I’ve made bread before, many times – who doesn’t like home made bread? But in those cases I was following a recipe, without understanding how bread works. I knew yeast made bubbles, but was pretty vague on the kneading and resting part.

Making sourdough bread was the result of my wish to learn more about the process of bread making. I have been reading a book called ‘The Bread Baker’s Apprentice’, from which I’ve learned about yeast, enzymes, gluten, bacteria, and the history of bread.

I like to bake, but in some ways the end product is not why I bake. In fact, quite often I give away the end product (to the annoyance of my wife). What intrigues me is learning about the process involved, the techniques, the ingredients. By adjusting the ratio of flour, water, yeast and salt, you can make many different types of bread. By sticking the dough in the fridge overnight, you allow time for enzymes to work on he flour, developing a great depth of taste. For something like bread, there is science behind the taste.

I approach many things I learn the same way – as a puzzle to be solved, or a process to be mastered. For example I spent several years doing web development. There was almost always an optimum way to write a piece of code, or to structure data. I enjoyed finding those out, and was not terribly concerned with the way the sites looked. That would be web design, which I consider art, and where there is no ‘right’ answer, though plenty of wrong ones.

Some select words from my top five strengths.

Today we were asked to go over the descriptions of our top five strengths, and select words or phrases that resonate with us. I took the resulting list of words and put it in Wordle.

Sourdough Bread

Why am I so proud of this? Well, as it says in the caption, this is sourdough bread, my favourite. And it was baked by me, something I enjoy. But the pride comes in with the starter.

Sourdough breads are made using a starter, which contains wild yeast and bacteria, both of which help produce the sour tang that gives sourdough its name. You can buy starter, or get some from someone. It’s propagated by carefully feeding it flour and water. Or you can make your own.

What is special in this case is that I made the starter myself, after reading the book The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. Unbleached flour will naturally have traces of wild yeast and lactobacillus culture. Following the directions in the book, I mixed flour and water, and waited. Every few days, I discarded half of the flour-water mixture, and added some fresh flour and water. Gradually the yeast and lactobacillus will start to grow, causing some bubbling. When you reach the point where the starter will double in size in a few hours, it’s ready to use in bread.

The result was an incredibly tasty bread, the best I’ve ever had. Having started from nothing but flour and water and ending up with delicious bread was very satisfying.

Edit – 6 Oct.

This is a great idea. Turns scheduling around, makes it the way it should be: http://lifehacker.com/5657222/schedule-your-work-to-avoid-a-calendar-choked-with-interruptions

The second thing is that preparing the lessons themselves is a more daunting task than I had imagined. Although classes start next Wednesday, I only have a few days worth of lessons planned. The rest are still very sketchy. I know that’s probably a good thing, since it means I can be more flexible – go faster or slower if necessary, or change my approach if I have to. But I don’t like it. I want everything to be laid out in detail for the full term. That would be very inflexible though, and certainly not good teaching practice.

Once classes start, I feel sure that I’ll find some happy medium between chaos and predictability. And I’m betting it tends more toward chaos.