365 True Things: 105/Bread

When I was in my twenties, I loved baking bread. I enjoyed the slow process, the physical work of kneading, and the aroma that filled the house as the dough transformed in the oven. I'd bake bread while studying: it provided enforced breaks from whatever textbook or research project I was working on.

Fast-forward twenty-odd years. Somehow, I came into possession of an automatic bread maker. I believe it was my mother's, and she had stopped using it. I used it a couple of times, but it was an early model and made big round loaves. Which to my mind just ain't right. A loaf of bread should be square, not cylindrical. I soon got rid of that bread maker, recycled it to a thrift store.

More recently, I decided to give a bread maker another try. A friend of mine has a Breville, and she said she used it a lot. It makes a rectangular loaf of high quality. I bought one and made a few very good loaves of bread. But for the past year or more, the machine has been languishing on the pantry floor.

Coming home from vacation—when all things are possible!—I decided to dust off the bread maker. My original intention was to try making some serious whole-grain bread full of seeds and yumminess, but I haven't found the right recipe yet. (And that may be something I have to bake in the old-fashioned way.) I did, however, find a recipe for sourdough starter.

And at the moment, my bread machine is well into the first rise of a Crusty Sourdough loaf. I took a picture, but really, there's nothing visually inspiring about a blob of dough. So I'm illustrating this post with a photo from Molokai—much more evocative.

Here's the recipe for the starter, which takes eight days to make:

1. Combine 1 tsp flour and 1 tsp water in a bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside at room temperature overnight.
2. Stir in 1 tsp flour and 1 tsp water. Cover and let sit overnight.
3. Stir in 2 tsp flour and 2 tsp water. Cover, let sit.
4. Stir in 4 Tb flour and 4 Tb water. Cover, let sit.
5. Stir in 8 Tb flour and 8 Tb water. Cover, let sit.
6. Stir in 3/4 cup flour and 3/4 cut water. Cover, let sit.
7. Take 1 cup of the starter (discarding the rest) and mix it with 1 cup flour and 1 cup water. Allow to rise at room temperature for 24 hours.
8. You are ready to make sourdough bread.

Or—my former favorite—sourdough buckwheat waffles! Keeping the starter alive will be my next trick, allowing more scrumptious yumminess, I hope.