works of wanderlust

Category: sourdough

  • Friday Yeast Fail

    I banked my evening post on some cast iron skillet focaccia bread. The plan was to bake a zesty round of generously seasoned pan bread, a twelve inch disc of leavened goodness, baked to perfection in the oven and sliced up for some Friday night snacking. I followed a simple recipe: some flour, yeast, olive

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  • The Artful Joy of Splitting Sourdough

    A friend of mine killed her starter. Dead. I didn’t ask how. Vacations. Life. A summer heat wave. It happens. So a few days later I just split mine and delivered one half it to her in a plastic pouch. Problem solved, and she could go back to baking loaves. This marks the third time

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  • Heat Proofed

    While the baker in me is disappointed by the negative impact the heat has had on my sourdough, the science nerd side of my brain has been giddy at watching how this blast of summer temperatures spun the dial on one of the variables in the delicate process. My fellow Western-North-Americans know this all too

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  • Bread, Un-Servable

    We had a small get-together in our backyard over the weekend. Because as the number of new infections drops and more people get vaccinated locally, the restrictions have been eased and we figured a few people over for drinks and food was now not only possible, it was lawful. Of course, I baked a loaf

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  • Local Flours Sours: Peace Country Rye (Part Two)

    If you read my weekend article about the Peace Country Rye flour blend that set the stage for my sourdough effort, you may recall how much I was anticipating baking a great-tasting rye bread from my sourdough process. By Sunday evening I had two hot loaves, fresh from the oven. Then one of these sourdough

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