Pandemic, Yeast & Other Scary Stuff

I like to consider myself a fairly adventurous cook, but something I’ve always found daunting is BAKING. The exact science is just not my forté as someone who really just likes to go with the flow. Cooking can be so flexible and baking is the opposite. Due to that, I have really only stuck to baking cookies and maybe the occasional pie.

Many people during the COVID-19 pandemic decided to use their quarantine time to learn a new skill. For me, I decided it was finally time to tackle one of my greatest culinary fears: yeast. I was not alone in my quest to bake delicious homemade artisan-quality breads, so yeast and most types of flour became impossible to find. My lovely neighbor graciously shared her sourdough starter with me while I awaited my order of yeast from Amazon (a full pound of SAF Instant Yeast). The result was this gorgeous, crusty on the outside, airy on the inside boule!

Finally, my yeast arrived and I was able to begin to conquer the beast. I always knew that baking, particularly bread making, was a very exact science. Armed with Rose Berenbaum’s The Bread Bible and a kitchen scale, I tried to learn as much as I could about autolyse, hydration, paté fermenteé, poolish, oven spring, and other foreign-to-me bread making terms and methods.

So far, I have made baguettes, ciabatta, batards and boules that were not only beautiful, but really delicious! Honestly, I haven’t bought bread from a store or bakery since early March!

After making these beautiful and delicious breads with enormous success, I started feeling a little more confident and decided to make my own sourdough starter. I followed the starter method on King Arthur Flour’s website, and I fed and babied this starter for days. Seriously, I thought we were going to be able to claim it as a dependent on our next tax return! When I felt that it met the criteria to become bread, I followed the steps I had previously used to make a sourdough loaf. Let’s just say things did not turn out as intended (see below).

After my sourdough failure, I think I’ll stick with my traditional yeast for now.

Feeling somewhat confident, I attempted to make the yeast boule called The Saturday White Bread (from Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza by Ken Forkish). One thing that I can say I’ve learned with bread making in particular is the importance of weighing ingredients, rather than measuring them. This bread is actually incredibly easy and requires no equipment at all (not even a stand mixer!) except for a large covered tub for hydrating, mixing and rising. I carefully weighed out my flour and put it into a Cambro 6 quart round container, and poured water in from a measuring cup. However. . . I forgot to weight it!!! UGH! The dough was overly hydrated, and super sticky. I was able to salvage it into a less than desirable looking (but edible) focaccia.

The world is slowly starting to reopen where I live and I’ve mostly overcome my fear of yeast, but sadly not my fear of sourdough (yet). I’ve learned a lot, especially the importance of the weighing to measure ingredients. Hopefully I’ve learned my lesson on that front and won’t make the same mistake. I plan to continue to make homemade breads and challenge myself personally. I can’t believe it took a pandemic to get me to this point!

Pandemic, Yeast & Other Scary Stuff

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