Sourdough FAQs on Carl’s Friends
Darrell Greenwood collated and maintained the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) for the old UseNet internet group rec.food.sourdough. Darrell died in August 2016 and can no longer maintain the FAQ. The old UseNet group is nearly defunct after a long period of many spammers made it unpleasant to use so it isn’t clear whether anyone would take over the FAQ. We also do not know how long Darrell’s website will remain available.
The information contained within the FAQ is a treasure trove of information to learn about sourdough gleaned from the days when rec.food.sourdough was in its heyday. Most of the information was gathered in the 1990s. All of the original members of the 1847 Oregon Trail Sourdough Preservation Society were active members of rec.food.sourdough in the 1990s. Darrell was a founding member of the Society.
We did not want to risk losing the information Darrell worked so hard to collect so we copied the FAQ, changed the links to our website files, and present it here on our Carl’s Friends website. Once the documents are in place, they likely will not be updated. Darrell periodically posted the text version of the FAQs on the rec.food.sourdough group but we do not intend to continue that procedure.
Sourdough FAQs – Darrell’s Sourdough FAQ on the Carl’s Friends website
Sourdough QA – Hypertext contents of the Questions & Answers FAQ on the Carl’s Friends website
FAQs in text files archived on the MIT servers and are also on the Carl’s Friends site. These were also edited to put into hypertexed html format.
FAQ.Sourdough.Questions & Answers is archived at rtfm.mit.edu with an archive name of food/sourdough/faq. On Carlsfriends.net: Text page
FAQ.Starter.Doctor is archived at rtfm.mit.edu with an archive name of food/sourdough/starters. How to tell when a starter is a starter, (Or, ALL You Wanted to Know about Sourdough Starters, but were Afraid to Ask). April 1999 by Brian Dixon On Carlsfriends.net: Text page HTML
FAQ.BasicBread is archived at rtfm.mit.edu with an archive name of food/sourdough/basicbread. Primer on basic bread with commercial yeast, not sourdough. On Carlsfriends.net: Text page HTML
FAQ.Recipes is archived at rtfm.mit.edu with an archive name of food/sourdough/recipes/part1 and food/sourdough/recipes/part2. Text pages on Carlsfriends.net: Part1 Part2 HTML pages: Part1 Part2
Other Items Darrell saved from the old group:
Long Technical Posts, Parts 1, 2, 3, 4 – Discussing the detailed science of sourdough cultures and bread, May 1998
Volkorn Without Tears – Rye pan bread by Dick Adams
Katrine Kirk's Rugbroed - Danish Rye Bread, text file
Newcomer Tips – Darrell’s tips for newcomers to rec.food.sourdough
Note: Some of the links in Darrell’s documents might not work in today’s Internet. For example, the old UseNet groups were taken over by Google and no longer work like they did in the 1990s and we have not verified whether resource links still work.
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