First Timer

This is my first ever blog post, so be gentle with me.

Speaking of firsts... As some of you may know, I decided recently to attempt to be a baker. In typical fashion, I decided to try something hard first. Sourdough bread. Armed with article from web, flour, water, plastic container, and wooden spoon, I started off on my adventure. After only 2 days of what was supposed to take 4, my "starter" batter was producing gas like Stephen after Thanksgiving and had developed an odor as sour as a college student's car. So I says to myself I says, "Self, you are an overachiever". A couple of days after loving care of my starter, I am prepared to undertake a weekend sourdough bread baking. And it is a multi-day process which I find to be quite enjoyable and zen-like. Only problem is that as I approach the finish line, I find my dough is not rising as much as it should. That's OK. I'm an overachiever. This will work out in the end. Throw it in the oven, and I'm sure it will improve. Many minutes of oven peering later, I pull from the oven my first "loaf" - a rather cheesy smelling brick of a thing. After much sawing with a bread knife, Christy and I took one nibble of the world's best smelling new building material - just to say that we had tasted it. Then into the trash. There are some good photos of its bitter end that hopefully my wife will post. Much research later, I realize that I have likely made a number of errors. The first of which was mistaking the cultivation of a bacteria like that used in making cheese for the cultivation of the wild yeast necessary for making sourdough bread. Bread gods 1, Hubris 0. I shant be daunted. More to come on my efforts to become Yankee Sourdough King. Once it's mastered, perhaps I'll send out packages of lovely sour beer smelling bubbling starters to family and friends so they can make their own loaves from what I am determined will be the best strain of sourdough motherloaf ever to be fermented in Connecticut (that might not be as hard as it sounds).