My Baking Journey..... thus far

I live in the US and 6 weeks ago major parts of the economy started shutting down due to the outbreak of COVID-19. People rushed to the grocery stores and started stocking on food and other products in anticipation that they would need to stay put for a while.

I went to the grocery store to grab a few essentials, one of which was bread, alas the shelves were mostly empty. I wasn’t sure how long the madness was going to last so I snatched two loaves of sourdough and headed over to the baking section. There were two bags of bread flour left so I grabbed them and a few other things since I wasn’t really sure what I would need.

A few days later a coworker sends out an SOS, “Does anyone have any bread flour?”. He makes the most amazing sourdough bread... I messaged him and offered a trade, a bag of flour for some starter, his recipe, and a loaf of bread. He thought I was joking about having bread flour until I sent him a picture of what kind I had bought. Happened to be the same kind he uses.

A week later the exchange goes down. I start reading the book “Tartine Bread” and watching YouTube videos. Hours and hours of videos and reading while waiting for my combo cooker to arrive and my bread baskets (totally got the wrong thing).

I attempted my first loaf, it didn’t hold its form and came out a little flat, but was still tasty.

I think this was still my favorite loaf.

I had refrigerated the the second half of the batch and baked it later, it was still quite formless, but at least the cold allowed it to have enough rigidness to score (I also found a sharper knife).

 
I spent my downtime over the next week researching, and decided to adjust the recipe with the next bake.

And I finally got some nicely formed loaves.

 I am now on my 4th week and still tweaking and changing as I go, but so far so good.