I love sourdough bread.
That’s how I got into this mess.
A whole bunch of years ago, my dear wife began making sourdough bread
using a starter that was fed with sugar, water, and instant potato flakes. It was soooooo good! The aroma of bread baking – then cooling on
the countertop – was just the best thing ever.
Well, until you sliced a hot loaf, so hot you could barely hold the top
while sawing with the knife; so soft you couldn’t really get a normal-sized
slice. So sad, those big thick steaming
slices of bread with butter slowly melting on top.
We lived in a pretty small house at the time. It was an old structure transformed from a
little country store into a home and moved by placing two logs under it and
dragging it with a tractor to a new spot.
All this happened before I saw it, but the stories lingered around
it. It belonged to my in-laws, who
graciously allowed us to live in it when we were first married. We heated with a wood stove and opened the
windows wide in the summer to slow the onslaught of heatstroke.
Now, Sherita, my wife, had to endure months of nausea every
time a child was on the way. This precluded
much time spent in the kitchen. As the cooking
assignment fell more to me, our first child and I endured a lot of “spaghetti-O’s”
and similar delicacies. By the time we
were expecting our third, I determined to be a better cook, and that has made a
big difference over the years.
One of the things I missed was the sourdough bread. Taking the bull by the horns, I tracked down
a starter. If memory serves, a nice lady
was willing to leave a jar of it on the trunk of her car for me one day. Her good directions led me successfully to
the property – and the starter. I took
it home and began to feed it, thinking of the terrific bread we would enjoy. MMMMM-mmmmm!
Sadly, my early efforts, though tasty, were less than what I
desired. They were much better than canned
ravioli, but that leaves the bar pretty low.
To make a long story well, long, it took several years of making bread
to achieve some kind of repeatable result that was worth repeating.
I’m an accountant by training and a man by the miracle of
genetics, so linear thinking is how I roll.
After many flatter-than-expected loaves, loaves without the soft texture
sourdough can give, and loaves with other deficiencies, I began to eliminate
variables in the recipe. The recipe I
started with was probably written on and index card (if we could afford such a
luxury back then). Today, when I share
my recipe, it requires about eight pages to print out.
With years (yep, you read that right – years) of trial an
error I began to get a result I could be proud of. The time could have been shortened if I had
thought to ask others for advice. Two
ladies, a mother and daughter, moved to Mount Airy from California and opened a
bakery. I spent some time with them and
got some good ideas in the process. So,
a well-deserved nod to Beverly and Randi Heddick! Thanks, you guys!
Sourdough bread here in North Carolina has a different taste
than the famous San Francisco sourdough.
(More on that in another post, if I ever get around to it.) Sourdough here is soft (oh, so soft), has a
milder taste, is a little sweet instead of sour. The same amount of flour that makes two
loaves of yeast bread makes three loaves of sourdough. With care, the texture is close-grained (a
term from my woodworking activities – I don’t know if it means anything when
you’re talking about bread) but still supports the structure of the bread.
That starter I received so long ago, retrieved from the
trunk lid of a car of someone I didn’t even know, has served me well for these
thirty years or so. This blog is the result of my kids’ desires to give me
another venue to spread the gospel of sourdough bread. If you’re still reading, thanks. You must be a special soul. My next post will actually contain the
recipe. The next post will contain my
recipe. I hope you’ll find it
worthwhile.
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