyond the grave? Our relationship is complicated given I consider him an anti-Jewish shit, but the Thoth tarot and I vibe hardcore so... maybe. Either way I am not sure I can recommend this! Keep your damn starter in the fridge!!! Don't name them after magicians, especially not their secret genders that never got to be openly expressed!!! They'll express as flour-covered fingers all over your kitchen!!!
But your bread will eventually taste great, admittedly.
