For the past week, I have been making homemade sourdough bread. It has become glaringly apparent why people no longer take the time to make bread from scratch: it’s a colossal pain in the ass. Why do it, then? Well, I’m not working now, and I’ve always la-la-loved homemade bread. I’ve also always been very intimidated by the thought of making it. All of those little quirks: the humidity messes with it, the rising is a big deal, you can totally over-knead the dough if you don’t know what you’re doing, blah blah blah.
I’ve had a recipe for homemade sourdough bread for probably 10 years, so I thought, what the hell. My mom used to make it when I was a kid, and the most vivid memory (aside from the crippling yumminess) I have of that time was that she finally stopped jacking with it because she would spend an ENTIRE day every weekend baking the shit. See, the sourdough is a unique animal: you begin with a “starter,” then feed it every so many days. Very mad scientist, right? Just kind of annoying, really.
Several days ago, I made the starter. It has to sit out for 8-12 hours (not in an airtight container, apparently; around midday, I found the lid had been blown off of the bowl and into the floor) , then you refrigerate it for 3-5 days, at which point you feed it, let it sit out for 8-12 hours, remove some of it to make a batch of bread, put it back in the fridge for another 3-5 days, and the whole shebang begins again. You can see where this could be taxing after a round or two.
Yesterday, I finally bake the first batch of this high-maintenance bitch. And let me say this: it was worth every second. That’s all we had for dinner, actually: homemade bread. I can’t wait to make some more this weekend.
