Nothing sobers a chef like breadmaking

The learning never ends

My best attempt so far. Pictures below are from the first to the most current tries at a loaf.

As a chefs we sometimes have a problem with patience. By sometimes I mean all the time. If someone is taking too long to do something, we may just take over and do it ourselves. Part of that is because we are against the clock all the time and part of it I think is because we are so hot.

We expect to get everything on the first try because it's food and we get it and it should be easy for us. There's nothing more humbling than making what you think will turn into something beautiful and having it instead be a huge fail. This is the sad reality of learning how to make sourdough at home.

When I was 20 years old, I worked as a pastry chef while I was taking a night time baking class at the college. It was a great year, full of cakes, cookies and different types of bread. During this class we created a starter which we would use for all the different types of bread we were going to make. We were told to feed our pets at home and bring some back for the next week so we could bake with it. I remember it getting so big that it took over the container it was living in and I had to moved into another one.

After the course was done, I was too busy to bake bread and had moved about 5 times making it very difficult to track my kitchen items. I never thought about that starter again.

When I would make focaccia, I used yeast. Any other time I baked bread it was always with dry or wet yeast, but never with a starter. I thought it was a lot of work for what I thought was a similar result using something else.

During the pandemic everyone was making sourdough and creating all sorts of baked goods in their kitchens to enjoy and some even to sell. I myself created a cookie business and sold it to friends and family, but never started making bread. Never got on the sourdough train.

I was at an event recently and was given a sourdough starter in a tiny jar. Looking at the jar I said to myself, this shouldn't be too hard to get back. It wasn't that long ago I was in the bake shop with the dough.

Really it was a long time ago. I was 22 and I'm now 36 and I hadn't worked in the bakeshop in years.

I have been reading and have been given tips by other home bakers and it has helped for sure. There is definitely an art to making great bread and I guess that's why it can come with the price tag.

Getting to understand dough again has been fun and a practice on patience. You become more in tune with your oven and what things should feel and smell like. I haven't made a large loaf yet and I'm not even close to mastering the technique at home, but I am getting there. I am having fun with a project and I'm having fun making mistakes and learning as though I did when I was young.

You're going to ask if I have any tips? Absolutely not. I am not the one to ask as I have conceited to the fact that I am not an expert on this subject. I do however have to say that making mistakes is okay and if you keep trying at something that you are not naturally good at you can get better. So i'm hoping I get better and I'm hoping to one day make a beautiful loaf. One as nice as the ones that they sell in stores, so I'll never have to buy one again. I'm not positive on the last part but one can dream.

Don't give up on the hard things. One day they might come easily