Dinnercraft helps bring your (and our) protracted adolescence to an end. Our authors cover topics ranging from cooking and eating, to home and garden, to crafting and DiY, and all the rest of the things you find yourself caring about these days.
Motherless Sourdough: Part I
Baking bread is one of life’s little alchemys I am only now beginning to probe. Baguettes need steam, bagels are boiled and sourdough, as I once understood it, requires a mother, or a beast or bitch or some other so-called starter that must be carefully tended, kept alive and bubbling like Donovan’s Brain. Once again the internet is responsible for dispelling myths and disseminating Big Bang level revelations. According to Nancy, who heard it from this dude, sourdough is as easy as flour, water, yeast, salt, and that most elusive of ingredients, time.
Tonight I measured, mixed and kneaded in my lonely kitchen, while I drank red wine, watched The Holiday and minimized my pores with a honey clay face mask. In 18 short hours I will revisit my living dough and see about this business of bread-baking.
By Jove, it works. It took close to 21 hours, but in the end I produced a loaf with crunchy, chewy crust and a doughy, dense interior that is great with unsalted Danish butter and rubarb strawberry spread. I cannot belief I was able to make such magic with my own hands in my modest little kitchen in Mexico.