Ode to Sourdough

My spouse and I have been off the bread baking wagon for quite some time.  We had been making various iterations of the bread Jim Lahey, of the Sullivan Street Bakery, developed and Mark Bittman brought to the rest of the world.  It is a very easy bread that has lots of loft, a very good chewy crust, and great texture.  The book ‘Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day’ furthered the technique to allow for making a batter over the weekend, and then leaving it in your refrigerator in a covered container, allowing you to cut off a piece of the dough and make a bread of any size you choose at any time the following week.  Voila!

A year and a half ago we discovered a bread bonanza in the form of a local woman running what she calls an artisanal micro-bakery out of her home.  She built a wood fired outdoor brick oven and she makes a handful of delicious breads off and on.  At that point we stopped making bread all together, despite having baked bread for over 30 years. 

The bread that my husband made before all this ease of bread making took hold was a sourdough bread that was moist and had a hint of sourness in the background.  It was not the kind of sour that you get in a San Francisco sourdough, but it was close.  That starter was not longer resuscitatable, I am sad to report, but it had retained a good amount of sourness.  He borrowed some active but not altogether sour started from a generous friend and got back in the business of baking bread this past week.  Delicious outcome, and a good reminder that sometimes we forget our roots, and they had some very appealing aspects we shouldn’t let go of.