For the month of March, I decided to make baking bread as my new craft to explore. I was trying to decide between soap making and bread baking, two very helpful post-apocalyptic skills, because I knew I am visiting colonial Williamsburg this month. Bread won because it doesn’t need me to buy anything else. I’ve done other baking (though I enjoy watching baking shows more than actually doing it). My husband already has bread-baking as a hobby. He is teaching my son how to make bread, and also got a bread-making machine. He had a sourdough starter kit too.
If I get one loaf this month that I enjoy eating, I’ll count it a success.
I started on the sourdough…it seems very complicated to maintain, like a little dough tamagotchi. It’s been a week of fussing and I think I killed it. Yes. It is now crossed over to mold. A very fine line there.
I grabbed a book from the library, King Arthur Baking Company Baking school. That will go through the basics, right? I flipped to the basic loaf page and was immediately intimidated. Ingredients were by weight, not volume like I am used to. They had an ingredient I’d never heard of (later I found my husband had not heard of it either). I had to take a deep breath. Slow my roll. Or rolls. I went to my husband and we decided to try out something in the breadmaking machine. I still had to weigh ingredients, which I find a bit intimidating (how can I be accurate when I try to pour a little and an avalanche happens?). But the bread machine is cool! Throw in the ingredients, push a few buttons, and bread! Strangely shaped and sunken bread, but fully baked and good tasting.
Books I will read:
- Let’s Bake Bread! A family Cookbook to Foster Learning, Curiosity and Skill Building in Your Kids by Bonnie Ohara
- Everyday Bread: 100 recipes for Baking Bread on Your Schedule by America’s Test Kitchen
- Basics With Babish by Andrew Rea
- Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg
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