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Sunday, May 28, 2017

Return to Sourdough Making And This Blog


A friend gave me some sourdough starter as I was oogling her cookbook-worthy photos of bread. Many years ago, I toyed with making my own from scratch. Although it was a cool home experiment, my sourdough was more or less a miserable failure. I over proofed, the yeast wasn't strong enough and I didn't invest in the right equipment. My oven at the time was gas and only cooked from one corner. I looked back through my old blog posts and felt embarrassed about my first sourdough attempts.

I've been practicing and today I made my first decent loaf. It's not tartine style like my friend's, hell I barely have enough time to make bread at all. But I just wanted decent organic sourdough that I can stick in the toaster or grill cheese with.

I was up at 1.30am shaping the dough, returning it back in the refrigerator for a slow proof. At 6am I took it out to rise at room temperature and at 10am it went into the oven. After deferring breakfast for a bite of the fresh bread I can say the trouble was worth it. While I'm still learning on perfecting my loaf, this is a vast improvement from many years ago.

On another topic, I googled this blog and it no longer shows up in the search. I have neglected this blog over the years. I felt like I couldn't post unless it was something really worthy. But to heck with it. What happened to the good old days when blogs didn't have any agenda aside from an idle chat about random topics? My blog used to be like a silent friend who I share things with and it didn't matter that my photos weren't perfect or that no one really cares that I bought a pot plant.

The incentive to get the most shares and blog traffic wasn't such a thing back then and I liked those simpler days. I think I will keep the sentiment going in this blog.