Terroir, but for bread
The wild yeast and bacteria that live in a starter are not the same everywhere. They are caught out of the air and the flour of one particular place, and they carry that place into everything you bake with them. Serafina was raised over the Great South Bay.
Who Serafina is
She is my first starter, named the day she first doubled, and she has been fed on bread flour with a little rye ever since. She is strong, fast, and forgiving — which is why she is the one going out into the world rather than staying on my counter.
Why this site exists
Because handing someone a jar without instructions is how starters die. This is everything I would tell you standing in your kitchen, written down so you can read it at 11pm when the dough is doing something strange.
If you kill her
Tell me. There is more where she came from and nobody is keeping score. The only real failure is quietly throwing out the jar and never mentioning it.