Need a quarantine cooking project? Bake some bread.

Photo by Irina Ba

Social distancing and stay-at-home orders have forced me to find new ways to stay active, engaged and well-nourished at home. I decided that I needed to have something to look forward to at home, something to get me walking around. That's why I'm taking up the ancient craft of making sourdough bread.

My mom baked bread often when we were kids. It was nothing fancy, just a standard white loaf made possible thanks to our bread maker. My sister and I routinely disobeyed my mom's orders to let it rest before cutting and caking our warm slices in butter. My mom insists her bread required no skill and wasn’t very good, but we didn't notice. The house smelled like a bakery for the day, and that made it taste better.

I’ve spent much of my adult life trying to recreate the best parts of my childhood, so it makes sense that I’ve been obsessed with bread and bread making since I left home. I so looked forward to the days my mom made bread and it’s something I can look forward to now.

What's so special about sourdough?

There’s bread and then there’s sourdough bread. Attempting to make sourdough bread is likened to striving for an olympic gold medal. I’ve read hundreds of comments on sourdough bread recipes and they all confirm the rumor that it's fickle and difficult, if not impossible, to get right the first (or second, or third) time. Still, I choose to believe the proficient bread makers of the world who say anyone can do it.

Photo by Tommaso Uril

All you need to make bread is flour, water, salt, yeast (to make the dough rise) and time. Sourdough is unique in that you need a form of wild yeast called a starter -- it’s what puts the “sour” in “sourdough”. Professional chefs recommend that you buy it online or get some from a friend or bakery that’s making good loaves, but given the recent social distancing orders, I decided to make my starter from scratch.

Making a starter is simple enough: mix together flour and water in a small jar, feed it daily with more flour and water, and after 6-10 days, you have a fermented dough that’s teeming with yeast and bacteria (the good kind). This now-mature starter can be used to make bread. (For a detailed explanation and how-to on making sourdough starter, check out this website that my culinary nutrition professor recommended. Or if you are completely turned off to the idea of making such a high-maintenance bread, there are plenty of easy bread recipes out there.)

After nine days, my starter looks ready for my first loaf of sourdough bread (see my timeline of photos below). It’s been a challenging process because it requires a lot of care, intuition and problem solving, but it's keeping me curious and active at home.

Stay tuned next week for my first loaf. In the mean time, I hope you all find something to look forward to!