The Daisy Papers
A Baker's Investigation Into the Language of Starter Life
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Living Apothecary Series
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Part I
The Starter I Thought I KnewDaisy came into my life in 2020.
Like many stories that began that year, it started quietly during the pandemic, when the world suddenly slowed in ways none of us expected. The small French bakery where we bought our bread closed its doors, and for the first time in many years I found myself with something rare — time.
But the truth is, sourdough had been waiting for me much longer than that.
When I was seventeen, my mother and I took a bread-making class together. I remember the moment vividly. When we opened the ovens that day, hoping to see beautiful loaves, what came out instead were flat, pale failures.
My mother looked at them for a moment and said, completely straight-faced,
“Well… looks like we’ll have some nice doorstops.”
The whole class laughed.
But I remember being quietly shocked.
How could something made from just flour, water, yeast, and salt be so difficult?
Even then I knew I wanted to learn the craft someday.
Life, however, had other plans. My years were filled with professional golf, constant travel, and later a deep immersion in homeopathy. True artisan sourdough requires something very particular — time, attention, and patience — and those were luxuries I didn’t yet have.
The pandemic changed that.
With the bakery closed and the world paused, I decided it was finally time to try.
I began by cultivating my own starter and had some early success, but like many beginners I didn’t yet understand the invisible forces living inside that jar. Eventually my starter likely became overly acidic — though I didn’t know that at the time.
So I ordered a mature starter from Breadtopia. I had heard that established starters often behave more reliably.
When it arrived, I gave her a name.
Daisy.
The name came easily. Daisy was my grandmother’s name, and it carries warmth and memory for me. It also belongs to the botanical family Asteraceae — the same family as the homeopathic remedy Arnica, which I love deeply. Those flowers have bright petals radiating like the sun, and in my mind Daisy would become a kind of sun in my kitchen.
She fit perfectly into the spirit of Sol Canyon Kitchen, the small hillside sanctuary where much of my life unfolds.
The moment I baked my first successful sourdough loaf, I was hooked.
It reminded me immediately of golf.
In golf, the swing is an art form. It looks simple from the outside, but underneath it is a delicate interplay of physics, timing, balance, and feel. When you catch that first perfect shot, something awakens in you. You want to understand it. You want to repeat it. You want to master it.
Sourdough felt exactly the same.
The craft of artisan bread — especially the open crumb made famous by bakeries like Tartine — fascinated me. I read everything I could find. I studied fermentation, hydration, shaping, dough strength, and temperature. I kept my hands in dough almost daily.
Practice. Practice. Practice.
Just like golf.
Over time my skill improved. Many people told me my bread looked beautiful.
But there was a problem.
One loaf would emerge from the oven with the open, elegant crumb I was chasing — large airy pockets arranged like delicate architecture.
The next loaf, made with the same care, would not.
It felt like luck.
And if something feels like luck, it means you don’t yet understand it.
So I studied everything I could about fermentation, dough handling, and baking technique. I read books, watched bakers, experimented constantly, and analyzed every step of the process.
Everything, that is, except the starter.
For seven years Daisy sat faithfully in my kitchen while I focused on every other variable in the craft.
At the time she lived on the counter of Sol Canyon Kitchen, tucked into a shaded corner where I could see her throughout the day while I worked. My kitchen looks out over the canyons through three large windows, and each morning I feed Daisy while the sun rises over the hills.
It is a small kitchen, but it is deeply lived in.
Along one wall are shelves between four storage cupboards, lined with rows of glass jars — perhaps eighty of them — holding beans, grains, flours, seeds, and nuts. Everything is organized for easy reach. They sit there like a quiet apothecary of ingredients, always ready.
There is a juicer, a grain mill, a kettle, a mixer, knives worn from use, and a cat water fountain humming quietly nearby. My cats wander through the space like small guardians of the sanctuary.
Friends often sit on stools at the counter, sometimes with a cat between us, and we talk about real things — life, health, the world — while food moves across the cutting board.
It is not a showroom kitchen.
It is a living one.
And Daisy was always there.
What made the mystery deeper is that Daisy appeared to be exactly what every baker describes as a healthy starter.
I fed her on time every day.
She rose reliably and often tripled in size.
She smelled pleasant and fermented strongly.
By every visible measure she looked vibrant and alive.
I never once suspected the starter itself could be part of the problem.
That changed this past Christmas.
Nicole — the daughter of my heart since my sister passed — gave me a gift I had casually mentioned wanting: a sourdough home, a small fermentation chamber designed to maintain precise temperatures for starter cultures.
I thought it would simply make Daisy more consistent.
Instead, it changed everything.
At 16°C — a temperature far cooler than my warm Los Angeles kitchen — Daisy transformed.
Her surface became silky and smooth.
Large bubbles began pushing upward like tiny domes under the skin of the starter. The structure inside became airy and elastic in a way I had never seen before.
Even after seven years of baking, I had never seen Daisy look like this.
I began leaving Nicole voice messages almost every day.
“Nicole, you won’t believe this… Daisy looks like a completely different creature.”
For the next sixty-two days she remained in that extraordinary state.
I started calling her Daisy Madre, inspired by the famous Pasta Madre cultures used in traditional Italian panettone — legendary starters known for their strength, balance, and beauty.
And for the first time in seven years, I realized something that would change my understanding of sourdough completely.
A starter can be alive.
It can rise beautifully.
It can bake good bread.
And still not be truly balanced.
That was the moment the real investigation began.
This is the first entry in a series I’m calling The Daisy Papers — a baker’s investigation into the language of starter life.
I did not come here to persuade.
I came to share what I had learned,
and to leave the choosing in other hands.