1.1 Bread

I have long been fascinated by sourdough cooking - I successfully made my first starter (on the first try!) in 1974 and managed to keep it going for a few years before moves and inattention doomed it to oblivion. When I moved to Ohio in 2007, my interest was rekindled, especially after I discovered Reinhart’s Artisanal Bread at Home. His starter recipe took a couple of tries, but the use of “organic” flour and pineapple juice in the initial mix proved successful. That starter is now about 13 years old and going strong (I’ll talk about maintenance in the Bread section).

The second piece in by bread baking evolution was a result of my wife’s Christmas gift of Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson in 2021. This is a fascinating book, one which interweaves recipes with detailed explanations of the reason for each step and photographs of how the steps are performed. The recipes are fairly involved, and following them from the book involves a lot of page turning (NOT something I’d want to do with an ebook), but the results can be spectacular. Again, I will provide some simplified ideas to facilitate your efforts.