About time I stepped in...

...after lurking for a few months.

Hi All, 

I’m a Swede in his early forties, now living in Jakarta, Indonesia.  I’ve always been obsesssd with bread. The ‘eating it’ part at least. Since about a year I’ve been getting more and more into the making of it.

I’m fairly at home home in the kitchen. Even worked a few years as a chef in the UK in my youth. 

Indonesia is not a bread eating culture. To most Indonesians bread is something soft, spongy and sweet, made with low-protein flour, and meant to be eaten with sweet toppings as an alternative to cake. Or put another way, bread is just another type of pastry. Real bread is only available from a few small expat-oriented outlets, but their products are out of my price range, at least for day-to-day bread needs. 

As I love bread, baking became a necessity, rather than me needing a hobby. 

My baking journey began when I decided to try the no-knead method. I had the standard, “Holy c**p, did I make this!?” revelation when the first loaf came out. Then I Became an annoying no-knead bread evangelist to everyone I knew. 

I didn’t have a Dutch oven at the time, so I preheated two lasagne dishes, put the dough into one of them and put the other on top, inverted, as a lid, “gluing” them together with flour paste. I would crack open the vessel with a knife halfway through and remove the lid. It was a huge hassle. Eventually I realized it would be better to spend money on a Dutch oven as opposed to all that burn gel for my fingers. Also, I didn’t want to risk eviction due to all those loud profanities.  So I bought one. 

I later progressed to kneaded yeast doughs. Not yet ready to take the sourdough-plunge, I dabbled with the “old dough” method for a while. Then I took the plunge. 

I’ve had my 100% hydration 100% rye starter for two months now. After a few “pancakes”, the breads got better, and now they are not too shabby, if I may say so. 

Fairly typical journey, right (apart, perhaps, from the improvised lasagne dish vessel).

Now I’m an annoying born-again sourdough evangelist instead. 

Thats it for the moment.