It's the Bread Life for Me

Hello Everybody! Sorry for the delay on this blog, I know I said it would come out a while ago but I ran into some complications. I had an entire blog that was near completion and the more I kept reading it the more I realized it was crammed together. My thoughts were jumbled about and I was trying to cover WAY too much. Over the past month I have been a bit of a mess, so it's no wonder that when I tried to write it came out just like that... a mess.  I picked my brain trying to simplify and edit it, until I just decided that one blog needs to go away and a new blog needs to come out. Funny, because that is how the past month has been for me. Out with the old and in with the new! A new adventure and a clean slate.  Why is growth so painful sometimes? Somedays I handle it like a good trooper and think positively, and other days I want to scream and yell... and break chairs and maybe a door too (did any of these things happen? Maybe, maybe not 😳). I realized that going through life takes a village. I'm sure I will forget this many more times and then come to the realization again and again... because I am human... and, no offense, but we humans can be pretty dumb. This past month has been a humbling one. I have felt dumb, foolish, and confused more than a few times.  Time keeps on ticking though... for good or bad, I am not quite sure. I believe for good.

 I was talking to someone who is very near and dear to my heart about this blog and how I was frustrated about my scatter brain.  I told her I have a passion for health, nutrition, and natural living and that I wanted to spread the word but I don't know where to start or what to say! That was when she brought up some infamous bread catastrophes of mine. Her mother (my aunt) has been an inspiration for me when it comes to cooking and bread making. I was constantly seeking her counsel on my many frustrations. We talked and laughed about how it really does take a village to do things in life, including making bread. I know it seems silly for me to relate making bread to life, but hear me out.

 When I decided that I was going to make bread, I originally started with yeasted bread (as in with yeast in a jar that you buy from the store). I was pretty intimidated by yeast...not sure why. Regardless, I started with a "mock" sourdough recipe because I had a vision of how I wanted my bread to look. (Here are my mock sourdough loaves that still turned out beautifully. I found this recipe from a book I received from my sister-in-law called "Artisan in Five Minutes a Day" by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoё François. By the way these did NOT take anywhere near 5 minutes. 😉)

Do you know the age old pictures of family and extended family all sitting outside around a big table? A woman in a peasant-style dress and apron, and men in overalls tired but happy from working all day outside? Right there in the middle of the table is a big basket with several rich loaves of beautiful bread (boules, batards, and baguettes). A big hearty salad and other delicious food spread out on the large wooden table.  The people are talking and smiling, enjoying the evening sun, a warm gentle wind, and each others company. (For the life of me I could not find the image I am writing of. It could have been a famous piece of art, out of a children's book, or I may have just made it up in my own mind. I tried to search for over an hour and no luck.) The first image is by Renoir: "Luncheon of the Boating Party". I like the expressions of the people all together (although no bread). However, the second image is close to the era I was imagining by Jan Steen: "Couple Dance" from 1663. (Do you see the bread?)

I have always been told that I am a dreamer or that I can't do "all the things". This very well may be true; however, that certainly won't stop me from trying.  I am not going to lie that when I started making sourdough bread (making your own yeast and letting the bread ferment for sometimes days results in true sourdough), I had visions in my head of my children standing on their little wooden stools next to me, of them helping to kneed the dough, of me pulling out lovely scored boules from the oven and serving it with dinner, of family and friends gathered around having a grand old time. (Insert Lauren is a weirdo joke here.) In reality, the beginning of this journey in making true sourdough bread started off quite different and massively frustrating. I literally almost threw in the towel many times.  I have been at it for over a year and a half consistently and I still mess up quite often. Starting to see how it relates to life? 😏

The very first step of making this bread is getting your starter up and bubbling (don't worry I will write a blog in the future that will list instructions and pictures so you can try making your own as well). I read cookbooks, blogs, watched documentaries, and asked around on how to do this. "Normally" a starter should take anywhere from 3-5 days to get alive and bubbling, depending on weather and humidity... well, mine took 9 days.  Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a patient person. On day 6, I was about to say FORGET IT! However my husband persuaded me to keep at it, so reluctantly I did.  On day 9, I started to see the bubbling and rising of my starter (which means that it had absorbed healthy bacteria and that the bacteria is literally eating the flour and helping to break it down... ahhh good ol' fermentation!) I thought that after these long 9 days of waiting the rest would be a walk in the park! Oh boy was I wrong, I was only getting started.

<--- Here are my first sourdough loaves... yes, they are also shown in my first blog. I could probably beat someone in the head with these and knock them out with how hard they were... they had about as much rise in them as some balloons my toddlers tried to blow up by themselves, so pretty much zilch.  I had my little sourdough book (I started with "flour, water, salt, yeast" it had good ratings and I liked the picture on the front.. 😳) I have NO idea where I went wrong, because there was so much wrong! I made the dough, didn't let it ferment long enough, tried to shape the loaves... which were like little pancakes.  I thought they would rise in the oven for "oven spring," so I didn't think the flatness was that big of deal... it was. I preheated my oven and then stuck a glass container on a lower rack so that I would be able to pour cool water into it to steam my oven to help keep the inside of my bread nice and moist. Did you catch the problem with what I just wrote there? I put a GLASS container (oven safe so I thought I was good) to pour water in to steam my oven, and I poured cool water in it.  Anyone who knows a bit about baking is probably laughing at me right now.  For those of you who don't know, let me go into a bit more detail.  I had preheated my oven to 450 degrees with the glass container on the lower shelf. I then had a pizza stone on the upper shelf for my loaves to go on.  I put my pathetic flat loaves on the stone and then went to the sink to get water to pour into the container (the idea is when you put the water in a hot container it creates steam and helps your loaves from getting as hard as rocks even though the hard as rock thing still happened) however with glass, the massive difference in temperatures also causes something else to happen...... IT EXPLODED!!!!! Glass burst and shattered all over the bottom of my oven and at the same time flew out of the 450 degree oven at me. I almost pooped my pants! Now envision a half crazed Lauren running around thinking: "oh CRAP! What do I do, what do I do?" I put so much time into making the starter and the dough not to mention what a waste of flour 'what do I do'!? I think a pity party was in order, but first I got out tongs and grabbed the big pieces of glass, vacuumed the floor, and just let the loaves cook until they were done. The stone blocked the glass from getting in the loaves... at least I think it did (we still ate them later and I'm alive so...😳).  I then go to my husband completed defeated and with a little bursted bread bubble and say: "Whelp, I completely ruined the bread and also destroyed my most used oven dish." "Apparently some people just cannot bake."

After I told my husband the story he just started chuckling at me which infuriated me further and then made fun of me for giving up so quickly.  Pretty sure his response was something like "did you think they would come out perfect on your first try?" The answer to that is Yes, yes I did.

Here are some more of my beginning loaves and before you think "wow those are pretty good"... I messed them up far more often than I succeeded and I still do to this day. For example, these are 2 loaves out of 6... and there is a reason the other ones aren't in this picture. Here is one last story for you (even though I have too many to count about my bread humiliation).

Upwards in this blog I talk briefly about a "starter" which is also called wild-caught yeast.  The starter is what makes the bread rise. Before you make your dough, you make what is called "leaven," or as I like to call it, kind of a "pre-dough." This is where you take some of your starter (that is alive and bubbly) and mix it with a larger amount of flour and water; you then allow this to ferment and wait until it doubles in size.  Once the leaven doubles in size, you are ready to make your dough!  Considering your starter is a living thing full of bacteria and you have to feed it to keep it alive, it is kind of like a pet if you ask me.  My starter I named "Kevin the leaven" (that's another silly story). Because you have to feed your starter everyday, it becomes a task can get a bit tedious.  You can however put the starter in the fridge, which I like to call "putting it in time out." However, my aunt, who is one of the people who inspired me to make bread, says to "Put it to sleep!" This past year we undertook a huge house project and had to move out for a few months so that we could turn our weird crawl space into a walkout basement.  Therefore I had to bring Kevin with me! Well I am sad to say that I killed Kevin... twice, I am now on Kevin 3.0.😳  After the second killing of Kevin, I decided that I didn't want to wait to make a new one from scratch and asked my Aunt who had a starter that is YEARS old if I could have a bit. (In the sourdough world, a mature starter is as good as gold). She gave me a bit of hers so that all I had to do was feed a couple tablespoons of her starter with flour and water and VOILA Kevin 3.0 was born and stronger than ever due to the maturity of my aunt's starter. I am just going to bounce back to the top of this blog and say again how it takes a village and a good support system and that I am beyond thankful for mine. (Pictured here is Kevin 2.0 happy and bubbling, R.I.P)

That leads me to the end of this blog...  (To anyone who is wondering about Kevin 3.0, he is still alive and bubbling, he helps me to bake beautiful loaves of bread, and after I feed him he explodes with delight. Every now and then I do put him in time out so he can chill 😜 okay thats enough puns).

This blog has only been a brief insight of my sourdough bread baking adventures over the past year and a half. It has been an immense challenge for me some days. I have made it a discipline so that my family and I can have the health benefits of homemade bread, which are many.  I feel strongly about cooking things from scratch when I can. It brings me joy and in all honesty, the foods that the FDA pass as "healthy" aren't healthy.  I think it is a shame that we can't trust the foods we buy at the store and that they are making us sick in too many ways to count. At the end of the day, maybe I should be thanking them because I have found a new passion and I am continually learning! I love the challenge of competing with myself and am always trying to be a healthier and happier Lauren. If talking a bit about personal silly stories or my own struggle gets even one person to try making ANYTHING from scratch, then this blog has done it's purpose. I have had people ask me about my pictures of bread on social media and decided that I felt compassionate about sharing my journey.  On top of all that, passing down knowledge to my children is just priceless. In the process, we are making traditions that bring our family even closer together. 

Lastly, I just want to mention some of the benefits of sourdough bread.  The dough is fermented because the starter collects bacteria from the air and it breaks down the flour; this makes it easier for us to absorb the nutrients and to digest the gluten. For the many people who suffer from "gluten intolerance," this is a big win for you! Sourdough bread has a lower glycemic index than "normal" bread, so it is also a better option for people with diabetes or similar illnesses. If you'd like to learn a bit more, type into google the benefits of fermented foods. (All fermented foods have tremendous benefits.) More than anything, making this bread has been a challenge that has filled with me gratitude.  There are so many more stories I could tell you, but I'm sure that you are about done hearing about bread for now.  "Food is not just fuel. Food is about family, food is about community, food is about identity. And we nourish all those things when we eat well." -Michael Pollan

*Final picture is of a sourdough pizza; same exact recipe as the loaves, just a bit shorter because I don't have to shape a loaf and I roll it out. I usually do about 5-8 of these at a time when I can and then just throw them in the freezer so they are all ready to go when my family and I would like a good homemade pizza. (sourdough pizza dough, homemade sauce, Italian cheese blend, sautéed onions and mushrooms, bacon, kale, and sprinkled feta cheese)😛