On The Rise...Baking Bread!
As cold temperatures beckon, the idle mind starts to wander-more than usual- that is! The very thought of a simmering homemade soup and the smell of bread baking evoke a comfort that money can't buy! Of course with the hefty rise in bread prices, making it yourself is an huge incentive.
My mother and Aunt Rosi (Rosi Tante) both baked bread each Monday morning. My mother's bread was very, very substantial (think brick) and she never veered from her original recipe. My Rosi Tante had a much more nuanced depth in her bread making, and she tended to experiment with various types of flour and yeasts; resulting in a more tasty and palatable loaf. I think there must've been a bread baking rivalry between them, but it didn't matter to me because, ultimately I was the one who had to take the sandwiches to school which my mother had baked. And, ohhhhh! Those were sandwiches! Old (Transylvanian) school, that is. Not everyone at Proctor Elementary School had 1-inch thick and unevenly sliced pieces of heavily-buttered bread, slathered with copious amounts of liverwurst and sliced radishes.
Speck 
(salted/smoked bacon with garlic and paprika) topped with brown and grainy mustard. I drew the line at pickled anything though. Those were the days when I longed for other kids' lunches made with Wonder Bread® , packaged Oscar Mayer® Bologna and something called mayonnaise (a product that never passed my lips until after high school). And what about those perfectly fluffy, pink and white coconut mounds called Hostess® Snowballs or the chocolaty cupcakes with that inviting, white squiggly line across the top? They looked beyond yummy. No one wanted to trade for my dried-out prune tart slices. But, I digress....
(salted/smoked bacon with garlic and paprika) topped with brown and grainy mustard. I drew the line at pickled anything though. Those were the days when I longed for other kids' lunches made with Wonder Bread® , packaged Oscar Mayer® Bologna and something called mayonnaise (a product that never passed my lips until after high school). And what about those perfectly fluffy, pink and white coconut mounds called Hostess® Snowballs or the chocolaty cupcakes with that inviting, white squiggly line across the top? They looked beyond yummy. No one wanted to trade for my dried-out prune tart slices. But, I digress....A few days ago I decided to experiment with some bread that I used to bake. I needed starter dough, but alas, I had to develop my own starter. It's what gives bread it's unbelievably good taste. My husband had opened a bottle of beer and set it down after finding out that it was a dark stout...no likey, very much! So, I used it to start a new batch of starter dough:
Karin's Dark Stout Reject Starter Dough (not bad for an experiment)
Combine:
2 Cups warm dark beer
1 Tbl. maple syrup, sugar or honey
2 Cups all-purpose flour
1 Tbl dry yeast
1 Tbl dry yeast
• Beat all ingredients together in a 2 qt bowl.
• Cover bowl with slightly damp cloth towel and place it in a warm place. It will double in bulk, but as fermentation develops, it will settle down.
• As the mixture sits, stir the liquid back down once a day for 2-5 days. When the bubbling begins to diminish and you notice a sour, yeasty aroma, you can use it .
Refrigerate remaining starter dough in a sealed container. Each time you use some of the starter, replenish with equal amounts of flour and water and allow it to sit in a warm place for 12 hours to allow the yeast to grow again. Place back in the refrigerator until the next time. It will keep indefinitely-and make sure to stir it every week or two.
Because I used the beer base, it gave me an extra shot of yeast (whoops), much like that which Lucille Ball experienced. Her cooking antics always give me a huge belly laugh and influenced me a bit too much...
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Tom