Adventures in Sourdough: Episode 1

Bless me bloggers for I have sinned: it has been 3 years since my last post.

My last post was on 12/28/19.  A post-Christmas lull...3 months before the Covid-19 pandemic shut everything down.  

Since that time:

• Lil' Man moved out of day care, is now a 1st grader, and I no longer have to pack lunches.
• He is also in his second year of Cub Scouts, and enjoying earning badges as a Tiger.
• I finished additional coursework at the local university that allowed me to get my Professional Geologist license to oversee work in Arkansas.
• I got recruited to help teach a field geology course the summer of 2020 during the pandemic, making me officially an adjunct instructor.
• I had a minor major episode of burnout at work after taking on too many projects due to turnover during the pandemic/Great Resignation...but we hired some really amazing folks which allowed me to spread the work around and move into a new role as head of the department.
• I started playing Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes on my phone, which is a total timesuck and I love it. (Leave a comment if you play & we can share Ally codes.)
• We have traveled to Fort Walton Beach, North Carolina (during Hurricane Florence), Playa del Carmen, Nashville, New Mexico, Miami, Winter Park (where Lil' Man skied for the 1st time), Austin, Wisconsin (where Covid finally caught up with us and we got sick mid-way through the trip...yet still hiked a mountain because we're bad@$$es like that), and most recently, took a cruise over the holiday break down to the Western Caribbean.

But blogging definitely took a back seat to parenting, swim lessons, homework, classes, scouting outings, and trying to regain a healthy balance between work, exercise, & home life.  Work has kinda owned my life the last few years.  I'm passionate about the work we do, and I believe we make a difference in the communities where our projects lie...but still: all work and no hobbies makes me SUPER boring.  I've still been cooking plenty, but not really experimenting. Just meal planning and making a lot of our favorite staples. And The Hubs is still homebrewing, but it's usually when I'm not at home, so I haven't taken the action of blogging about it. Maybe because that's mostly his passion, not mine.

In my annual review this year, I asked my boss (of 13 years) to nudge me to find/keep up with some extracurriculars.  And thankfully, his nudge was to restart blogging, rather than something crazy like CrossFit or joining the company volleyball team.  Probably because, after 13 years of working together, he knows what I'm more likely to actually stick with.

Simultaneously, a few weeks ago a coworker asked if I wanted some sourdough starter.  Bread making is something I've dabbled in before, but always with instant yeast or quick breads--never by maintaining a starter.  However...I'm a fan of things I can't easily kill, and carbs. So I said yes.

...and then promptly forgot about it in the office fridge for a week thanks to some snow days.

I finally stopped by the office on a weekend and brought it home. After starving in the fridge, the starter (which I've since named Mandough) was a sad shadow of itself, covered by a layer of hooch.  I fed it, let it hang out on the counter for a few hours and he started to bubble up.  

Mandough. (Rubber band to show growth after feeding. This is the way.)

And of course... I wanted to make bread, so I poured 150g off into a large bowl to make this basic sourdough recipe.

Ingredients:

150g starter

250g water

25g olive oil

500g AP flour

10g salt

I found the dough to be a bit tight/thick compared to the videos on that site, but I assume that was largely due to me being impatient and not waiting for "peak bubblyness" on the starter.  

I also forgot to score the top before baking....then remembered when I removed the lid after 20 minutes of baking and scored it then.  End result of loaf one?

Not terrible.  A fairly dense crumb, and the folding I did caused the bottom to be very tight/gummy & tough to cut through.  But flavor was very nice.  Perfect for toasting with some butter, and pairing with dipping oil.

Since I don't have the free time to bake on the daily, Mandough lives in the fridge, so that he only needs to be fed once a week (which means I bake once a week with the discard half).  That seems manageable.

So...here we are.  I have a new cooking/baking adventure...and a blog.  So might as well chronicle that adventure here.  And maybe that will help me stick with both things.