Heidi gave me some sourdough starter a month or so ago, and I've been dutifully ignoring it ever since. I tried making sourdough bread from one recipe I found online, but the stupid thing never rose. Or maybe I just didn't have the patience to let it rise for more than 6 hours and just threw the thing away.
I found a different recipe and today decided to go for it; if this one failed like the last one, then I would toss the starter and begin from scratch.
But the consistency of the dough felt different, felt more like bread than the first attempt, so I was hopeful that I would be eating hot sourdough bread before bed.
I let it sit for two hours and it did a bit of rising, which was great. I let it sit for another two hours and it filled the bread pan. This was working! I was going to have hot bread! My starter wasn't bad! A whole world of sourdough possibilities were opening up to me!
The recipe I had found mentioned putting boiling water in the oven under the bread pan to help keep things moist, so I popped a Pyrex pan in the 450°F oven while I boiled water.
Boiling water is only about 212°F. And I dumped it into a glass pan at 450°F. You don't have to have a chemistry degree to know that that difference in temperature will make for some crazy bad things. If you can't imagine it, let me give you a better picture:
I really liked that Pyrex pan. But the kicker? The sourdough bread was in the oven at the time of the explosion. I have to throw it away.
At least the focaccia pizzas I made for dinner came out good and yummy.
04 MAY
2008
Inspired by Mighty Girl, I've been thinking about the moments in my life that have been so fantastic that I want others to experience the same thing. I'm trying to come up with 100 of them, but it's proving more difficult than I thought it would be. There might only be 60 items in my 100 Things Worth Doing list, but then I can claim that I'm saving the last 40 slots for the awesomeness to come.
- Throwing rocks at seagulls on the beach
- Wading in the ocean, convincing tourists to get into the cold water
- Sky full of the aurora borealis on the evening of 9/11/01
- Singing Sunday school songs at the top of my lungs on hour 9 or a road trip
- My first niece on my arms, so tiny and attached to a heart monitor
- Backing over my brother's mailbox, twice
- Trying to communicate with German tourists in a Parisian hostel
- Hot springs at -20°F, steam so thick I can't see the stars
- Climbing on top of the Alyeska Pipeline despite the "no climbing" signs
- Midnight baseball under a full Solstice sun
- That first kiss
- Teeny tiny puppy choosing my armpit as a bed for the night, afraid I'd crush him
- Mixing chocolate chip cookie dough with my bare hands
- Fresh, hot crepes from a corner stand in Paris
- Bed time stories about an annoying, spoiled, bratty princess named Melissa
- Standing on the Arctic Circle
- The slip and slide in the front lawn on a summer afternoon
- Apple core. Baltimore. Who's your friend?
- Zip line on the beach
- 3am giggle fits
- Shared green tea ice cream
- 7up and bendy straws
- Being lulled to sleep by the sound of waves lapping against the boat
- Giving a boy I barely knew a manicure on a trans-Atlantic flight
- The smell of homemade bread
What things have you done that are worth doing?
23 APR
2008
