Requests pour in for free 177-year-old sourdough starter
Acclaimed ingredients reportedly traveled the Oregon Trail in 1847
For almost a quarter-century, Mary Buckingham has been the keeper of a special mailbox where breadmakers from around the world send requests for free sourdough starter that claims lineage to the historic Oregon Trail.
In a typical winter, she would field between 30 and 150 weekly requests at her home in Greeley, Colo.
But in January, a video about the starter and its ties to the Oregon Trail went viral on TikTok, causing “an unbelievable flood” of mail, Buckingham said. “This week, we have well over 1,000 requests coming in. It's insane.”
It's easy to see the allure of baking with such an illustrious artifact. The sourdough starter belonged to the late Carl Griffith, a native Oregonian who inherited the living heirloom when his parents died. The starter had been his family for many generations, reportedly traveling west with his ancestors from Missouri along the Oregon Trail in 1847, according to a brochure Griffith wrote in 1996.
Griffith, who was born in 1919, first learned to use the sourdough starter at age 10 on his family's homestead in southeastern Oregon.
In later years, he was known for sharing his dried starter with anyone who sent him a self-addressed and stamped envelope. It caught traction in the early internet forums of the 1990s, where the starter not only earned a reputation for its vitality but also built a virtual community of likeminded bakers who exchanged tricks of the trade.
“It's strong, it's stable. It raises bread very nicely, and it's everything you want in a starter,” said Buckingham, who was part of the original foodie-focused group on Usenet.
When Griffith died in 2000,
members of the forum set up The 1847 Oregon Trail Sourdough Preservation Society to keep both his legacy and sourdough starter alive. According to Buckingham, Griffith's remaining family wasn't interested in maintaining the starter or the project.
As of 2023, the society had mailed nearly 65,000 baggies of dried starter to bakers across the globe. The most common international destinations include Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany, Buckingham said, but
she's hard-pressed to recall countries besides China and Russia she hasn't mailed to.
“I even got a request from Ukraine in 2022 right before the attack (by Russian troops), some person in Kyiv,” Buckingham said.
Buckingham is just one volunteer in a nationwide network of people known as “Carl's friends” who continue to share his starter. She collects the mail and ensures each envelope is adequately filled out and stamped. Bucking