Day 16 of 21
A couple of weeks ago, my son and I embarked on lessons in baking, and I am loving it. He seems to love it too. He has been asking about cooking more things (he can cook some basic things), and I told him I wish someone had taught me bread when I was younger and that I would teach him bread next. He loved this idea, and we have been having fun ever since.
We have made some batches of french bread, some sandwich rolls, and we started a sough dough starter–only we had troubles with. I had been gifted a sough dough culture from San Francisco and tried to get a starter going with it. I loved this gift so much because the first time I ever had chowder in a sourdough bowl was in San Francisco for an academic conference. We were out for lunch, and I had originally bought a hot dog from a street vendor, but a seagull stole it right out of my hand. I was both grumpy and in awe of the creature. It just ate the hot dog whole! I didn’t go back for another hot dog and bought soup in a sourdough bowl from a different street vendor, and it was the best ever to me.
You can see why I really needed that sourdough culture to work. First, it was a gift from a dear friend, and second, it was like the universe was giving me my first sourdough experience again. I followed the directions on the packet exactly, but it was too dry. I posted to Facebook for help and got some suggestions. Mostly, people offered recipes to start again, but others pointed out that it was too dry but that the cultures can be pretty resilient and to keep trying with it.
So I did, but I was reminded of reading Michael Pollan years ago when he wrote about his trouble overthinking his sourdough starter. Of course, I would be the same way. I overthink everything.
But it lived! I can’t even begin to tell you how happy I was! I hollered from the basement: “It’s alive!” in my best Dr. Frankenstein voice
This morning, we made our first breakfast rolls from the sourdough starter, and I am over the moon that my son and I are learning how to do this together.
