Want to know what I’m doing right now?
No?
Well, I’ll tell you anyway: I’m eating my breakfast, which consists of coffee and sourdough bread made by none other than…ME.
Yesterday was my day off from teaching, and my friend Emily let me come over to her house and soak up her breadmaking knowledge – not to mention that she gave me a cup of the bread starter that’s been in her family for decades.
Really.
Sourdough bread starter is just a mixture – a living mixture – of flour and water, and yeast and bacteria. Yummy. Once you get a good starter going, you can feed it every week or so, and keep it living for years. Emily remembers her mom making sourdough bread when she was a child from the same batch of starter she uses now. When Emily got married, her mom gave her some of her famous starter, and now Emily feeds her little starter pet and keeps it in her fridge. A few years ago, Emily’s mom’s house burned down, and Emily was able to give her back some of her original starter. And now, she has kindly shared it with me. I feel honored to be a part of such a rich breadmaking heritage…lovely…
Anyway, in addition to being a great breadmaker, Emily is also a great mom to her three-month-old, Evan. So, as you can imagine, I was in heaven yesterday: holding babies, talking books with Emily, who has an MA in Literature, and baking bread. Oh – and did I mention the coffee drinking?
My first bread loaves turned out tasting fabulous, but only looking semi-fabulous. You see, bread dough usually takes hours – and hours – to rise before you bake it, and we were on a bit of a tight schedule, so…
Next time, they’ll be a bit fatter. And that’ll make two of us.
