A winter of bread
Sixteen Saturdays, sixteen loaves. From a flat disc the birds refused to the best bread I have made.
This winter I baked a loaf of sourdough bread every Saturday, sixteen loaves in all. The first was a flat, dense disc that the birds would not eat. The sixteenth was the best bread I have ever made. Here is everything that happened in between.
The starter
Sourdough starts with a starter: flour and water, left to catch wild yeasts and bacteria from the air and the flour. Mine took nine days to wake up. I fed it every morning and watched it do nothing, then a little, then suddenly double in four hours.
