I started baking bread about 18 months ago. First, I took a yeast bread class. It was an all-day affair at this community: Baking Breads - The Ploughshare Institute (sustainlife.org). I loved the class. I made my own yeast bread for about a year. I bought buckets and buckets of wheatberries, and I bought my own kitchen grain mill and started baking with homeground flour!
Meanwhile, even before I took the class, I had a yearning to make sourdough. I bought a book. I grew my own starter from scratch. I watched youtube videos. Something wasn't right. A friend at work told me about a neighbor who gave classes. In May this year, I signed up! Kirsten was a fantastic teacher! I have been successfully baking and growing the sourdough starter she gave me for a few months now.
I bake once a week. It's an all-day affair. BUT it doesn't take hours! It's a few less-than-15-minute tasks over the course of the day. Many of the tasks are under a minute! All the tasks are easy to fit into a day you spend mostly at home. As I get better, it is getting easier to fit into even days that are more hectic.
It's traditional to name your sourdough starter. Kirsten joked and said, "maybe if you name it, you won't kill it!" I laughed. But the reason I name mine is different. I love fresh bread. I love it with butter. I love it grilled with butter and dolloped with honey. I love it in French toast on the last day before it goes moldy. But my love of bread is only the path through which I found another love. I love making bread.
Making bread makes me incredibly mindful about my food. There is something about the preparation of food that changes your relationship with it. The prep works makes you more grateful. Gratefulness is something I'm working on!
I noticed this mindfulness even back when I was making yeast bread. I would often pray while I kneaded. Prayers of gratefulness; prayers for family members; prayers for myself; prayers for my husband; even prayers for our dogs (we recently brought one through a heartworm treatment.) There is less time for praying while making sourdough bread, but that hasn't stopped me!
One dear cousin comes to mind almost every time I pray. She has lost 2 children 7 years apart in separate car accidents. I miss both those young people. They were lights in a dark world. I am sorry to see their lights extinguished. Their names were ShyAnn and Ryan.
When it was time to name my sourdough starter, the name for my starter came to me almost immediately! My starter is fed with 1/10 rye flour and 9/10 whole wheat flour. The name RyeAnn sprang into my head!
To be clear, I'm not superstitious; it's not as though I think there is a mystical connection or anything like that! But now, I have a built-in reminder - to be mindful when I bake. It turns my baking day into a labor of love every time!
Note: I have 2 main starters. I alternate weeks with them. All 3 jars are stored perpetually in the fridge except when I bring them out the night before baking day to pre-feed them. The name "discard" is misleading. This is really a "reservoir of live starter". I can replenish from it or share it with others any time. I regularly use it for pancakes on Pancake Sunday. The reason I keep it separate from RyeAnn 1 and RyeAnn 2 is that the 2 named starters are measured as precisely as possible every week before I put them back in the fridge - hence the rubber bands.
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