Fourth time's the charm (I'm lying to myself)

The starter has been sitting on the counter for six days and I have been talking to it. That’s where we are. I don’t know when sourdough became my thing — somewhere between finishing up the archive project coordination stuff with Margaret and needing something that had absolutely nothing to do with spreadsheets or preservation materials. Bread felt right. Bread felt simple. Bread is not simple.

Fourth time’s the charm (I’m lying to myself)

This is attempt number four. Attempts one through three produced, respectively: a dense hockey puck, a weirdly gummy situation that I don’t want to revisit, and something that looked genuinely promising until I forgot it in the oven for twelve extra minutes. Today’s dough at least feels correct — tacky but not sticky, which I have learned is a thing that matters deeply. I watched probably four hours of video tutorials this week, which Jake has been very patient about considering our living room doubles as his workspace and I had the volume up.

The dough does not care that I watched four hours of tutorials.

I keep thinking about something Margaret said last time we had tea — that her husband always said the best way to learn a skill was to be willing to be bad at it in front of yourself first, before anyone else saw. She was talking about pottery, but it applies here too. The sourdough is ugly. The kitchen looks like a flour bomb went off. I have no idea if this loaf will actually work. And somehow that’s exactly the point.