There’s a group on Facebook called the Dull Men’s Club, a 1.8-million-member-strong cadre of people who share their most mundane thoughts on things like deodorant, fencing and vegetables. Sometimes, though, a member touches on something deeper.
“If you fancy a new pet but can’t be bothered with muddy paw prints, tank cleaning, trips to the vets etc I can thoroughly recommend a sourdough starter,” a 52-year-old man named Dave wrote in a May 21 post. “It just sits on your bench. That’s it!”
Dave says that the most exciting part of his “pet” — which he named Megumin after a popular anime character — is feeding the microbial colony to watch it grow. He says it’s given him “countless loaves” of bread for minimal effort.
“I love her very much,” he said. “I fed her this morning and the bubbles are a sign she had an enjoyable nosh.”
Dave is far from alone, with folks in the comments sharing their punny names for their own starters: “Weirdough,” “Marilyn Mondough” and “Bread Pitt.”
And folks on other social media platforms have been discussing what they name their jars of fermenting flour and water for years.
Bread bakers are so passionate about their sourdough starters, the culture of microorganisms that assist in making complex-flavored loaves, they’ve become part of the family.
“Growing up, my dad was a big baker,” Aidan Fennelly, an eighth grade English teacher in New York City, tells TODAY.com. “I sort of rebelled against him and refused to care about it or listen to him talk about it or anything.”
Fennelly, now 34, says he got into sourdough in 2020 when the pandemic hit. He adds that his wife, Emi Boscamp — TODAY.com’s senior food editor — is the cook of the pair, so he decided to learn to bake.
“I kind of felt like I had to pull my weight in the kitchen a little bit,” he says. To help, his dad sent him a freeze-dried, vacuum-sealed sourdough starter from his own decades-old batch.
Fennelly has been building his skill since, going from nurturing three different starters to just having just one, which he uses to bake sourdough loaves and rye breads — and it has a unique name.
“Jesus Crust,” he says.
Colleen Kingsbury, a pastry chef in Center Valley, Pennsylvania, has had years of experience with sourdough starters, although the one she keeps now is only five years old.
“I have a commercial bakery in my basement, and I bake for coffee shops,” Kingsbury tells TODAY.com, adding that she used to have five different starters that she recently combined into one.
“I had so many, and I was like, ‘This is ridiculous, you’re getting out of control,’” she says. “So, the giant one that I have now is called Frankenstein.”
Kingsbury, who previously worked as a home ec teacher, says that her current starter is made up of a few from lockdown. During that time, she held a naming contest with her 10th to 12th grade students.
“I wanted them to incorporate the best pun,” she says, adding that the class had a lot of good ones. “There was Bready White, The Yeasty Boys, Breaddie Mercury, David Doughie. We went hard into the music era, but that’s very much a high school thing.”
Kingsbury says that she thought that she would be more likely to take care of her starters if she named them — a sentiment others online have also expressed.
“They get shoved to the back of the refrigerator, you forget about them,” she says. “You do have to take them out and feed them and tell them that they’re pretty. Then they’ll work for you.”
In the years since Kingsbury ran the contest, former students still reach out to talk recipes or send her pictures.
“I guess very much right now, the trend is to hold your loaf of bread like a fish, so I will get random pictures from students, and they’re just holding a piece of bread,” she says with a laugh.
“It is really cool, the idea of being able to start something very basic, and then it becomes something else,” she says of sourdough starters. “I think that it’s just them taking the time to invest in the process and becoming a part of a community of people who make bread.”
Fennelly’s bond with his starter has more to do with the past.
“I definitely have a connection to it, though I don’t think it’s as close as my connection to (our dog) Koji,” he says, adding that even though his jar of cultures is brainless, it’s a living organism, so it feels like having a pet.
“I think there’s something very elemental or primordial about it,” he continues. “This is gonna sound way over the top, but I feel connected to, I guess, generations of people who throughout history have used this naturally occurring yeast to make bread. I don’t know, it feels like a very human thing to do.”
What to name your sourdough starter
If you’re looking for a creative name for your own sourdough starter, there are simply countless avenues to travel down. Some folks opt for standard names like Doug or Genesis, but most reference athletes, books, actors, singers and movies with a bread-based pun.
You could even look to a certain morning television program for inspiration, if you’d like. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
- Al Doughker
- Viktor Crumb
- Dough-a Lipa
- John or Jane Dough
- Crumbelina
- Bread Begley Jr.
- Dough Burrow
- Toast Malone
- Doughbi-Wan Kenobi
- Dough Boy Fresh
- Dough McStuffins
- Clint Yeastwood
- Doughly Parton
- Edgar Allan Dough
- Breadley Cooper
- Wheatney Houston
- Shaquille Dough’neal
- Doughnan O’Brien
- Teddy Doughsevelt
- Dwight Risenhower
- Leslie Doughdom Jr.
- Robert Doughny Jr.
- Vincent van Dough
- Marlon Brandough
- Breadie Prinze Jr.
- Angelina Doughlie
- Rye Romano
- Frida Kahldough
- D’Oh! (you have to say it like Homer Simpson every time)
