“If thou tastest a crust of bread, thou tastest all the stars and all the heavens.”
Robert Browning
My love of good bread is as much a part of me as my love for words. I’ve been baking bread, with various degrees of sucess, for almost 15 years now. Sometimes I break out the bread machine, less often I put my pizza stones to use and aim for the rustic, crusty look
Sourdough is to bread what wine is to grape. It takes an already great thing, and makes it a delicious mouthful. But in my nearly 15 years of breadmaking, achieving a good, tangy, stable sourdough has never been something I was able to achieve. I’ve tried grape starters and flour starters, but my east coast home never gave me anything with more than a memory of what I know as sourdough.
Last weekend I pulled out the big guns in my search for great sourdough and went shopping. Between the marvels of internet shopping and the USPS, today I had waiting in my mailbox a prepackaged mix from Sourdoughs International.
The jar and measuring cup are mine; the instruction book ad culture packet were in the envelope.
This is a proofing box. Basically a very low wattage lightbulb that generates just enough heat to keep the inside of this box warm, but not enough to melt the box or overheat the jar of starter. Ideally, it’s going to stay 85 degrees in that box for the next 24 hours.
Tomorrow we feed it and hope it starts to grow. With good luck, I’ll be on my way to the deliciousness that is sourdough by Turkey day.
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2 users responded in this post
Oh, that’s interesting. I’ve always wanted to try making bread that uses a starter, but just never had the means. Neat!
Good luck on your sourdough quest. I’m a complete disaster in the kitchen so if I tried making bread something would probably explode. I nearly set the kitchen on fire when I forgot about my boiling eggs which led to the smoke alarm going off and a kitchen full of smoke.
Happy Thanksgiving!