YJL

I have been making my own bread for probably almost two years. The reason of why I wanted to make my own is because you can't choose what's in commercial breads. It is not a big deal to me if I didn't become lacto-vegetarian, now vegan. (It wasn't for health issue or I wanted a healthy diet.)

If you ever read the label behind the bread package, the ingredients list is like your weekly shopping list, they could be even longer. Some of them you probably not be able to pronounce them.

At the beginning, I was making Irish soda bread, which only needs flour, baking soda, water (or salt... I can't remember exactly), and buttermilk. I didn't have buttermilk, so I think I used milk plus vegetable oil at the time. I never got to make one right, the amounts of ingredients is very important and the temperature as well. I usually got a very dense bread.

Then, one day I remembered I had heard of sourdough starter from a cooking show. I began with a research about how to catch wild yeast. When you start this sourdough starter, you may feel like "I am not gonna to be able to make bread from this," because from what you read.

But believe me, I caught the wild yeast on my first try and their descendants are still in the container I keep them. You will read about how to feed them, one differs from another. But you will find a way for your own sourdough starter eventually.

Whoever has baked own breads would know there is only four ingredients you need to make a bread, that is flour, water, salt, and yeast.

Sourdough bread requires two more, time (patience) and love. I know the last one sounds pretty lame cliché, but it is true. You will develop the love for bread or for the sourdough starter or for the ones you make breads for.

You need to give it much longer time for dough to develop, to inhabit enough young yeast, so you will have better bread. A normal bread with packaged yeast only needs a few hours. Sourdough bread, in my opinion, needs a whole day.

There is also a different method of how you start making bread. Some just mix with flour and water to make a dough. I make sourdough sponge, I feel this way allows yeast to bloom and they will be distributed into a dough more evenly since they are more or less in liquid form.

I don't have a recipe for my bread. Once you have make a plenty of times, you just put it and feel if it is enough. I touch it, smell it, look at it, then I know if it is time to move on to next stage.



You will eat everything with your bread. In the morning, a cup of coffee with few slices of breads is great. Some vegetable salad with bread. A glass of wine with breads...



Or with jam you just made.

Then, you would realize that you should have started making more bread because you are eating the last slices.

Every time, you will make bigger and bigger dough because you remember how soon they were gone, but they disappear even faster and faster.

The most exciting part of making bread for me is when you send your bread into oven, they are little. Then you hear the buzz, you open the oven door, you see a big bread.

You will tell yourself, let it rest to cool down. Then you convince yourself, I can just slice it to help it, it will cool down much faster. But the point behind that is you can have a few slices by yourself.