Sonoma man’s 80-year-old sourdough starter is ‘better than sex’

Steve Kyle has babies all across the globe. He really doesn’t know how many he has out there, he’s lost track. It’s likely his babies have had babies, and those babies have had babies.

“I’m immortal,” he said with a chuckle and grin.

Kyle, 77, is younger than his original “baby,” a sourdough starter he believes is probably 80 years old, perhaps older.

He was an event creator and manager producing food and wine events before he retired. He was at one of his events when he met “Sourdough Jack,” one of the exhibitors. Sourdough Jack was trying to earn a little extra income by selling his sourdough starter and original recipes. Kyle bought one and has kept it going. That was in 1971.

Sourdough Jack was an older man at that time himself and had the sourdough starter for many years bringing it with him from Alaska, Kyle said.

Sourdough bread dates to ancient Egypt and is the oldest form of leavened bread. Before commercial yeast was available, leavened bread used naturally occurring yeast, which is what Kyle’s sourdough relies on as well.

Steve and Holly Kyle’s children, then 5 and 3, were raised eating pancakes, biscuits and bread from that sourdough starter. Now grown, their children have their own starters and feed their children from it, Steve Kyle said.

Kyle has given away a lot of his sourdough starter over the decades, and said there could be up to four generations fermenting out there. Through many fishing trips his Alaskan Sourdough Jack starter is in Argentina, Chile, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, and “it is scattered all over the U.S.,” he said.

One who receives the starter is obliged to send to Kyle a photo of whatever they’ve made with it, be it bread, biscuit or pancake.

“He has quite a collection,” wife Holly said.

“I call it ‘bread porn,’” Steve Kyle said.

A recent set of photos came from his niece who turned the starter into focaccia bread and placed vegetables on top before baking to create scenes of nature. Celery stalks became the stem of a flower made by onion and jalapeno pepper slices. Cherry tomatoes formed a sunburst.

“They were works of art,” Kyle said.

Kyle believes there is no better bread and a slice toasted is “killer.”

“There should be a 12-step program,” he said.

Several years ago he started making scones with the starter, too. Patting his belly, he said he was eating too many of them himself and started giving them away. He’s now known as the “Scone Ranger,” he said.

“Kathleen Hill came up with that one,” Kyle said, referring to the Sonoma Index-Tribune food writer.

Kyle has tweaked the recipe a little over the years, and bakes regularly making four loaves at a time, more than enough for Steve and Holly to eat. Loaves of bread are gifts of love Steve Kyle relishes in sharing.

“I’m like Johnny Appleseed,” he said.

The first thing he made with the starter was pancakes; his wife and kids loved them.

The pancakes are “yummy,” he said. “They are better than sex. They last longer, too.”

Over the years he has taught cooking classes at the Community Center and used his knowledge of baking as his “contribution to the conversation,” when surrounded by women.

The shelter-in-place orders are taking people back to baking and flour has been harder to come by for Kyle, he said. During this time the popularity of sourdough “has taken off,” he said.

He’s happy to oblige anyone who wants some of his sourdough starter in exchange for a cup of flour, he said. Sourdough starter is a “much nicer” thing to spread around than “coronavirus,” he said.

Email Kyle at stevekyle@me.com, and remember to send him bread porn later.

Contact Anne at anne.ernst@sonomanews.com.