Right after Christmas, I created my first sourdough starter. I named it Blunderbore and vowed to help it grow.
Like other deities of creation, I bestowed gifts upon young Blunderbore: filtered water, wheat and all-purpose flour and, of course, my undivided attention.
All was well for many days.
This week, Blunderbore begat. And I named this new creature: Sourdough Bread.
When my now-mature starter offered Sourdough as a sacrifice, to thank me for all the blessings I had given and to request good fortune in the future, I gratefully accepted.
Three cats and a dog currently reside in our home. This is the smallest my brood has been since, gosh, 2003? I like to have at least half a dozen kitties hanging around and now that we’ve purchased a larger house, there’s plenty of room for more.
While waiting for additional felines to appear, I decided to create new life. Over the Christmas holiday, I birthed… a sourdough starter.
Although I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, I waited until things had calmed down. The past year has been focused on work and settling in; tending to a starter just wasn’t in the stars. I have time now, though.
Three days in, Blunderbore doubled in size.
Yes, I named my starter. And why not? For the foreseeable future, I’ll be tending to his needs every day. If I’m going to spend that much time and effort caring for a living organism, I might as well name him.
A few hours ago, I gave Blunderbore his first feeding, new accomodations and tucked him in for the night. If all goes well — and fingers crossed it does — I’ll be making sourdough bread before 2018 is even two weeks old.
I’m not a fan of reality television. I don’t like watching shows that make untalented people famous. I don’t like shows that focus on humiliation. And I really don’t like shows that use meanness to “create drama.”
This last practice seems to be a staple on cooking competition shows. Although I’ve learned a lot about ingredients and techniques from watching “Chopped” and “Top Chef,” I simply can’t stand the cruel judges or the sniping between the “chef-testants.”
The one exception? “The Great British Baking Show” on PBS. After watching the first episode, I immediately began binging on the rest. Not only does this charming program highlight the contestants’ skills, it features people who are supportive of each other. And when each episode ends, I head into the pantry, examine the ingredients on the shelves and start planning what I’m going to make next.
Last week, the Brown Eyed Baker posted a blog entry about her kitchen conquests. Since she and I share a similar cooking style — we’re both huge fans of America’s Test Kitchen — I decided to follow her example and make a list of the 100 recipes I want to master. They are:
Yeast Goodies:
Apple cider doughnuts
Beignets
Breadsticks (both crunchy and chewy)
Challah
Ciabatta
Focaccia
Glazed chocolate cake doughnut holes
Honey wheat dinner rolls
Kaiser rolls
Parker House Rolls
Parmesan and garlic butter pull-apart bread
Sourdough bread from homemade starter
Thin-crust pizza
Quick Breads:
British scones
Buttermilk biscuits Chocolate banana bread
Churros
Irish soda bread
Shortbread
Tart cherry and toasted almond scones
Cookies/Bars:
Biscotti
Hot chocolate thumbprint cookies
Mexican wedding cookies
Who wants to come over and taste my treats? If no one volunteers, M will be forced to be my guinea pig (not that he minds). I’m also open to suggestions of other recipes to try. Dishes that serve two people are always preferred.
In the documentary series, “Cooked,” author Michael Pollan talked about how cooking shows have become a hugely popular form of entertainment even though fewer people are spending time in the kitchen making food for themselves. He attributed the interest in watching people cook to family recollections implanted in childhood, an experience that created a sense of tradition and nostalgia.
“You know there are lots of things in modern life we no longer do for ourselves, that we’ve outsourced to corporations, and we don’t watch TV about it,” Pollan said. “Cooking is different. There’s something that draws us to that hearth. And I think some of it has to do with the fact that we all have powerful memories of being cooked for by our moms, by our dads, by our grandparents.”
I seem to be an outlier of his theory. I love to cook. I cook for my husband every day. But I certainly didn’t learn to love cooking — or food — in my childhood home.
I come from a Midwestern working-class family, one that pretty much survived on convenience foods. Typical dinners were hot dogs and Kraft dinner, fish sticks and canned veg or Hamburger Helper. Once in a while, there would be a pot roast or a meal cooked on the grill in the back yard. We couldn’t afford to eat out much so we never got hooked on fast food; going to McDonalds for a birthday party was a rare treat.
Every lunch box was filled with a sandwich (usually made with cheap white bread), a piece of fruit and some sort of salty or sweet snack. Every dinner was quickly assembled from a box or a can, and made on the stove top. My brother and I drank gallons of Kool-Aid and sweet iced tea and milk, but pop was a luxury that only Grandma provided on weekends.
Needless to say, in my family, there were few “traditional” recipes handed down from generation to generation, and certainly none that harkened back to any particular culture. Our meals rarely featured any ethnic cuisines or influences; hell, I didn’t even try Chinese food until I went away to college.
And so, I cook for other reasons:
Health: Cooking is healthier than eating out because I know exactly what’s going into the food I make. For example, my favorite recipe for sandwich bread contains flour, salt, milk, unsalted butter, honey and yeast. The most popular brand of sandwich bread sold in grocery stores contains: flour, sugar, wheat gluten, yeast, fiber, calcium sulfate, salt, calcium carbonate, soybean oil, cultured wheat flour, vinegar, dough conditioners (including one or more of the following: sodium stearoyl lactylate, calcium stearoyl lactylate, monoglycerides and/or diglycerides, calcium peroxide, calcium iodate, datem, ethoxylated mono and diglycerides, azodicarbonamide, enzymes), guar gum, soy flour, ammonium sulfate, monocalcium phosphate, soy lecithin, niacin, iron (ferrous sulfate), thiamine hydrochloride, riboflavin and folic acid. Americans also consume a great deal of excess salt and sugar from eating processed food products; when you cook at home, you decide how much of each ingredient to use.
Experimentation: Think back to those rainy afternoons at home with a stack of blank pages and a box of crayons. Or perhaps you were given a block of molding clay in art class and told to go wild. As children, we’re given the opportunity to play, to create, to mess up and start over again. Cooking is the same for me. Each new recipe is a chance to make a masterpiece — or to learn from a dish that didn’t turn out quite right. The more I cook, the more I understand and over time, I’ve gained the skills needed to elevate some of those “not so great” recipes into food that’s more than just edible.
Kitchen witchery: There’s something magical about cooking and baking. You take quality ingredients from all parts of the planet, combine them skillfully, add heat or cold or motion — and ta da! A dish appears. Watching this transformation occur is such fun. Plus, the “trick” tastes divine and it disappears!
Love: I’ve never worked in the food industry nor am I a trained chef. For me, cooking is an act of love. When I create meals, I’m showing people how much I care. I fill the house with warm, delectable scents and fill the body with food that both nourishes and satisfies. When circumstance allows, cooking at home leads to good conversations and great meals.
Hmm… Perhaps Pollan was right about that memory thing after all.
Cake layers are baking. Frosting’s in the fridge. In a couple of hours, I shall assemble the two and make a blackout cake to rival anything found at the local bakery. Once topped with candles, I shall make my wish, extinguish the flames and celebrate turning 42 by eating the chocolate-y creation.
A dear friend of mine called not long after midnight to wish me a happy birthday. He does this every year because he is both thoughtful and cognizant of the fact that I’m actually awake at that hour. When I mentioned my plans to bake a birthday cake, he was a bit taken aback. However, as I explained to him, baking is a joy for me. Creating something delicious out of ordinary ingredients is the perfect way to start a new year.
As any artist or writer, baker or filmmaker, musician or mother can tell you, the process of creation is both difficult and magical. Yet having the freedom to do so, in any form, is not something I take for granted. It is that freedom I bear in my mind as I write these words. It is that freedom I recall when I see stories about journalists being imprisoned and killed for doing their jobs. Or when I read about the planned executions of poets. Or when I hear about musicians, and their fans, fleeing gunfire.
Why anyone would want to halt the beauty of creation is beyond me. But as I begin another anniversary of existence on this planet, I vow to spend more time creating, and less time stressing out about those who are only able to destroy that which they do not understand.
–Quote by Dhani Jones. Photo by Vladvvm. Used with permission.