Day #23: Bread baking ‘fail’

Today I planned to try a new recipe for sandwich-style sourdough bread. I fed the sourdough starter as required, gave it a good four hours to bubble up, and then assembled the other few ingredients (flour, salt and water).

Well, then I lost focus, or interest, or energy for the idea, and decided to use the bread maker instead of following the recipe, which wouldn’t have had the dough in the oven until tomorrow. I added all the ingredients in the correct order, selected the French setting (because this allows longer rest times for the dough to rise), chose medium for a decently browned crust, and hit start.

Then I took a three-hour nap. The dogs woke me up early (for a Sunday morning, 7 a.m.), and I suppose with all the socializing yesterday at the wedding, on the heels of a hectic week, I was just exhausted. Today even started out rainy — the best kind of day for a nap — so I cozied up under a fleece blanket and slept well.

The bread was baked when I woke up, and the kitchen smelled like it. I imagined a still-warm slice slathered with butter and sprinkled with salt.

The bread, however, didn’t rise as it was supposed to. With a bread maker, even though the sourdough starter’s job is to make bread rise, there are not enough long pauses in the bread maker cycle for that to happen. You have to add yeast. And, of course, I didn’t.

I remembered, but then I forgot.

So a block of dense flattish bread is what came out. It was still tasty, warm, buttered and salted, but not exactly what I had intended it to be.

There are several metaphors and morals to this story — even I can see that! — but here’s what I’ll end with:

I made the bread.

It tastes good enough — better than good!

This time I did a quick workaround. Next time I will make it completely by hand, doing all the kneading and rests for rising myself.

That moment of preparing the first piece with butter and salt, and taking a bite, brought me my little slice of joy in the moment for the day.

That’s what I wanted to work on anyway: recognition of those moments. So my fail was actually mission accomplished!