Can we talk about sourdough bread?  A few months ago, I watched a documentary on Netflix about Dan Buettner’s Secrets of the Blue Zones, revealing 12 habits that can add years to your life.  At 64 years of age, adding years to my life and my husband’s life sounds very appealing.  I found the documentary to be very interesting.  As you might expect, there is a lot of emphasis on eating better, getting exercise, and reducing stress, among other things.  The segment about the people from a mountainous area of Sardinia introduced me to homemade sourdough bread.  I love bread!  Could I too make sourdough bread?

Let me start off by saying, I know nothing about making any kind of bread.  I think I made a loaf of bread in home economics class in 1973, but I remember nothing about it and I have never made bread since.  These days, my “go to” to learn about how to do many things is YouTube.  My husband taught himself how to make quilts on YouTube, surely it can instruct me on how to make sourdough bread.

What I learned very quickly with my research on YouTube was that I had to create something called “a starter” and that I had to “feed” it.  What in the world?  And this process of getting the “starter” strong enough to make bread could take 5-10 days.  I was told to “be patient” if it takes longer.  I have to tell you, creating that starter almost kicked my butt. 

I began this process on January 7.  I followed my recipe, this many grams of water and this many grams of flour, stir, cover, let sit in a warm location, but not too warm, and repeat the process in 24 hours….  I thought I started off pretty good.  You know your starter is active if it has bubbles and it grows.  The instructions told me that the starter would be ready to bake with when it at least doubled in size.  The final test to see if it was ready was to take a small spoonful of the starter and drop it into a cup of water.  If it floats, it is ready.  Sounds easy enough right???   WRONG!!!

On day five of this process, I noticed my starter was not doing anything.. I didn’t see any bubbles like I had seen the previous day and it didn’t look very thick.  I learned that this is normal and not to panic.  But I didn’t know not to panic on day five.  I fed the starter and it began to have a good reaction again.  It was apparently hungry…

On day seven of the instructions, it indicated my starter should be ready to bake bread.  It wasn’t.  I gave it a few more days and it still wasn’t ready.  So, I started over.

This time I used organic whole wheat flour, instead of just unbleached all-purpose flour.  I also found a different recipe to follow to get this one going and get a first bake in.  I found a gal on YouTube who said that if your starter was slow, you could add a pinch of instant dry yeast to her recipe.  I printed off her recipe and was going to try it.  My new starter was bubbling and growing each day but it would not pass the “float” test. 

I am now on day 7 of my second attempt at this “starter” stuff and I am getting anxious and frustrated.  Is it ever going to be ready to bake with?  I made the decision that I was going to get out the new recipe and use the instant dry yeast and make some bread!!!

I followed the printed recipe and mixed the dough together.  The recipe said the dough would be very wet and that it was normal.  It was to sit overnight and then I would be able to proof the next morning and then bake.  When I got up the next morning, the dough had indeed risen but it was still very wet.  I started trying to work the dough to get it into a ball, but it was so wet that it was very difficult to do.  This was a no-knead recipe so I wasn’t too worried.  I did finally get it baked and it wasn’t terrible, but I know I can do better. 

After I sampled the bread. I went back and rewatched the video instructions on what I was supposed to do.  Well guess what, the written instructions were quite a bit different from what she did on the video.  How come the instructions don’t match what she is showing on her channel?  I threw her recipe away and found another person to follow.

I had enough incomplete starter left to keep working on it.  Finally on January 29, my starter floated.  I got my new recipe from Baker Betty and her written instructions matched exactly what she showed on her YouTube channel.  The next day I began preparing my starter and made my dough.  Today I did the final proofing and baked bread.  It was beautiful and it tasted great.

I did it.  I made sourdough bread.  Thank you, Baker Betty.  I can’t wait to try it again.